Our 10 favourite brand pop-ups of 2025

And because the concept is now so mainstream there are more and more pop-ups appearing every year all around the world.

Some are purely brand-building and customer engagement exercises. Others are also actual shopping spaces as well.

But the very best all have one thing in common – they’re a brilliant take on the brand that really connects with customers, whether that’s making their lives easier, making their day a bit brighter, or introducing them to an aspect of the brand they may not be aware of.

So, in no particular order, here are our 10 favourite brand pop-ups of 2025.

1.      MUJI MUJI 5.5 (Milan, Italy)

Part of Milan Design Week 2025, we loved this simple but effective pop-up concept from Japanese lifestyle company MUJI.

Created in partnership with design company 5.5, MUJI MUJI 5.5 was a modular micro-home in a secret garden in Milan’s Brera district. What was really cool about the space is that it repurposed 12  iconic MUJI products in different ways to fulfil different purposes, such as using a MUJI box file and wire basket to make a planter or plastic storage boxes to make a stool.

It was a complete reimagining of MUJI’s products and yet felt very on-brand with a focus on form and simplicity. We also loved that MUJI made the instructions available online so consumers could recreate the different objects.

2.      La Fontana Di Peroni (London, UK)

Italian beer company Peroni Nastro Azzuro leant into its heritage with a brilliantly conceived pre-Christmas pop-up.

It placed a beer fountain on London’s South Bank where real, complimentary Peroni beer flowed from the tap.

Brilliantly engineered, the fountain not only looked like the real deal, evoking the beautiful fountains found throughout Italy, but it also made it look as though water was being turned into beer in the process. Super memorable and on-brand, it’s a great example of what a bit of creative thinking can do.

3.      IKEA House Warming (New York, US)

IKEA’s pop-ups are always great, but this one stood out for us because it homes in on and amplifies one part of IKEA’s home business – the kitchen.

And it did this by focusing on the idea that the kitchen is the heart of the home and the value of the things that take place in it – cooking and eating –  to consumers. So the pop-up included activities like kitchen demos and tasting, plus a daily happy hour built around the hook of IKEA’s famous meatballs.

IKEA also used the space as a launchpad and spotlight for its new cooking and dining product ranges with a seamless buying path from getting customers excited about food to giving them the things they need to enjoy their kitchen at home.

4.      Dylon Launderette (London, UK)

Clothes dye brand Dylon used London Fashion Week as a brilliant anchor for its Dylon Laundrette pop-up.

At a time when the city was buzzing around new fashion collections, Dylon found a sustainability angle for its products, encouraging shoppers to better care for their existing clothing and extend their lifespan.

A paid one-hour styling session, with the enticement of a complimentary scarf designed by Marques Almeida, sat alongside a quick fix, drop-in Repair & Renew station, serving different levels of customer interest.

5.      The Ralph Lauren Holiday Experience (London, UK)

Travelling, immersive installations aren’t a new concept in the luxury world, but the Ralph Lauren Holiday Experience was a great application of that idea for the Christmas season.

While the Holiday Experience also popped up in LA, Tokyo and Seoul, it was the London stop that stood out to us because of the commitment to the execution.

As a six-week pop-up, a lot more care and thought had to go into the concept. This was clear from the scale of the pop-up with Ralph Lauren creating a mini village, including a central wooden barn which was used for different workshops.

Every detail of the pop-up looked incredible, making it somewhere you wanted to just walk around and capture the Christmas atmosphere.

6.      Jo Malone London Seaside (London, UK)

Another great pop-up to grace London’s South Bank, Jo Malone’s seaside theme concept was the perfect pop-up for summer.

Designed to celebrate the brand’s limited edition Raspberry Ripple perfume, the pop-up took all the key components of a traditional British seaside town and gave them an upmarket twist. Pink-striped beach huts housed different activities including sending a digital postcard to someone, bunting making, a vintage photo booth, and actual raspberry ripple ice cream.

The location was also a brilliant choice, offering Londoners a dose of beach fun without the 1.5-2-hour drive to the nearest actual coast.

7.      Gymshark Londrette (London, UK)

We weren’t expecting to have two laundrette-themed pop-ups on the list, but this Gymshark London pop-up was another brilliant brand concept.

For a start, the retro laundrette design and branding was fantastic, making for brilliant images but also almost allowing the pop-up to hide in plain sight by taking over a sandwich shop.

What we liked about the Gymshark Londrette is that the brand saw an opportunity to support the fitness community – in this case competitors at the HYROX London event.

HYROX is an indoor fitness competition that travels the world. However, many people who complete an event don’t do anything with their finisher patch.

So, the Gymshark Londrette offered free Gymshark clothing to finishers, including customisation by sewing the HYROX patch on, so they could proudly show off their achievement.

8.      Adidas This is Superstar (London, UK)

A pop-up that wowed through scale, the Adidas This is Superstar pop-up was a fantastic celebration of a specific product – the Superstar sneaker – and the culture that it has been part of.

A three-day event at 180 Studios, This is Superstar had everything from free skating in a themed skate park, hair and beauty treatments and trainer customisation through to three nights of paid live music and DJ events.

Tying it all together was a cohesive monochrome aesthetic with images of big names across music, sport and entertainment who are associated with Adidas to cement the link between the brand and success.

‍9.      HOKA Fly and Run Park (Shanghai, China)

For the Shanghai marathon, running shoe company HOKA didn’t just open a single pop-up, but turned a whole street into a temporary runner support location.

The brand set-up four pop-up bases along Yongyuan Road for two weeks, which each catered to runners in a different way. This included a place for warm-ups, somewhere to pick up race numbers and gear, and places for runners to hangout before and after the event.

HOKA also threw an after-party for those who took part in the marathon and arranged discounts for participants at various local businesses.

It was a great example of a brand embedding itself within a local community and offering more than just products for sale.

10.  Fiorucci (Milan, Italy)

Our final pop-up wasn’t a traditional pop-up at all but a brilliantly conceived spin on an AR experience by Italian fashion brand Fiorucci.

Taking place a few weeks after Milan Fashion Week, this week-long digital pop-up was a great example of using storytelling and heritage to connect with customers in different ways.

During the activation, customers who visited Milan’s Piazza San Babila – where Fiorucci had its original flagship store between 1967 and 2003 – could scan a QR code to access an AR experience that tapped into the same brand aesthetics as the original store.

The virtual store was interactive with lots of archival imagery, as well as being the only place that brand fans could shop an exclusive, limited-edition capsule collection.

Just a brilliant example of how physical and digital can be combined in exciting new ways.

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By Jack Stratten, Director and Head of Trends at retail trends agency Insider Trends.

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