25 years of MINI design under the BMW Group: what the manufacturer's anniversary release says

The BMW Group PressClub Global heritage listing carries an entry dated Tuesday 28 July 2026 at 18:00 CEST, headed "25 years of MINI Design at the BMW Group: from the classic Mini to a new icon." Per the listing as read, the item is published as a press release in the MINI Brand Heritage topic, so the issuer is the BMW Group press office itself and the stated date is 28 July 2026, Central European Summer Time.

Per the listing, the release is summarized in three bulletin points: MINI celebrates 25 years of design history under the BMW Group umbrella; a new video, "From the Original to the Original – 25 Years of MINI Design", was made available on the BMW Group YouTube channel; and MINI Design combines heritage and future with clear design language and distinctive character. The listing tags the item under MINI, MINI Design, Heritage, MINI Brand Heritage and Milestones.

What the release is, and what it is an announcement of

For a global audience following the car industry, the item is a manufacturer milestone announcement, not an independent history. The claims in the bulletin points are the manufacturer's own framing of its design department's anniversary - the counting of a 25-year span of "design history under the BMW Group umbrella" comes from BMW Group, as does the description of MINI Design as combining heritage and future. This article holds no driving impression, no measurement and no reliability verdict, and nothing on this page was driven or tested by us.

The thread running through the heritage topic

The anniversary announcement sits in a topic channel that BMW Group uses as a standing record of MINI heritage items. Other entries in the same listing, each with its own date, give the surrounding context a reader can follow:

• "MINI and Paul Smith present A Garden of Curiosity at Salone del Mobile 2026", dated Friday 10 April 2026; its bulletin notes that the design installation showcases the latest MINI Paul Smith Edition, while the listing tags it under, among others, the F67 and F66 generations.
• "Just one click to the classics. Historic BMW model overviews now online for everyone", dated Thursday 27 February 2025, in which the BMW Group Archive puts a product catalog with 424 cars online.
• "MINI Celebrates 65 Years of Iconic Innovation and Racing Heritage", dated Monday 26 August 2024, noting the 1959 inception year.
• "1959 – 2019. SIXTY YEARS OF MINI", a press kit dated Monday 26 August 2019.

Reading the arithmetic carefully

Two anniversary counts appear on the same topic page and answer different questions: the 2026 release counts 25 years of MINI Design as a function within the BMW Group, while the 2024 release counts 65 years since the brand's inception in 1959. The two figures are not in tension - they measure different things, and both come from the same issuer. Note that the 2024 and earlier items are marked "Aged" in the listing as read, whereas the 2026 design-anniversary entry and the April 2026 Paul Smith item carry no such marking in the listing read.

How to check this yourself

Open the BMW Group PressClub Global site and go to the MINI Brand Heritage topic listing, where the 28 July 2026 entry should appear with its headline, bulletin points and tags. For the substance of the video mentioned in the release, the stated location is the BMW Group YouTube channel - we have not viewed the video, so verify its availability there directly. The listing read shows older entries marked "Aged", and such markings are out of our control, so the date to look for is Tuesday 28 July 2026, 18:00 CEST.