The 2026 Autumn Keqiao Curtain Fair has concluded, but its signals are sufficient to rewrite the competitive rules for the soft furnishing industry in the second half of the year. The most intuitive change at the fair was not a new product, but the overall transformation of exhibition halls—traditional fabric-stacking booths have almost disappeared, replaced by immersive full-house real-scene experiences. This signifies that the value anchor of the curtain industry has shifted from 'fabric' to 'space ambiance', marking the end of the era of simply selling by volume.
Event Background
This edition of the fair was characterized by 'scenario-based' displays, with modern minimalism, gentle French style, retro vintage, and light new Chinese style becoming standard. Brands like Orange Impression have completely abandoned single-product displays, focusing instead on whole-house ambiance coordination. Its head stated that the soft furnishing industry has left the low-price era, with competition now centering on aesthetic ability and space-shaping capability. For buyers, this means that product selection logic must upgrade from 'choosing patterns' to 'choosing overall solutions', otherwise they risk losing bargaining power in the end market.
In terms of style, the fair presented a diverse landscape of minimalism as a base, personalized accents, and the rise of national style. Dopamine bright colors, French retro, and vintage texture styles remain popular, with younger consumers increasingly favoring niche, textural, and non-repetitive designs. The biggest dark horse was light new Chinese style—represented by brands like Calamile Road—using soft low-saturation bases such as mist grey, latte, and off-white, combined with minimalist oriental lines and delicate embroidery, preserving elegance while adapting to modern large flat-floor apartments. This style explosion is driven by both the growth of improved housing demand and the national trend aesthetic, which will continue to boost the high-end custom soft furnishing market.
Industry Impact
Fabric iteration is the underlying support for this round of upgrades. Chenille and high-precision fabrics remain dominant, but yarns are finer, grammage is upgraded, and drape is improved, directly echoing the trend of large floor-to-ceiling windows. Natural eco-friendly materials such as cotton-linen blends and Tencel textures have seen soaring attention, with no-odor, high colorfastness, and biodegradability becoming hard criteria rather than added value. This means the supply chain must accelerate environmental certification and process improvement, or risk being quickly eliminated by end buyers.
Curtain accessories are also undergoing structural changes: thickened illusion gauze that is transparent but not see-through has become a household standard, elevating gauze from a supporting role to a protagonist of ambiance; functional ready-made curtains with high shading, sun resistance, and permanent shaping continue to sell well, while venetian blinds, honeycomb blinds, and custom-shaped window treatments are expanding. Integrated whole-window treatments are becoming a new profit direction for stores, placing higher demands on factories' flexible production capabilities.
Original design has officially become a core industry barrier. The fair clearly showed that self-developed patterns, original texture processes, and exclusive color schemes are more favored, while copied and homogeneous products are being eliminated faster. The industry is shifting from 'competing on volume and low price' to 'competing on design, quality, and innovation', meaning IP protection and R&D investment will become a watershed for enterprises. Meanwhile, channel models have been completely revolutionized: short-video seeding, live cloud exhibitions for online traffic, combined with offline real-scene experiences for precise transactions, have become the standard operating model for soft furnishing stores and source factories. The fair's cloud exhibition attracted far more online visits than offline foot traffic, with customers selecting products online and placing orders offline, fully integrating the entire chain.
The advantages of Keqiao's 'exhibition-trade integration' continue to expand, extending the short-term fair into a year-round source market. Buyers can capture annual trends at the fair and then visit the Beilian physical market to connect with factory orders, significantly shortening the supply-demand chain. With increasing visits from overseas buyers, domestic fabric brands are accelerating their global expansion, broadening the industry's global footprint. For small and medium factories, this means they must establish an online-offline coordinated customer acquisition system and strengthen original design capabilities to compete in overseas markets.