The 2026 autumn Keqiao Curtain Fair has concluded, sending a clear signal: the curtain and soft furnishings industry has completely moved beyond the era of selling fabric by volume. On-site, immersive whole-home experience displays replaced traditional stacked exhibits, light Chinese style emerged as the biggest highlight, fabric innovation accelerated, and original design was pushed to the core. These changes are not merely about aesthetics; they signal a value reshuffle across the industry chain.
Event Background
The most visible change at this fair was the upgrade of exhibition formats. Traditional booth-style displays largely disappeared, replaced by realistic spaces in modern minimalist, gentle French, retro vintage, and light neo-Chinese styles. Brands like Orange Impression abandoned single-product displays in favor of whole-home ambiance coordination. A brand representative stated that market competition has shifted from price wars to aesthetic ability, coordination capability, and space-shaping skills. This means buyers who still prioritize low-price sourcing will miss the real needs of end consumers.
Style diversification was another notable feature. Dopamine bright colors, French retro, and vintage texture styles remained popular, but the most striking development was the explosive rise of light neo-Chinese style. Different from the heavy and complex traditional Chinese design, the 2026 version uses low-saturation base colors like light mist gray, milk coffee, and off-white, paired with simplified oriental lines and delicate embroidery, reducing heaviness and enhancing transparency. Brands like Caramel Road use this to suit modern large flats and improved residences, becoming the top choice for high-end home furnishing. Behind this is a shift among young consumers toward niche, textured, and unique solutions, demanding higher R&D capabilities from factories.
Industry Impact
At the fabric level, the industry has completed a new round of quality upgrades. Chenille and high-density precision fabrics remain mainstream, but yarns are finer, grammage is higher, and drape is better, fitting large floor-to-ceiling windows. Natural eco-friendly fabrics are surging in popularity, with cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures favored; no-odor, high colorfastness, and biodegradability have become hard requirements. Window covering categories are also undergoing structural changes: thickened sheer fabrics that transmit light but not view are becoming standard, elevating sheers from supporting roles to protagonists; high-blackout, sun-resistant, permanently shaped ready-made curtains are selling well, while blinds, honeycomb shades, and custom-shaped window treatments expand. Whole-home window covering integration is becoming a new profit direction for stores, meaning suppliers need to diversify product lines rather than just selling fabric.
Original design has formally become an industry barrier. The fair showed that self-developed patterns, original texture techniques, and exclusive colorways are favored by buyers, while plagiarized and homogeneous products are being eliminated faster. The industry is shifting from scale and low-price competition to design, quality, and innovation. Channel models have also been revolutionized: short-video seeding, live-streaming cloud fairs for online traffic, plus offline physical experience for transactions, have become standard operating methods. The fair's cloud live-stream attracted far more online viewers than offline visitors, with customers selecting products online and ordering offline, fully integrating the omni-channel chain. Keqiao's 'exhibition-trade integration' advantage continues to amplify, extending the short-term fair into a year-round source market. Buyers can capture trends and also visit the Beilian physical market to connect with factory orders, shortening supply chains. The continued arrival of overseas buyers is accelerating the overseas expansion of domestic fabric brands.