The curtain fair in Keqiao concluded in August 2026, sending a clear signal: the competitive logic of the soft furnishing industry has been completely rewritten. The most visible change was the near disappearance of traditional fabric-stacking booths, replaced by immersive full-house real-scene experience spaces. This means curtains are no longer just a piece of fabric but an expression of spatial mood. For buyers and factories, understanding this shift matters more than chasing any single trend.
Industry Direction: From Selling Fabric to Selling Space
The upgrade of exhibition halls is a microcosm of the industry's transformation. Real-scene spaces featuring modern minimalism, gentle French style, retro mid-century, and light neo-Chinese style have become standard. Brands like Orange Impression focus on whole-house ambiance coordination, with their head stating that the soft furnishing industry has long left the low-price era of selling fabric by volume. This change is driven by demand-side upgrades: end users no longer pay for a piece of blackout cloth but for an 'ideal home scene.' For factories, this means the role of a mere fabric supplier is being phased out; source enterprises capable of offering spatial styling solutions will gain stronger pricing power.
Styles and Fabrics: Light Chinese Style Surges, Functionality Becomes a Hard Requirement
The biggest hit at this fair was the lightweight neo-Chinese style. Unlike the heavy and intricate traditional Chinese designs of previous years, the 2026 version uses low-saturation base colors like light mist gray, milky coffee, and rice white, paired with minimalist lines and delicate embroidery, reducing heaviness and suiting modern large flats. Brands like Calamile have made it their main push. This trend reflects the deepening of national aesthetics and the rise of the improved housing market. Meanwhile, fabric iteration is accelerating: chenille and high-precision fabrics have upgraded with higher grammage and better drape; eco-friendly materials like cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures are gaining popularity, with no odor, high colorfastness, and biodegradability becoming hard requirements. Functional window coverings are also expanding, with sheer fabrics, honeycomb blinds, and venetian blinds in demand, featuring see-through-but-private, high blackout, and permanent shaping. This means buyers who only focus on patterns while ignoring material and function will miss mainstream demand.
Industrial Impact: Originality and Omnichannel Operation as Barriers
Another strong signal from the fair is the return of original design value. Self-developed patterns, original texture processes, and exclusive colorways are favored, while copied and homogenized products are being phased out faster. The industry is shifting from 'competing on volume and low price' to 'competing on design, quality, and innovation.' This transformation challenges small and medium factories but also offers differentiation opportunities—instead of burning out in the low-end market, investing in R&D can build a moat. At the same time, channel models have been completely renovated: short-video seeding, live-streaming cloud exhibitions for online traffic, combined with offline real-scene experience for closing deals, have become the standard playbook for soft furnishing stores and factories. The fair's cloud exhibition attracted far more online visitors than offline, with customers selecting products online and placing orders offline, fully integrating the whole chain. Keqiao's 'exhibition-trade integration' advantage is further amplified, extending the short-term fair into a year-round source market. With increasing overseas visitors, domestic fabric brands are accelerating their global expansion. For buyers, this means more efficient access to source factories; for factories, it requires strengthening online content capabilities and foreign trade services.