2020s

The 2020s have shifted IKEA’s cultural position. The catalogue that shaped the brand for seven decades came to an end, the secondary market flourished, and the company began consciously producing objects that sit at the boundary between mass design and collectible culture.

In the autumn of 2020 IKEA announced that the 2021 edition would be the last printed catalogue in its history. First published in 1951, and at its peak distributed in 200 million copies annually across more than fifty countries, the catalogue had been the most widely circulated commercial publication in the world. Its retirement was a symptom of deeper change: digital communication demanded different tools, and physical print was losing reach. The gap was filled by social media and digital channels, but something irreplaceable disappeared with the paper edition.

In 2022 IKEA unveiled the OBEGRÄNSAD collection in collaboration with Swedish House Mafia: an all-black range of modular home-studio furniture built around two iconic shapes, the square and the circle. A desk with integrated monitor arms, an armchair, and a shelving unit adapted from the KALLAX system were aimed at musicians and producers of limited means but, as the name declared, unlimited creativity.

The VARMBLIXT collection by Sabine Marcelis arrived in stores in 2023: nineteen glass objects, including a signature round lamp in amber-tinted glass, exploring the emotional effects of sculptural light at home. Marcelis, a Dutch-New Zealand designer known for her work in the collectible-design register, translated her visual language into mass production without aesthetic compromise.

From 2023, the Nytillverkad programme completed a circle. Archive designs from the 1950s through the 1980s were reissued in new colourways and improved materials, confirming that IKEA treats its archive as a living catalogue, not a museum.