Live: All the highlights live from the Superyacht Design Festival 2025 in Kitzbühel

The long-awaited Superyacht Design Festival returns for the 2025 edition in the Austrian ski town of Kitzbühel. BOAT brings you all the action live from the slopes...

The Superyacht Design Festival follows the BOAT International Design & Innovation Awards on 2 February, where the winners were crowned in a glamorous ceremony. Attendees can look forward to a packed agenda, with a keynote speech by Yves Béhar on designing the future of luxury on water and a closer look at the interior of the 67-metre Kasper 7 with her designer/owner – followed by the famous Ski Cup.

The festival would not be possible without the support of our valued event partners - as well as our supporting partners - Oliveri, Feadship, KMF, Compass Tenders, F/Yachting, Metrica, Fema Marine, Dunya Yachts, Cantiere Delle Marche, MB92 Group, Paragon Studio, Volvo Penta, Videoworks, Lürssen, Benetti, Ocean Alexander, - as well as our trophy partner - Lasvit.

Day one

The day kicked off with a welcome coffee and registration at the K3 in Kitzbühel. Guests were then invited to the conference hall, where Shirley Robertson OBE officially inaugurated the event.

The State of Superyachting

Stewart Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, BOAT International

BOAT's editor-in-chief Stewart Campbell kicked off the festival with a detailed insight into the state of the current superyacht fleet, with data from our Global Order Book, powered by BOATPro. He noted that the global fleet of superyachts has grown 611 per cent in the past 40 years, with motor yachts leading the way. Campbell said that Italy tops the leaderboard for both the total length and number of projects under construction – 572 superyachts on its order book with an average length of 38.8 meters – while Turkey's order book has grown 8.9 per cent in 12 months, with 146 projects with an average length of 43.9 metres. 

Campbell also drew on the significant increase in semi-custom yachts in build during the Covid years, which now make up over 80 per cent of all boats over 24 meters in build or on water. He added that Germany remains a leader in the market for the very largest yachts, but the Netherlands is challenging its dominance.

Shaping horizons: Designing the future of luxury on water

Yves Béhar, Industrial Designer and Founder, Fuseproject

Swiss-born American designer Yves Béhar is a sustainability advocate who argues that a designer's role is to create products that are both commercially viable and contribute to social good. As the Founder and CEO of Fuseproject, a San Francisco-based design and innovation studio, he created the iconic Herman Miller Sayl chair and Samsung Frame TV and has developed products for brands such as Jawbone, Kodak, L’Oréal, Prada, PUMA and SodaStream. His work is included in the collections of major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has received over 300 awards and has been named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 25 Visionaries. Forbes recognised him as the “Most Influential Industrial Designer in the World.”

Béhar is now turning his attention to yachts with an ambitious new design project that puts sustainability at its heart. Working with Italian shipyard Rossinavi, Solsea is an innovative 43-metre catamaran concept unveiled at December’s Design Miami. In this inspiring keynote, Béhar discussed the thinking behind his creation, and explained how he has drawn on his career in product design to approach the project from a unique perspective. Talking about his concept, Béhar said: "I really wanted to design it for the lifestyle I'm familiar with, which is the ocean, towards community, physically active."

He concluded his panel by stating: "When you ask somebody, 'What is your intent?', you could say, 'What is your design?'. 'What is your plan?' For me, design really accelerates the answers by remaining humanistic and by addressing the paradoxes of modern life. I think design can make a difference in bringing a future that is more sustainable and more enjoyable."

The art of kinetic: Moving sculptures that create waves

Zolty, Artist and Founder, BREAKFAST

Zolty is the visionary artist and founder of BREAKFAST, a fine art studio specialising in digitally controlled kinetic art and sculpture. With a team of highly skilled engineers and specialists, BREAKFAST has crafted over 300 kinetic masterpieces that now enhance some of the most prestigious collections worldwide, including those at Harvard University, Rockefeller Center, and Tiffany & Co.

In this captivating talk, Zolty unveiled his groundbreaking portfolio, inviting us into the innovative world of kinetic art and revealing how he conceived The Pearl, the world’s largest kinetic sculpture which takes centre stage on new cruise ship Icon Of The Seas. At 15 metres in diameter and composed of 3,000 motorised tiles, it mimics the sea’s movements in real-time.

