Отчет Marmomac о тенденциях 2026 года: почему гибкий камень — это материал, за которым следят архитекторы.

TL;DR: Marmomac 2026 — the 60th edition of the  world's leading stone industry fair — runs 22–25 September at Veronafiere in Verona, Italy, with a content agenda dominated by "materials × digital fabrication × architectural design" (Carlo Ratti's keynote, "From Material to Code"). The fair's clearest signal: the industry is moving away from heavy, rigid slabs toward lightweight, bendable, digitally fabricable surface materials. At just 2–8 mm thick, flexible stone (MCM soft stone) is the product category that answers that shift most directly — Wayon's soft stone carries an SGS-verified fire classification of A2-s1,d0 (EN 13501-1), bends 180° around a 40 mm mandrel with no cracking (ISO 24344), and passes 25 freeze-thaw cycles with no visible change (EN 14617-5), at an area density of only 3.50 kg/m² at 3 mm. All of these figures are measured results from Wayon's own submitted samples — see the SGS data below.

Introduction: What Material-Selection Signals Does Marmomac 2026 Send?

Every September, the global stone supply chain converges on Verona, Italy. But Marmomac 2026 is not just another edition — it is the 60th, and its opening-day agenda has already mapped where material specification is heading over the next 12–18 months: digital fabrication, computational design, and a whole-chain narrative running "from quarry to craft." For architects, contractors, distributors, and developers, this article distils the three signals the fair sends about material selection — and takes a close look at the material that maps onto those trends point for point: flexible stone from Wayon Stone.

Why does a single fair matter this much? Because Marmomac sits at the meeting point of two audiences: the stone trade and processing system (block traders, slab processors, machinery manufacturers) on one side, and the design avant-garde (architecture practices, research institutes, materials laboratories) on the other. When those two groups converge on the same set of questions — digital fabrication, material efficiency, curved geometry — those questions stop being experiments and start entering formal project specifications. The sections below unpack the fair's signals, the technical character of flexible stone, its third-party-verified performance data, and a sourcing guide for engineering teams.

What Is Marmomac 2026 — and Why Does It Matter?

Marmomac is the world's leading fair for the complete natural stone chain, covering everything from quarrying and blocks through finished products to processing machinery and technology. 2026 is the 60th edition; it opened on 22 September at Veronafiere in Verona, Italy, and runs until 25 September. According to Marmomac's official exhibitor information, the fair draws exhibiting companies and buyers from around the world, with an official representative network covering more than 40 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.

Three structural features explain how much influence the fair has over material selection:

1.  It covers the whole chain, not just finished materials. Unlike purely design-led fairs, Marmomac shows blocks and quarrying machinery, CNC equipment, diamond tooling, and surface-treatment technology alongside finished slabs. Trends that appear here are built on what production chains can actually deliver — which is why the fair works as a "12–18 month early indicator" for project specifications.
2.  Commerce and cultural curation run in parallel. The fair's well-known experimental design area — The Italian Stone Theatre — commissions architects and designers to build walk-through installations in natural stone, turning materials research into a space visitors can experience first-hand. Many of the surfaces, textures, and formats that later appear in hotel lobbies and retail flagships debut here.
3.  Its content agenda sets the industry's talking points. Beyond the halls, the forum and talk programme brings architects, engineers, and researchers on stage, and their keynotes amount to publishing the industry's "task list" for the next cycle. The 2026 agenda leans explicitly toward digital fabrication and the "material to code" pipeline — the subject of the next section.

For buyers, the conclusion is simple: the material categories, formats, and performance standards being debated in Verona this week are what procurement teams will be asked to quote next year.

What Are the Three Themes of Marmomac 2026?

The three themes of Marmomac 2026 are digital fabrication, material innovation, and the path from stone to architecture. On opening day, Carlo Ratti delivered the keynote "From Material to Code: Digital Fabrication and the Future of Making," covering material scanning, computational design, robotic fabrication, and precision assembly; it was followed by "From Quarry to Craft: How Stone Becomes Architecture & Design."

