The end of the year needn’t be muted. This season, UNFOLD is full of colour, creativity and the pulse of cities offering constant thrills. Mandarin Oriental hotel openings in Downtown Dubai and, very soon, in Vienna are shining light on places we thought we knew all about.

While the traditional Viennese coffee house is embracing a distinctly modern rhythm with a new wave of roasteries, also changing pace is the celebrated Le Normandie at Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, where Anne-Sophie Pic takes charge at the pass in the hotel’s 150th year.

In London, design studio Uchronia lights up Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London’s Celadon Green suite, the group’s first collaboration of its kind with Pantone. And across the continents, a Gen Alpha collection of gallery spaces, from Dubai to Paris, Taipei to New York, is rewriting the rules of where to see art at its most cutting edge.

It’s a season of fresh perspectives, where even the familiar can feel gloriously, unexpectedly new.