A simple and harmless curve-shaped trace changed everything. The famous Nike symbol not only represents the brand, but is already part of the collective imagination. From November 12 to January 25, 2026, TeamLabs/ Madrid will open the doors of an exhibition that will bring together different objects and pieces of the famous sports house. Tickets have just gone on sale.
NIKE. Design in motion ( organized by La Fábrica in collaboration with TeamLabs/) is a journey through its almost six decades of history in continuous evolution: from the emblematic Swoosh logo to cutting-edge innovations such as the Air sole, collaborations with athletes and designers (Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Virgil Abloh, Comme des Garçons…) or the cultural impact of the brand. Today, Nike turns over more than 50 billion US dollars a year with products conceived from its headquarters just outside Portland, Oregon.
Curated by Glenn Adamson (American curator and historian specializing in contemporary art), the exhibition arrives in Spain for the first time after its inauguration last year in one of the world’s leading design centers: Vitra Design Museum, located in Weil am Rhein. In it, we can enter and know what happens in their laboratories and learn about the work of engineers, designers, scientists…
What we will find in the Nike exhibition
How did Nike turn sports into fashion? How did it manage to change the rules of design? To answer this question, the exhibition gathers objects among which we will find experimental prototypes of models (such as the Waffle Trainer, the Air Force 1 and the Shox), historical images and videos, design sketches… All of them belonging to the Department of Nike Archives, the internal archive of the firm defined as “a place where you will find inspiration in the past to imagine the future” and which are exhibited in Spain for the first time.
The exhibition, organized in four sections, contains many samples and experiences within the proposal.
The first part, Track, narrates the birth of Nike (a name that refers to the Greek goddess of victory), a brand founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman in the early 1960s as a local business by sports lovers for sports lovers. Knight was a runner and Bowerman was his trainer, and the first employees were athletes. In this first part, the key moments of its history are summarized in which the intense and close relationship between Nike and athletes, research and design is unraveled.
The second part, Air, is a journey through the decade of the 80s, when Nike entered the international market with force and moved from the world of athletics to expand the fence: skateboarding, soccer, tennis, basketball… with the already iconic collaborations with athletes like Michael Jordan and Andre Agassi. This was also the moment when pop culture (and especially the arrival of the Air Max ’87 model) burst far beyond sports.
The third room, Sensation, is around the decade of the 90s, which was decisive for the technological development of the brand with the opening of Nike Sport Research Lab. A laboratory that delves into the science of the body and movement to perfect the brand’s designs, research on sustainability and new materials.
The last era (Relation), takes us to pop, mass culture and global design names such as Marc Newson, Tinker Hatfield or Virgil Abloh (and so on up to fifty collaborations) that united and unite Nike with the daily lives of its buyers and fans. How? In the form of fashion, video clips, even films. Nike as a form of expression and identity construction.