For buyers and designers, those three themes translate into three concrete material-selection questions.

Theme One: Material × Code — Stone Enters the Digital Pipeline

Carlo Ratti's keynote set out the fair's central argument: in contemporary construction, a material is no longer merely physical matter — it is also a set of data. Material scanning, parametric modelling, robotic cutting, and precision assembly together form what the talk called the "material to code" pipeline. For stone, that means blocks and surface materials are increasingly scanned, their performance simulated, and their processing automated.

The selection implication is direct: materials of uniform thickness and consistent sheet format can plug straight into a CAD-CAM workflow — laid out on screen, cut by machine, installed to tolerance — while materials with wide thickness variation cannot. This is precisely where ultra-thin sheet materials hold a digital advantage: a 2–8 mm flexible stone sheet sits closer to a "printable" material than a slab sawn from a block.

Theme Two: From Quarry to Craft — Efficiency as Ethics

The second theme, "From Quarry to Craft," traced stone's full journey from extraction to finished architectural product and put the industry's resource question on the table. Every square metre of 20–30 mm natural stone cladding corresponds to a disproportionate volume of block extraction, water, cutting energy, and freight weight. As sustainability reporting becomes standard practice in commercial buildings, the designer's question sharpens: how many mountains does my facade actually need?

Materials that deliver authentic stone texture while using stone powder and natural sand as their core raw materials — rather than continuously consuming virgin blocks — align directly with this theme; so do materials light enough to cut transport emissions per square metre. The efficiency narrative is no longer just cost engineering; it is turning into a carbon narrative, and procurement teams are already auditing supply chains against it.

Theme Three: Curved, Free-Form Architecture Meets Material Reality

The third theme is architectural form itself. Computational design tools have made arc walls, cylinders, double-curved and free-form facades easier to draw than ever — but being able to draw a curve is not the same as being able to clad it. Rigid stone slabs and sintered panels cannot bend; wrapping an arc requires expensive segmentation, CNC profiling, and visibly interrupted joints. The gap between what a parametric model promises and what rigid materials allow is one of the quiet frictions of contemporary construction.

The answer offered at the fair — recurring across several exhibitors' stands — is the rise of inherently flexible surface materials: products designed for ductility at the raw-material stage, able to follow curved substrates without segmentation. This is where the flexible stone category enters the conversation, and it is the focus of the rest of this article.

What Is Flexible Stone (MCM Soft Stone)?

Flexible stone (also called MCM soft stone or ultra-thin soft stone) is a bendable architectural surface material just 2–8 mm thick. It is made from natural sand, stone powder, and quartz sand as its core raw materials, combined with an eco-friendly emulsion and composite-formed through precise curve temperature control and photochemical isomerization technology. It reproduces the fine texture of natural stone while remaining bendable and easy to install.

Unlike conventional thin stone panels, Wayon flexible stone is composite-formed with an eco-friendly formulation and delivers multiple environmental functions — flame retardancy, waterproofing, weather resistance, UV resistance, anti-ageing, corrosion resistance, bacteriostatic performance, and air purification — in line with green building engineering standards. Its standard large formats sharply reduce the number of joints:

600×1200 mm (24"×48", 0.72 m²)

1200×2400 mm (48"×96", 2.88 m²)

1200×3000 mm (48"×120", 3.60 m²)

Custom engineering sizes available

The texture range spans travertine, slate, concrete, and rammed earth — representative models include MC402 Rough Granite, MC301 Travertine, and MC401 Rammed Earth — and is widely used in hotels, retail, offices, residential renovation, facades, ceilings, feature walls, and prefabricated construction.

Why Test Reports Beat Material Descriptions

Designers should treat "stone look" descriptions as a starting point, not as evidence. A flexible surface material only becomes eligible for a project once its fire performance, bending capability, and weathering behaviour have been tested to recognised standards and documented in a form that can be submitted for approval. That is why the certification path matters more than any adjective: it converts a supplier's own claim into a third-party record that a fire officer, a facade consultant, or the client's insurer can verify. When comparing flexible stone products, ask for the EN 13501-1 reaction-to-fire classification, the ISO 24344 bend test result, and the EN 14617 series weathering reports — the same three document families cited below.

