Kia Showcases Its Gamer-Inspired Concept at Milan Design Week

• Kia is at Milan Design Week for the fourth time since 2023, and its newest exhibit runs by way of April 26.
• For the primary time, Kia has a concept-car walk-through, culminating within the international debut of the Vision Meta Turismo idea, beforehand solely proven in Korea.
• The Vision Meta Turismo is an electrical sports activities automobile that might be the successor to the Kia Stinger if it reaches manufacturing.

Design Week in Milan, Italy, is a feast of the senses. Galleries are awash in projected mild exhibits and vibrating with sound tub installations. It’s a celebration of supplies, scents, and colours, as trend, meals, and inside design manufacturers vie for probably the most hanging demonstrations of their model aesthetics. It’s the proper place for Kia to focus on its inventive course of.

Since 2023, Kia has participated in Design Week, typically by way of partnerships with outdoors artists that seemingly don’t have any connection to cars. “I liked the idea that our designers could show their non-automotive creative side,” says Karim Habib, govt vp and head of Kia Global Design.

For 2026, Kia continues to be displaying its inventive facet with “Journey of Reflection” on the Museo della Permanente. The set up performs with mild, sound, and reflections to alternately soothe and confuse a viewer. The Kia designers concerned within the multi-room expertise say it represents the design course of, which might begin out with a way of danger however, by following one’s instincts, can finish with the creation of a good looking area that absorbs stress and offers sanctuary.

It’s a metaphor for a way the designers view their work in automotive, but when all that feels a bit intellectual once you’re simply searching for a mid-size SUV, maybe you will discover the second exhibition simpler to connect with the dealership. In “Journey of Projection” on the Salone dei Tessuti, just a few blocks from the museum, viewers are welcomed as soon as once more right into a spa-like room flickering with rainbow mild. Once by way of the doorway, nevertheless, the sculptures are far more recognizable as Kia merchandise.

Through a collection of brightly coloured rooms, the viewer passes by latest Kia idea vehicles—from the small EV2 to the three-row EV9—and finishes the tour in a darkish theatre the place a pulsing, light-streaked show streams behind Kia’s newest idea, the sporty Vision Meta Turismo Concept.

We first noticed the Vision Meta Turismo in Korea in December of 2025, however that is the primary time it has been proven outdoors its residence nation. Unlike the SUVs in the remainder of the show, the Meta Turismo is a wedge-shaped electrical sport sedan, virtually Lamborghini-like in profile. The faceted physique panels transition into a fragile framework supporting a glass cover over an uneven inside that Habib says is impressed by gaming and racing simulators.

Virtual driving is on the core of the Meta Turismo’s creation, and never simply because it is a idea. The entire automobile was impressed by the thought of designing a sports activities automobile for a era whose first efficiency experiences may need been with video video games in the lounge, moderately than hand-me-down hatchbacks in native parking tons. “If you grew up experiencing sports cars virtually, how does that affect your tastes in a real car?” requested Habib.

Perhaps you may want a extra laid-back seating angle, or a shifter that seems like a joystick. “We thought a lot about the play between the physical and the digital,” mentioned Habib, when requested in regards to the latest design transfer away from screen-heavy interiors and again in the direction of extra analog controls. He says that idea vehicles enable the design group to discover applied sciences that are not prepared for the road, however would possibly sooner or later be the norm, like elevated projection on home windows to exchange conventional gauge clusters or utilizing voice controls as an alternative of complicated infotainment menus.

In the Meta Turismo, the experimental tech contains three totally different modes that make use of augmented-reality glasses and head-up shows, imagining a world the place the motive force would possibly use AR goggles to navigate visitors in Dreamer mode, a full windshield projection in Speedster mode to amp up the joy of a high-speed drive, after which proceed the adrenaline rush at their vacation spot by switching into Gamer mode and utilizing the automobile as a racing simulator whereas parked.

Kia says the Meta Turismo might be the subsequent evolution of the four-door Stinger hatchback, even when it does not come to market fairly as radical as what’s on show in Milan. Kia has observe document for bringing its idea vehicles to life, with the manufacturing variations that includes lots of the daring coloration selections and fascinating inside layouts on show within the ideas.

The Design Week exhibitions are much less about showcasing product and extra about highlighting a course of, which, for Kia’s designers, is all about their “opposites united” philosophy. A tough line might be balanced by a smooth inside. A wild virtual-reality display screen will share a cabin with a tactile shifter. Bright paint and inside colours are impressed by naturally derived dyes. As a comparatively new model, Kia’s designers aren’t restricted by legacy designs, which they are saying provides them a variety of freedom in creating future merchandise. Each new mannequin can mirror the present developments and buyer wants, and what higher place to discover these developments than Design Week in Milan?

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