Monday, October 13th, marked the conclusion of Expo Osaka 2025. The exhibition gathered representatives from 165 countries and international organizations and welcomed around 28 million visitors to Yumeshima, a reclaimed site in Osaka Bay. The site was reimagined through a masterplan and bounded by a Guinness World Record-breaking wooden circular structure, both designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects. Over 184 days, participants were able to visit the self-built, modular, and shared pavilions, national exhibitions, and public activities organized under the overarching theme “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” During its six-month run, the Expo set out to explore three pivotal subthemes, Saving Lives, Empowering Lives, and Connecting Lives, as an invitation to bring together new perspectives for our built and social ecosystem.
World Expos, officially known as International Registered Exhibitions, are international gatherings of nations and institutions addressing contemporary challenges from a global perspective. Since the first World Expo, the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, the event has served as an opportunity for nations and institutions to demonstrate power and progress through built infrastructure, from the Crystal Palace and the Eiffel Tower onwards. With most editions held in Europe and some in the United States, this latest edition marks the 36th World Expo and the third one hosted in Japan, 55 years after the previous Expo in Osaka in 1970. This year, the event sought to transform Yumeshima artificial island into a hub of international collaboration and experimental architecture, with Sou Fujimoto’s master plan and circular wooden structure emphasizing “Unity in Diversity.”
Since the Bureau International des Expositions was established in 1928 to oversee these events, World Expos have been organized around a theme, with the explicit objective of serving as large-scale platforms for education and as bridges between governments, companies, international organizations, and citizens. Expo Osaka 2025 aimed to unite architectural and design enthusiasts by demonstrating how cutting-edge technology and innovative solutions can address global challenges, foster dialogue, and inspire collective action. During the official closing ceremony held in the Expo Hall – Shining Hat, BIE representatives referred to this edition as “a symbol of resilience,” noting that “collective intelligence and international cooperation are our greatest strengths in the face of uncertainty,” and describing it as “a space for human interaction, for face-to-face diplomacy, for co-creation, and for the exploration of fundamental questions about our shared future” at a time when the world faces uncertainty, tensions, and conflict.
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Lina Ghotmeh’s Bahrain Pavilion Wins Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape at Expo 2025 Osaka
To conclude the six-month event, a BIE Day Awards Ceremony was also held a day before the official closing, during which the recipients of the Expo 2025 Official Participant Awards were announced. A total of 45 Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards, along with four Sustainability Awards, were presented during the ceremony. Among them, the Kingdom of Bahrain Pavilion, designed by Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture, received the Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape in the self-built pavilions under 1,500 square meters category. Below, we present five featured articles offering perspectives on the international exhibition, adding to the diversity of published pavilion designs that stood out the most this year.
Designing the Future, Again: What the 55-Year Return of the World Expo to Osaka Reveals
Halfway Through Expo 2025 Osaka: 10 Must-Visit Pavilions
The World’s Largest Wooden Architectural Structure: Explore Sou Fujimoto’s Grand Ring at Expo 2025 Osaka Through the Lens of Stephane Aboudaram
On Designing National Pavilions: Power and Identity at Universal Exhibitions
Osaka Architecture City Guide: 23 Projects Showcasing Japan’s Design Legacy and Innovation
The next World Expo, Expo 2030 Riyadh, will take place from October 1, 2030, to March 31, 2031, under the theme “Foresight for Tomorrow.” The master plan for the exhibition has been developed by a team of advisors led by LAVA, guided by three core design principles: Nature-Led Urban Design, Nature-Inspired Regeneration, and Sustainable Mobility Without Compromise. The team recently welcomed Spaceagency, an international design consultancy specializing in placemaking and experiential master planning, to lead the wayfinding and signage strategy for the Expo. Meanwhile, another major international exhibition is also drawing to a close, the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, which has been running since May 10 and will conclude on Sunday, November 23, 2025. In this nineteenth edition of the Biennale, the Kingdom of Bahrain was also this year’s winner of the Golden Lion for national participation.
We invite you to check out ArchDaily’s comprehensive coverage of the Expo Osaka 2025.