What Does Wayon's SGS Test Data Show?

The performance figures below come from five SGS test reports submitted for Wayon flexible stone (MCM soft stone), covering four dimensions: fire performance, physical properties, environmental safety, and chemical safety.

One point deserves particular emphasis: these values are measured results from Wayon's own product and do not mean that every flexible stone performs to the same level. Flexible stone is a category, not a standard — raw-material formulations, emulsion systems, and forming processes vary widely between manufacturers; fire classifications can range from B to A2, and bending capability, water absorption, and chemical safety can differ several-fold. Performance should therefore never be judged by the category name "flexible stone," but by the verifiable third-party test reports a supplier can provide.

The six findings below are what a designer should put directly in front of a fire officer, a facade consultant, or the client's insurer.

1. The A2-s1,d0 fire classification is measured, not written (EN 13501-1:2018). Tested per EN 13823 (single burning item) and EN ISO 1716, Wayon's 3.0 mm flexible stone veneer achieved A2 for fire behaviour, s1 for smoke production, and d0 for flaming droplets — the best rating in both the smoke and droplet categories. The underlying data is more telling still: a fire growth rate index (FIGRA₀.₂MJ) of just 28.6 W/s, total heat release over 600 seconds of 0.8 MJ, total smoke production of 43.4 m², a gross calorific value of 1.5 MJ/kg, and no burning particles or droplets across three tests. For projects that must pass European public-building fire review, this is the classification to state in the project file. The report also declares its field of application — A1 or A2 substrates, mechanically fixed, no joints — which is worth confirming against the specific build-up at specification stage.

2. Weight: 3.50 kg/m² at 3 mm thickness, apparent density 1,813 kg/m³. This is the most decisive number in renovation work. Conventional 20 mm stone slab cladding weighs roughly 50–80 kg/m², whereas Wayon's 3 mm flexible stone veneer has an area density of only 3.50 kg/m² — an order of magnitude lower. That gap decides whether a high-rise facade or a light steel-frame commercial floor can carry a stone finish at all, and it directly reduces freight weight per square metre covered.

3. Flexibility: 180° bend around a 40 mm mandrel with no cracking (ISO 24344:2008 Method A). In testing, specimens were bent 180° around a 40 mm mandrel within 3–5 seconds with no cracking — which also reflects how Wayon's own record has improved: the 2025 SGS report used a 90 mm mandrel for the same 180° bend test, so the certified bend capability has doubled within a year. In practical terms, columns and tight arcs can be wrapped in a single continuous sheet — no segmentation, no visible joints.

4. Weathering: 25 freeze-thaw cycles and 20 thermal-shock cycles with no visible change (EN 14617-5 / EN 14617-6). The freeze-thaw test began with 48 hours at 40 °C and 48 hours of immersion in water at 20 °C, then repeated −20 °C freezing / 20 °C thawing for 25 cycles, with no visible change in appearance; the thermal-shock test ran 20 cycles of "18 hours at a constant 70 °C + 6 hours of immersion in water at 15 °C," again with no visible change. These two reports are the evidentiary basis for exterior applications in cold climates and in regions with sharp temperature swings.

5. Chemical and environmental safety: formaldehyde, heavy metals, vinyl chloride monomer, and REACH SVHC all pass. Formaldehyde emission was not detected (<20 mg/kg against a 120 mg/kg limit); migration of eight heavy metals (arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, antimony, selenium) was not detected; vinyl chloride monomer was not detected (<0.10 mg/kg against a 0.2 mg/kg limit). The latest screening covered 253 substances on the ECHA REACH candidate list of substances of very high concern (SVHC) plus one substance pending identification, all at ≤0.1% (w/w). For hospitals, schools, hotels, and any project involving indoor air quality or REACH compliance documentation, these are the reports that close the file.

