Save the date: the next edition of Identità Milano will be from Saturday 9th to Monday 11th March 2024

We announce the dates earlier than the usual, for a specific reason: the next edition of Identità Milano, number 19, will be held once again at MiCo from Saturday 9^th to Monday 11^th March 2024.

We announce it earlier than usual, because we’re back to normality and we’re so unused to this now, after the recent events, that it seems extraordinary. We announce it earlier than usual because it’s through these actions too that we can reclaim the possibility of planning - both for the event’s organisers and for speakers, exhibitors or participants – that seemed lost in recent years. «Being able to make plans is a conquest, in fact a reconquest – says Paolo Marchi, curator and founder of the event together with Claudio Ceroni. – We’ve always been a “winter” congress, with the event being held between January (in the early years) and March (in the latest pre-pandemic editions). Instead, as of 2020 we had to move by baby steps, following the principle of "who knows when we’ll make it". That year, the first of the lockdowns, we moved from March to July and then November, before giving up completely; in 2021 we moved to September; in 2022 to April... Now we need more certainty, logic and set pace». It helps us, because we can work in a more organised way, inviting the right guests in advance, having a reasonable certainty that they won’t be stuck somewhere around the world, and even have the time to visit and discover new talents... And it also helps the many – among those who decide to participate with a stand or for other professional reasons – who need to plan their choices in a suitable advance.

Claudio Ceroni and Paolo Marchi on the stage of the crammed Auditorium, during the recent Identità Milano 2023

So, 9-11 March 2024. «I’ve always been a little annoyed by a question everyone always asked, "when is the next Identità Milano going to be?", because our dates have changed in time, while for instance everyone knows that Madrid Fusión is at the end of January, Gastronomika in October, that in November there’s the presentation of the Italian edition of the Michelin guide and so on – adds Marchi. – We have often changed dates to find the best match with FieraMilano, which hosts us at MiCo. We now return to March and it makes sense to announce it already».

But what will be the theme of Identità Milano 2024? Marchi: «I must still think about it. For sure, I want to focus on a positive element, if the right input will emerge in the next few months. In other words: we’ve been focusing on the issues of the industry for some time, even before Covid, like environmental sustainability, the labour emergency, the difficult post-lockdown prospects, the need for change... The current war is terrible, it makes us face huge risks, but the pandemic has all deprived us of something we believed unquestionable, that is to say the freedom of movement. So I would like to return on discussing that freedom and the prospects of the meeting of cultures. After all, in March 2024 it will be less than two years until the Milano-Cortina Olympic Games, which will also provide an extraordinary opportunity of exchange and discussion between people from all around the world».

Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso