What does it mean to design a new Africa? Design Week Lagos 2026 explored the topic inside the Nigerian capital’s beret-shaped National Theatre, through a series of exhibitions, installations, launches, talks, showrooms, creative hubs, and design experiences, placing designers at the centre of a wider conversation about the continent’s creative and industrial possibilities.
Running from 18 to 25 October, the event was a reminder that Africa has always designed beautifully and intelligently. From furniture, product design and architecture to textiles and experimental objects, the work on display offered a compelling view of design as both cultural expression and material proposition.
Design Week Lagos 2026: making a new Africa
Under the theme Making a New Africa: From Material to Market, the latest edition of Africa’s leading design festival wasn’t tunnel-visioned about craft alone: it meditated on Africa’s design future and the fostering of manufacturing relationships.
'The next chapter of African design cannot be about visibility alone,' says Titi Ogufere, founder of Design Week Lagos. 'This edition asks what Africa will make next, how we will make it, and how design can become part of a much larger story of enterprise and industrial growth across the continent.'
The festival’s All Roads Lead to Lagos touring programme answered those questions, spotlighting a new generation of Nigerian designers, such as Nicole Adaora Enwonwu and Athanasius Johnson, following showcases in Milan and Paris. The programme also unveiled its first designer-manufacturer collaboration with Italian manufacturer Ombré.
Here, discover the work of seven designers to watch from Design Week Lagos 2026.
Brimet Silva
Brimet Silva’s ‘Mocho’ stool invites spatial attention, turning a seat into a study of mass, balance and negative space. Its four sculptural supports fold outward like a starfish, framing a circular opening beneath the seat; fine, repeated striations make the brown surface feel geological.
Silva’s Portuguese practice and African roots place the piece within Design Week Lagos’ diasporic understanding of African design, informing an exchange between places.
Ajayi Kehinde Gabriel
Ajayi Kehinde Gabriel’s ‘Ijapa’ chair, from Àjàyí Studio, gives furniture an animated presence. Mimicking the form of a tortoise, the chair’s saturated blue shell probes into an undulating seat, supported by thick, curved legs that make the structure appear playful and grounded.
A side stool echoes the chair’s tapered, sculptural language. Rather than relying on ornament, the design makes silhouette, proportion and colour do the expressive work, presenting contemporary Nigerian furniture as product design with the potential to move from striking exhibition object into everyday use.
Djakou Kassi Nathalie
Created by Cameroonian ceramicist and sculptor Djakou Kassi Nathalie, the ‘Mr and Mrs Karaktar’ chairs for Design Week Lagos are handcrafted from mahogany wood and showcase her signature dense, highly textured style featuring interlocking abstract faces and geometric tribal motifs.
James Brendan Udom
Created by Nigerian architect and designer James Brendan Udom, the ‘Okkyo’ lamp is a striking, anthropomorphic and sculptural lighting piece that is as whimsical as it is functional, demonstrating against the notion that African design objects have to look a certain way.
Nicole Adaora Enwonwu
Nicole Adaora Enwonwu’s ‘Ànyánwụ́’ lamp draws from Igbo cosmology, an exploration of light as a living, emotional force. Its sinuous, looping structure, rendered in warm terracotta with contrasting white detailing, creates a striking interplay of movement, materiality and light.
Athanasius Johnson
For Nigerian designer Athanasius Johnson, his ‘Apo’ lamp (part of a wider series) sits at the philosophical intersection of design and interior utility. Inspired by the structural strength of the arch, the lamp embodies community and interdependence. Its curved glass form connects two grounded points, symbolising how strength emerges through shared support. Within the ‘Apo’ collection, the lamp expresses a simple ethos: stability is collective, and light shines through connection.
Studio Contra
Within the perimeter of the National Theatre was ‘Bloom Against Violence’, a memorial pavilion designed by Lagos-based architectural firm Studio Contra. Serving as a poignant tribute to the children who have tragically lost their lives to violence across Nigeria, the choice of crimson is striking, a visceral reminder of the horrors of violence.
The floral-shaped installation also draws on the African courtyard and the architectural language of breeze-block screens, which isn’t only environmentally intelligent for ventilation, but creates a protective space for visitors for quiet grief and reflection.