6. Adhesive installation is backed by measured bond strength and water behaviour. Tensile bond strength measured 0.3 MPa (EN 1348:2007); water absorption was 8.1% (EN 14617-1:2013); and in the water-resistance test after 24 hours of wet-sponge contact, thickness swelling was only 0.55% with no visible edge delamination (ISO 13894-1:2000). Taken together, these three results explain why Wayon flexible stone can be installed with adhesives and needs no mechanical anchoring system.

How Does Flexible Stone Answer Each Marmomac 2026 Trend?

Flexible stone answers the fair's three headline trends almost point for point: it can be digitally processed; it is far lighter than conventional stone cladding — 3.50 kg/m² at 3 mm; and it physically bends to follow curved walls, columns, and arcs, with a 180° bend around a 40 mm mandrel and no cracking (ISO 24344) — none of which rigid panels can do.

One further point on digital fabrication is worth developing. Prefabricated construction — an obvious application for flexible stone — is the most literal arena for "material to code": wall units are modelled, sheets are laid out and cut in the factory, and site work becomes assembly. A sheet that is thin, light, uniform, cuts cleanly, and bonds with a simple adhesive process is close to an ideal prefabricated stock material; a 30 mm slab that requires anchored structural calculations is the opposite.

Flexible Stone vs Natural Slab vs Porcelain Slab: How Should a Project Choose?

For weight-sensitive or curved projects, flexible stone usually wins on installation cost and feasibility; for high-load horizontal surfaces such as countertops, quartz or natural slab remains the right choice. The three materials are complementary, not substitutes.

Three practical ways to read that table:

Renovation decisions come fastest. When a structure cannot carry more load — older hotels, buildings near heritage sites, long-span commercial floors — a finish measured in millimetres and grams is often the only "stone look" option that clears structural review, while a slab measured in centimetres and kilograms is not.

Curved geometry is decided by physics. If the design contains genuine curves, there is effectively no choice; rigid materials simply cannot follow the substrate. A 40 mm bend radius means cylindrical columns, curved returns, and full arc feature walls can all be clad in continuous, single-sheet work.

Which Applications Suit Flexible Stone?

Flexible stone's application map spans facades, interiors, and prefabricated construction — anywhere authentic stone texture is needed but weight, curvature, or renovation constraints get in the way. The most common project categories are below.

Facades and high-rise cladding. Weathering performance (UV, waterproofing, freeze-thaw, thermal shock) plus a very small added dead load makes ultra-thin flexible stone a candidate for tower retrofit programmes — adding 50–80 kg/m² of slab is impossible, adding a few millimetres is entirely feasible. The large 1200×3000 mm format keeps facade joints sparse and clean.

Hotels and retail interiors. Hotels, restaurants, and brand flagships want the atmosphere of stone without carrying its logistics cost. Travertine and rammed-earth textures happen to deliver the warm mineral aesthetic that hospitality design currently favours, applied to walls, reception backdrops, columns, and ceilings — including the curved geometry brands increasingly use to differentiate themselves.

Feature walls and ceilings. The material's very low weight removes structural pressure from full-height wall and ceiling applications, while its flexibility handles sculptural partitions and both convex and concave ceiling curves. Sheets cut with standard tools, so on-site adjustments for light fittings, sockets, and terminations are quick.

Renovation of older buildings. Re-cladding directly onto sound existing substrates (tile, render, concrete) compresses the scope from "strip out and rebuild" to "surface preparation": shorter programme, lower cost, and far less demolition waste. This is exactly the renovation logic behind flexible stone's popularity in urban renewal and adaptive-reuse projects.

Cultural tourism and themed projects. Rammed-earth and slate textures combined with 3-metre sheet heights suit cultural-tourism facades, exhibition spaces, and themed retail — situations that need atmosphere at scale, quickly and economically.

Prefabricated construction. Off-site wall units can be finished with flexible stone before they leave the factory — the sheet's weight barely affects lifting calculations, and factory work is more precise than site work.

