More than the store
IKEA selects Austin suburb for first stop of global 9-city festival
IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings retailer known for its sometimes tough-to-assemble furniture, is assembling a global festival this year that will make its first stop in the Austin area.
On August 26, IKEA’s store in Round Rock will host the first event as part of the nine-city IKEA Festival. The festival, which concludes September 10, “celebrates people’s real creativity and inventiveness at home,” the company says.
The nine cities will host activities related to food, sports, gaming, music, dance, nature, fashion and beauty, arts and crafts, collecting, wellness, and pets.
The Round Rock festivities “will inspire upcoming musical artists to transform their space using IKEA, and give attendees the best tips and tricks on how to create a living area to co-create music, how to celebrate and make room for instruments and memorabilia, and an open floor disco showing how you can flex your living space into a dance floor for neighbors and friends,” IKEA says.
Lemya Osman, IKEA’s U.S. leader for home furnishings, says the Austin area is an ideal place to spotlight the festival’s focus on music and dance.
“Our vision for the IKEA Festival is to showcase people’s creativity and inventiveness from diverse, iconic locations around the world,” Osman says.
Round Rock and Brooklyn, New York, are the festival’s two U.S. hosts. Other host cities are Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Shanghai, Stockholm, Sydney, and Tokyo.
“We recognize that life at home has taken on a whole new meaning for every one of us over the past couple of years. We launched the IKEA Festival in 2021 as a way to offer a new experience to celebrate, connect, and engage around life at home,” Osman says. “It’s a way for us to be virtually connected and open the door to many more lives around the world — exploring how we all live, while celebrating individuality and creativity.”
