There are few weeks in London’s calendar when the city feels quite as alive as it does during London Design Festival. Every September, museums, galleries and streets become the centre of conversation, where architects, designers and makers invite us to look differently at the spaces we move through every day.
The first programme announced for London Design Festival 2026, which returns from 12 to 20 September, looks at both the origins of design and its future direction. This year, both craft and artificial intelligence sit alongside one another as historic techniques are revisited through contemporary collaborations, exploring themes of migration, ecology, and cultural exchange across many confirmed projects.
London Design Festival 2026: programme announced
A bamboo pavilion with a bigger story to tell
Among the first commissions announced is The Pangolin Shield, the festival’s inaugural Landmark Project by the Anglo-Indian studio Studio Saar and structural engineers Atelier One. Installed on the Strand, the pavilion takes its cue from the pangolin, the shy, armour-plated mammal whose overlapping scales serve as the starting point for a structure made of bamboo and woven shields traditionally used by farming communities in north-eastern India.
While the pavilion could easily be appreciated for its impressive engineering, the aim is to encourage visitors to engage with it on a deeper level. It invites reflection on colonial histories, the movement of people and ideas, and the stories that materials carry as they journey across the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, the bamboo canopy serves both as shelter and as a space for contemplation, urging those on London’s busiest streets to slow down and be viewed.
On view all day, 12-20 September, Strand, Aldwych, London, WC2R 1ES
The Pangolin Shield
Made looks back to the Barbican
Renowned for its iconic brutalist architecture, the Barbican has profoundly influenced London’s design imagination. Its impact is evident in contemporary interiors, furniture design, and even the conversations surrounding urban living.
This autumn, Made revisits that legacy with a new Made x Barbican collection developed by designer Miriam Howitt, drawing on archival research into the estate and its original interiors. Furniture, lighting and textiles draw on the Barbican’s distinctive interiors. To accompany this, an installation at the Barbican during the festival explores how one of Britain’s most recognisable architectural landmarks continues to shape ideas of home decades after it first opened.
Installation on view 8am-11pm, 12-20 September, Barbican, Level G Hub Space, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
The V&A begins with an awakening
The V&A has become the spiritual home of the London Design Festival, and its annual commission often captures the mood of each edition. This year, ‘Awakenings’, curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, looks at how design can reshape our relationship with the world around us.
Spread throughout the museum, the programme brings together designers including Aziza Kadyri, Eunjo Lee and Henry Svendsen, alongside new commissions exploring sound, identity, artificial intelligence and the natural world. There is a sense of curiosity running through the exhibition, as well as a sense that technology is no longer treated as something separate from craft. Instead, both are becoming part of the same conversation.
From 12 September, V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
The Design Museum turns its attention to people behind the practice
‘Negrita’ bench by Simone Brewster
The Design Museum’s programme during LDF, as ever, spans fashion, furniture and contemporary design culture. A major ongoing retrospective celebrates Nigo (until 4 October), charting the Japanese designer’s influence across streetwear and luxury fashion. London-based designer, educator and cultural change-maker Simone Brewster’s Platform installation (until January 2027) continues her exploration of sculptural furniture and material histories, layered with references from 'palaeolithic fertility deities to African diasporic traditions'.
Away from the galleries, conversations take centre stage too. Brewster joins Jasmi Hussein, Emefa Cole and Hettie Judah for a discussion exploring design and motherhood, shifting the focus away from finished work towards the lives and experiences that shape creative work.
224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG; visit designmuseum.org for the full programme
Japanese craft meets contemporary design
Chairs by Seto Sometsuke Yaki
This year, Craft x Tech Tokai Project continues its tradition of collaboration between Japanese artisans and international designers. The exhibition highlights the fusion of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design, featuring media such as ceramics, washi paper, lacquer, textiles, and woodworking.
It spotlights designers such as Bethan Laura Wood, David Caon, and Philippe Malouin, who engage with artisans whose techniques have been refined and passed down through generations, showcasing the exciting possibilities born from this rich exchange of ideas.
New conversations between Asia and London
Elsewhere, cultural platform MixZ continues its exploration of exchange between Asia and the UK through a pair of exhibitions taking place at the V&A and the Old Selfridges Hotel, an event space within the London department store.
At the V&A, ‘MixZ: China White Reimagined’ highlights the ancient beauty of Dehua porcelain. At the Old Selfridges Hotel, ‘Future Living with Shenzhen Style’ explores future living through future with immersive technologies and artificial intelligence. Throughout both presentations, the focus is on collaboration as community, underscoring the idea that true innovation seldom occurs in a vacuum. Instead, it flourishes through the shared knowledge, materials, and ideas that flow between different cultures.