60 Years of the Fair, 44 Years of Wayon

Marmomac has reached its 60th edition not through a hit product in any one year, but by pulling the global stone supply chain to Verona every September for 60 straight years — quarries, machinery, design, and standards aligning in one city and exchanging the direction of the next step. That kind of sustained presence is itself the industry's greatest certainty.

Wayon Stone reaches exactly 44 years this year. Placed beside a 60-year-old fair, we see ourselves more as a learner: learning from its commitment to standards, its relentless exploration of material boundaries, and its willingness to put commerce and design at the same table. Digitalisation, sustainability, curved design — every direction discussed at this edition will enter the iteration list for our next generation of flexible stone.

Learning from it, advancing together, growing together. Stone is an ancient material, but as long as every link in the chain keeps investing and evolving, it can keep growing for another 60 years. That is also our plainest understanding of sustainability: make the product well, make the data solid, and hand the next 44 years to continuous innovation.

Stone is one of very few materials that has accompanied the entire history of human building — from temples and city walls to today's towers, art museums, and urban renewal. What it records is not only style but a period's understanding of "durability" and "beauty." A fair can run to 60 editions and a company can last 44 years not because of any one generation's cleverness, but because a task keeps being handed to the next generation to continue. We are willing to spend every cycle ahead continuing that plain work: letting this ancient material be understood and used anew under new technical conditions — which is both what we learn from the industry's predecessors and the answer we leave to the next 60 years.

Want to Explore the Full Flexible Stone Collection?

Browse the complete product range online (MC402 Rough Granite, MC301 Travertine, MC401 Rammed Earth, and more), review the full SGS report pack (EN 13501-1 fire classification, ISO 24344 bend, EN 14617 weathering, EN 15102 environmental and safety, REACH SVHC screening), and request a free sample kit. 👉 Flexible Stone · New Freedom for European Design — visit the Marmomac 2026 special page

How Do You Source Flexible Stone from Wayon?

Sourcing flexible stone from a factory-direct supplier takes four steps: request samples → confirm specifications against your substrate and fire code → lock in custom sizes and textures → arrange wholesale export and installation guidance. The factory-direct model compresses the cycle to days and removes intermediary costs.

Request samples and the colour chart. Check texture and flexibility by hand — start via the special page or the product page. A sample kit lets your team bend, scratch, and compare colour plates before placing an order.

Verify the compliance file. Ask for the full SGS report pack for your project file: EN 13501-1:2018 reaction-to-fire classification (A2-s1,d0), ISO 24344 bend test, EN 14617-5/14617-6 freeze-thaw and thermal-shock reports, EN 15102 formaldehyde and heavy-metal migration results, and the REACH SVHC screening conclusion. These are the documents European approval processes check, and they ship with the goods rather than being supplied afterwards.

Customise. Confirm sizes (standard formats or project-specific), textures (rough granite / travertine / rammed earth / slate / concrete ranges), and project quantities. Factory-direct development means matching a design's colour reference is a production question, not a procurement compromise.