Zolty spoke about. He said: "Oftentimes, people come to me very late in the game and they say, 'I have a rectangle on the wall', or 'I have this space on the floor' and everything's kind of finished. In my dreams and my future, my hope is that there doesn't need to be this separation between the architecture, the interior design and the art. We don't need to put just a piece on the wall itself, the ceiling, but the materials – all of those can change. You can block the sun or let it in just by letting the wall actually change and move."

Driving forward Project Zero’s energy solutions

Bart Bouwhuis and Marnix Hoekstra, Creative Directors, Vripack

Vripack’s creative directors Bart Bouwhuis and Marnix Hoekstra started with an exclusive update on how the new energy technologies from the ground-breaking fossil-fuel-free ketch Project Zero are taking shape. The 69-metre sailing yacht, in-build at Vitters, is a radical open-source project meant to inspire yacht designers to take on what Vripack believes is the superyacht industry’s biggest design challenge yet.

Speaking about the yacht's progress, Bouwhuis said: "It's really getting there. On the deck, the two carbon deck houses are mounted [and] the 38 deck hatches are all in place. Painting is about to start. And the 420 square metres, of which is about 210 squares of wood decking, is about half complete."

The creative directors also explained the rationale behind some of the design features, including the wood of the interior, which is European oak harvested from Slovenia and Croatia, "consciously chosen to avoid shipping wood all over the globe". Bouwhuis continued: "The owner made a conscious choice to accept that nature is not perfect, and it comes with small defects. They were very receptive to having small defects in the wood joiner. With that decision alone, they saved about two-thirds of waste."

The designers explained how the project aims to inspire sustainable marine technology and expanded on Project Zero's energy sources – wind and solar – and the generation of 250 kilowatts of electrical power. 

Marnix rounded off the panel by talking about collaboration and how, even with people outside the industry, "if you just all picture the same thing, you can can think of things which you've never thought before." 

BOAT Artistry & Craft Awards in association with Parkway England

The first half of the day was closed with the winners of the BOAT Artistry & Craft Awards in association with Parkway England. Now in their second year, the Artistry & Craft Awards celebrate the unique hand-crafted and artisanal objects and details on board the world's finest superyachts. BOAT's group creative director Chris Whale was joined on stage by Parkway England’s CEO Jay Rushton to crown the winners, who were presented with intricate, hand-crafted trophies designed by Nature Squared.

Young Designer of the Year lunch

The Young Designer of the Year lunch, in partnership with Feadship, saw winners and finalists join the shipyard's designer and wider team in an intimate lunch setting to discuss this year's competition and all things superyacht design.

How to make a horse ‘gallop’ on water – and become the most talked-about event at the Paris Olympics

Morgane Suquart, Naval Architect, MMProcess
Madeg Ciret-Le Cosquer, Merchant Navy officer, MMProcess

One of the highlights of this summer’s Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony was a masked woman riding a metallic horse along the River Seine. The stunning silver-leaf horse appeared to gallop over the water, powered by a 14-metre-long electric trimaran partly submerged underneath. Innovative Breton naval architect duo, MMProcess explained how they used cutting-edge racing boat technology to create an illusion, how they ended up being more involved in the ceremony than they initially intended and the short timeline of three months for the project, starting only a year before the opening ceremony.

Nuclear-powered luxury yachts: A bold vision or science fiction?

Øyvind Gjerde Kamsvåg, Chief Designer, Ulstein International
Dr. Spyros Hirdaris, Manager, Global Ship Systems Centre (Corporate Technology), ABS
Jo Assael, Ambassador for Technical and Regulatory Affairs, British Superyacht
Wesley Deason, CEO, Emerald Nuclear
Hosted by Lucy Dunn, Content Director, BOAT International

With no one-size-fits-all answer to green propulsion, it is no surprise that the conversation has turned to nuclear - aided by the rise of new, fourth-generation small modular reactors (SMRs) which are compact enough to fit on a luxury yacht. But along with plus points including total energy independence and the fact that nuclear in marine settings is already well-established, nuclear raises many pertinent questions over safety and cost. The conversation also highlighted the need for public education and regulatory updates to facilitate the adoption of nuclear power in marine applications. 

They also discussed whether nuclear power needs a rebrand. Øyvind Gjerde Kamsvåg, chief designer at Ulstein International said: "I think it does. It's a heat source. If you burn petrol, gasoline or diesel, we have learned how to convert that into mechanical energy or mechanical work, but you convert it just the same way as you burn or make heat from a nuclear reactor. So, it's heat basically – you're just converting it. It's about the conversion of energy. So I think a rebrand would be a choice." 

BOAT International will update this highlights article throughout the day.