The winners of the 2026 London Design Medals have been announced as the London Design Festival prepares to kick off (12-20 September), with Jonathan Anderson, Sir Christopher Frayling, Anab Jain and Solveiga Pakštaitė awarded the annual design accolade. The winners were selected by a jury of global creatives led by the festival’s director Ben Evans, and will be celebrated at RH London, The Gallery, on 14 September.
The winning quartet embodies the breadth of creativity and ingenuity at the heart of London's creative industries. 'This year's medal winners demonstrate the transformative power of design, from Jonathan Anderson’s work blending high fashion, art and craft, to Sir Christopher Frayling’s lifelong dedication to design education and cultural history, Anab Jain’s pioneering work in speculative futures, and Solveiga Pakštaitė’s solutions for intuitive, inclusive and considered design,' comments Evans. 'Each medal recipient exemplifies how creative innovation shapes our culture, industry and shared future.'
LONDON DESIGN MEDALS 2025: MEET THE WINNERS
London Design Medal: Jonathan Anderson
Blending his work in fashion with a lifelong dedication to craft, both historical and contemporary, makes Jonathan Anderson a fitting winner for one of London's most important creative accolades. 'It is a true honour to be recognised by the LDF for my work within the field of craft and design, which have always been a personal passion of mine,' says Anderson.
Throughout his career, and both as a personal pursuit as well as through his work for brands like Loewe and Dior, as well as his eponymous label JW Anderson, Anderson has operated, a note from the festival reads, as a 'creator and curator'. Through projects such as collaborations with The Hepworth Wakefield and the Offer Waterman gallery, and the founding of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, he transformed the role of creative director with a distinctive cultural perspective.
Lifetime Achievement Medal: Sir Christopher Frayling
British cultural historian, academic, broadcaster and champion of design education, Sir Christopher Frayling represents the festival's belief in the importance of fostering and nurturing the industry's future. Frayling recognises the similar mission the two share: 'Since 2003, the London Design Festival has been drawing the public's attention to the key importance of design in everyday life,' he notes. 'Through my teaching, my publications, my broadcasts – and my leadership of the Royal College of Art (RCA) – I have been on a similar mission.'
Frayling is a former rector of the RCA; among his achievements, he set up the pioneering History of Design postgraduate course with the V&A Museum, contributing to bringing modern and contemporary design at the forefront of the academic discourse. His belief in the accessibility of design education and the industry has led him to write and present programmes for the BBC and Channel 4, and to be a key voice in the crucial conversations surrounding funding for creative education.
Design Innovation Medal: Anab Jain
The co-founder of challenge-facing, future-oriented studio Superflux, Anab Jain is a futurist applying creative thinking to 'the complex and deeply interconnected nature of the challenges we face today'.
Today led by a mission of 'meaningful legacy', Jain was born and raised in India, where she studied filmmaking at the National Institute of Design before moving to London for a master’s at the RCA. Founding Superflux with Jon Ardern in 2009, her work has focused on designing speculative solutions where technology, politics, and nature are considered to confront the increasingly complex challenges facing current and future generations (as seen in the studio’s recent exhibition ‘The Craftocene’ in Venice). 'For us, [the award] is recognition that speculative and future-led design is inherently innovative and entrepreneurial,' she says. 'At Superflux, we have always believed that design’s greatest power lies in making complex, systemic futures viscerally felt, so people can step outside established narratives and find the courage to imagine alternate futures.'
Emerging Design Medal: Solveiga Pakštaitė
This year's Emerging Design Medal winner is chief design officer and founder of tech venture Mimica, and runs a multidisciplinary practice that deals with user-centred and sustainable design. Among her early achievements is Bump, which she developed while attending the Industrial Design & Technology course at Brunel University London: the surface of a temperature-sensitive label is applied to food, and its tactile pattern changes when the food is about to go bad – the mission being to cut food waste and support visually impaired individuals in their everyday life.
'I'm passionate about promoting inclusion and sustainable habits through design, and I think it's wonderful that work that makes the world a little bit better is being recognised,' she says. 'I feel very honoured! I'm proud of what I have worked on so far but I'm even more excited by the design challenges yet to come.’