Ship and install. Lightweight sheets lower freight per square metre; factory CAD support and installation guidance shorten the site programme. Wholesale, customisation, and export all run through a single channel, serving both bulk procurement and bespoke design needs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1.  What are the themes of Marmomac 2026? 
2. The 2026 content agenda centres on "materials × digital fabrication × architectural design," headlined by Carlo Ratti's keynote "From Material to Code: Digital Fabrication and the Future of Making" and by "From Quarry to Craft: How Stone Becomes Architecture & Design."
3.  What is new at this Italian stone fair — any new materials, new discoveries, or highlights?
4.  The most significant development is material digitalisation moving from concept to pipeline: scanning, parametric modelling, and automated fabrication are being connected into a complete workflow, so stone starts entering the design process with a dual identity — data plus matter. On the materials side, ultra-thin, lightweight, bendable surface materials and low-carbon processing claim more agenda time, while The Italian Stone Theatre's master installations keep producing new surface-treatment and format experiments. The highlights can be summed up in three points: the opening keynote setting the tone for digital fabrication, "From Quarry to Craft" putting efficiency and sustainability on parallel tracks, and commercial stands and design curation validating each other on the same floor.
5.  How far has digital fabrication actually landed in the stone industry?
6.  It has moved from demonstration to engineering. Scanning and parametric modelling can reconstruct textures and pre-plan panel layouts; CNC and five-axis machining make shaped components repeatable; prefabricated construction moves site work into the factory. For buyers, this means inquiries should start requiring suppliers to provide CAD-importable dimensional data and machining tolerances — not just colour cards and photographs.
7.  What is the biggest challenge facing the stone industry right now? 
8. Four pressures: energy and cost — processing is energy-intensive and both power and labour keep rising; compliance — environmental, carbon, and chemical-safety documentation requirements in Europe keep getting more granular; skills shortage — experienced processors and installers are thinning out across several production regions; and logistics — stone's weight makes freight sensitivity extreme. Together these four explain why thinner, lighter, site-light materials are being actively sought by the industry: it is not an aesthetic choice but a cost-and-compliance one.
9.  What is the predicted trend for the stone industry in 2027? 
10. Four directions can be read off this edition's agenda: ① digital specification — CAD-CAM-compatible dimensions and performance data become standard bid requirements; ② lightweighting — thin panels and composite veneers keep replacing traditional thick slabs in high-rise and renovation work; ③ the carbon narrative — environmental declarations and whole-lifecycle data shift from bonus to baseline; ④ curves and free-form design — parametric design keeps growing demand for shaped facades. Suppliers who prepare their product and documentation combinations along these four lines now will be ahead in the 2027 inquiry cycle.
11.  Will curved and free-form design keep growing? 
12. Yes, and the growth is moving down from landmark buildings into ordinary projects. As parametric tools have spread, arc walls, curved ceilings, and shaped columns are no longer the preserve of a few practices; mainstream commercial and hospitality projects are adopting them too. The real bottleneck is not on the design side but on the material side — rigid panels facing a curve can only be segmented, which pushes up joints, programme, and cost. That is the side effect of the curved trend: it works backwards and filters materials.
13.  Why is flexible stone relevant to this year's fair trends? 
14. It sits at the intersection of all three: uniform 2–8 mm sheets are natively compatible with digital layout and cutting; a weight far below conventional slab answers the lightweighting narrative; and 180° bendability makes parametric curves genuinely buildable. It is against this background that Wayon flexible stone is being added to more and more European projects' specification lists.
15.  Can flexible stone really wrap curved walls and columns?
16.  Yes — that is its core advantage. In SGS bend testing it wraps 180° around a 40 mm mandrel with no cracking (ISO 24344 Method A), allowing seamless application on curved surfaces, arc walls, and irregular structures, where rigid stone or porcelain slab can only be segmented.
17.  Is flexible stone fire-resistant? Is it safe for indoor use? 
18. It passes on both counts. Wayon soft stone was tested by SGS to EN 13501-1:2018 with a reaction-to-fire classification of A2-s1,d0 — FIGRA₀.₂MJ of just 28.6 W/s, THR₆₀₀ₛ of 0.8 MJ, and no flaming droplets. On chemical safety, formaldehyde, eight heavy-metal migrations, and vinyl chloride monomer were all not detected, and all 253 substances on the REACH SVHC candidate list plus one substance pending identification came in at ≤0.1% (w/w) — precisely the documentation hospitals, schools, and hotel projects normally require.
19.  Which projects suit flexible stone best? 
20. Commercial buildings, cultural-tourism facades, hotel and commercial interiors, renovation of older buildings, curved feature walls, columns, and ceiling retrofits — any situation needing authentic stone texture while being constrained by weight or rigidity.

 What can Chinese stone companies learn from this fair?

 Three things stand out: respect for standards — treating test reports as part of the product rather than as marketing material; patience across the whole chain — clear boundaries of responsibility from quarry to processing to installation; and the habit of pulling design into R&D — putting architects and materials engineers in conversation on the same subject. Chinese manufacturers already hold an advantage in production efficiency and supporting capability; the next contest is who can translate that advantage into language global projects can adopt directly