V&A, Cromwell Road London, SW7 2RL
Selfridges, 1 Orchard St, London W1H 6HJ
St Paul’s Cathedral becomes a space of light
The Point of Unity, by Mykola Kabluka, produced by Expolight. Visualisation Expolight
Ukrainian artist and lighting designer Mykola Kabluka will install two works inside St Paul’s Cathedral. Created with his Kyiv studio, Expolight, Soul and The Point of Unity examines the moment when a thought or feeling remains private.
Soul draws on research into the brain during daydreaming and inward thought. Its audiovisual imagery has no set sequence. Light travels through glass and responds to people moving around the cathedral, changing the work as they pass. The Point of Unity debuted at Burning Man in 2025 and will make its UK debut at the LDF. Some 3,500 fibre optic points illuminate the sculpture after dark; during the day, its mirrored surfaces reflect the cathedral around it. Kabluka explores how an individual presence becomes part of a larger whole.
Created during the ongoing war against Ukraine, Kabluka highlights his thoughts and personal experience of uncertainty and hope.
St. Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8AD
The Speaking Oasis gives palm weaving a 'new language'
The Speaking Oasis, by Azaz Architects sponsored by the Ithra Palm Initiative
Saudi architect Shahad Alazzaz turns to the date palm for The Speaking Oasis, presented at The Lavery in Cromwell Place during the London Design Festival. Her project explores how a material deeply woven into Saudi cultural life can be used in contemporary design.
The largest self-contained palm oasis, Al Hasa Oasis in eastern Saudi Arabia, acts as a reference point. Its extensive date palm groves have long made it a place of movement and exchange, while generations of craftspeople have worked with the palm through weaving. Supported by the Ithra Palm Initiative, launched by the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in Dhahran, Alazzaz, founder of Azaz Architects, brings this skill and knowledge into architecture and design, exploring how the material and its techniques can develop.
On view all day, 12-20 September,The Lavery, (3 Cromwell Place), London SW7 2JE
Mali Mowcka creates a special sanctuary in Shoreditch
At the Hart, Shoreditch has invited contemporary urban artist Mali Mowcka to create Sanctum of Renewal inside its pan-Asian restaurant 'UBA', turning it into a contemporary sacred space for the London Design Festival, filling the upper part of the room with wooden pieces that descend from the ceiling.
Making between 160 and 200 forms by hand, each with an organic shape. Translucent resin petals will be suspended among them, drawing on Yūgen, the Japanese idea that 'beauty can be found in what remains partly unseen.' UBA will continue operating as a restaurant throughout the installation, with guests eating beneath the sculpture as staff move through the room.
On view all day, 12-20 September, 61 - 67 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3HU
Brompton Design District puts craft in focus
Brompton Design District returns for London Design Festival under the direction of British and Italian curator and gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker. The Wallpaper* USA 400 honouree has invited designers and curators to occupy spaces across the district, bringing together more than 150 participants. Isamaya Ffrench and former guest editor Laila Gohar are among them, along with a group of New York designers making their festival debut alongside launches from designers and brands including Molteni&C, Cassina and Tai Ping, presenting new collections from their Brompton showrooms.
Following his 2025 programme, Tieghi-Walker returns with a closer look at craft and contemporary design, introducing work by new voices London audiences may not yet know. Taking place from 12 to 20 September, this year's programme considers the personal attachments we form with the objects and design around us. Titled Perfectly Imperfect, the programme opens up studios and workshops, bringing unfinished experiments into public view.
On view all day, 12-20 September, The Lavery, (3 Cromwell Place), London SW7 2JE
Byron Pritchard lets the material decide
Also at Brompton Design District, British designer Byron Pritchard presents a new body of work featuring a slab of sycamore at the London Design Festival. Building on traditional woodworking techniques and with a deep appreciation for the craft, he and his team will, in work yet to be completed, work entirely by hand in a garage in Cromwell Mews, following the grain and responding to the timber as they go.
Finding Form brings this part of the design process into public view with no drawing setting out the final object; visitors will see each decision take shape as the work develops. To do this, Pritchard will research historic woodworking at the nearby V&A, then return to the garage and keep making.
On view all day, 12-20 September, Cromwell Mews Garage, London SW7 2JS
Past Made Present takes over Ham House
At Ham House, students from Kingston University’s MA Product & Furniture Design programme have responded to a place with more than 400 years of history. Developed with The Storybox Collective and the National Trust, Past Made Present brings the work of a new generation of designers into the house and gardens that inspired it.
Projects and prototypes will be installed throughout the property, drawing on archival research and stories connected to the house. Accessibility is central to the exhibition, with the students considering how design can give visitors another way to experience a historic place. Their material experiments enter into the existing rooms quietly, responding to Ham House as it is.
From 10 September to 11 October, Ham St, Ham, Richmond TW10 7RS