The World Design Cities Conference (WDCC 2025), being held in Shanghai from Thursday to Sunday, alongside other international-level events, are helping spur innovation and advance the city's design capacity, nurturing new brands and facilitating the megalopolis' high-quality economic growth, said local officials.

Organized by the Shanghai municipal government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), WDCC 2025 includes two major exhibitions held in Shanghai and overseas, an international design forum with 100 participants and two thematic forums on global creative city design, said Zhang Ying, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.

WDCC 2025 also includes specialized forums in five design fields of industrial, architectural, fashion, digital and services. Another five industry ecosystem-themed sessions will also be held to facilitate supply-demand matching, investment promotion, product launches, fashion shows and talent recruitment, said Zhang.

The main exhibition in Shanghai covers an area of approximately 15,000 square meters, attracting about 500 brands to showcase over 3,000 exhibits. About 20 percent of participants are internationally well-established brands and around 60 percent are emerging brands, she added.

The overseas exhibition will focus on promoting Shanghai's design and fashion consumer goods abroad. In late September, one exhibition is scheduled in Paris during the Bonjour Brand Forum, while another will be held in Italy during Milan Fashion Week. Exhibitions will take place in Kuala Lumpur in late October when industrial matchmaking events will also be held.

A new U35 youth design talent program will be introduced to the WDCC for the first time this year to formulate favorable policies and support young talent startup projects.

Ge Dongbo, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said the city's creative design industry has been reporting double-digit annual growth over the past few years, with its size exceeding 1.6 trillion yuan ($230 billion) to date. A complete industrial layout combining industrial design, architectural design and fashion design has been established in the city.

Holding events like the WDCC and the concurrent "Shanghai Design 100+" global competition has facilitated the conversion of design achievements valued over 250 billion yuan. The design industry ecosystem is continuously improving, fostering 21 national-level industrial design centers and 200 municipal-level design innovation centers, said Ge.

Well-established brands featuring innovation and outstanding designs have thus been nurtured in the city, including a tilt-rotor electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft made by Shanghai TCab Technology Co Ltd, along with Xreal AI glasses and humanoid robots produced by Shanghai AgiBot Innovation Technology Co Ltd. These have served as important support for the development of "made-in-Shanghai" brands, he added.

Meanwhile, advertising's creative design level in Shanghai has been advancing amid various events like the WDCC, said Zhang Hongbing, an official at the Shanghai market regulation bureau.

In 2024, the city's advertising sector revenue reached 335.1 billion yuan, up 8.4 percent year-on-year. Over the first seven months of 2025, advertising revenue spiked 10.7 percent from a year earlier to 220 billion yuan. The scale of advertising's creative design business and the number of creative talent in Shanghai account for 40 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of the national total, Zhang said.

The municipal government released on Sept 8 a set of 12 new measures to support the innovative development of the advertising sector by better using artificial intelligence. Innovative application of AI large language models and the development of intelligent advertising creative design agents are supported. Special funds as much as 20 million yuan will be provided for eligible AI-empowered creative advertising projects.