Move over Milan! Sorry Copenhagen!
For nine days every September, it’s London’s turn to argue why it’s the design capital of Europe, with a scattering of exhibitions, launches, installations, talks, and enough beautifully upholstered furniture to furnish several small countries across the capital.
London Design Festival is now in its 24th year, with 11 Design Districts spanning the city, from Brompton and Mayfair to Shoreditch and Clerkenwell. There are a few changes to the map for 2026, too. Shoreditch’s program has splintered off into its own Shoreditch Design Week, while Waltham Forest joins the festival for the first time.
Much of the fun lies in moving between galleries, showrooms, and the occasional piece of public art that makes you stop halfway down the street. Most exhibitions and installations are free, although some events like the keynote talks are ticketed. So if you would rather not spend nine days wandering London with your tote bag in tow and no particular plan, start here.
The best exhibitions at London Design Week 2026
Awakenings at the V&A
The V&A is the obvious starting point – and, thankfully, it is also one of the more interesting. For 2026, the museum’s London Design Festival program, Awakenings, brings together 10 projects across three floors, looking at the increasingly porous relationship between craft, technology, and design.
Many of the works investigate our relationship with AI, such as Sender Unknown by Aziza Kadyri, which sits within the museum’s The Jameel Gallery collection of Islamic art. The London-based Uzbek visual artist explores how AI language and misinterpretation through suzani, the traditional intricate hand-embroidered textiles traditionally made for a bride’s dowry.
“Humans have always borrowed language,” Kadyri explains, “AI is encoding our everyday but […] it doesn’t have the context or language to extrapolate. There’s a breakdown of communication, human communal understanding but machines struggle with extraction, [so this piece] questions what gets lost along the way.”
The exhibition also makes excellent use of the V&A’s own collections, like placing Henry Svendsen’s Lovers Hold resin sculptures within the classical sculpture gallery, or your golf course made my GPU by Sam Ghantous, which takes over the Architecture gallery.
There is also the showcase of Craft x Tech Tokai, which pairs Japanese artisans from the Tokai region with international designers to reinterpret traditional techniques, including lacquer, metalwork, ceramics, woodworking, washi, and textiles. Standout pieces include Fushi, a pairing of a ceramic console table and lighting that looks like bamboo shoots by Yohei Ito and Australian industrial designer David Caon; and Kasane, the work of Shigeyuki Ando with British-Canadian designer Philippe Malouin of stacking boxes made of closonne enamel inspired by gardens in Kyoto.
Awakenings runs until September 30, so there is slightly less excuse for missing it if the festival week gets away from you.
Brompton Design District
Brompton is where things get rather more boutique. This year’s program, Perfectly Imperfect, takes over a cluster of galleries and cultural spaces around Cromwell Place, with The Lavery at 2–4 Cromwell Place acting as its epicentre. Studio Iron presents a group exhibition of furniture, objects, and sculpture bringing together established and emerging names, including Kelly Wearstler.
Elsewhere, The Reading Room combines bespoke furniture by Dominican-American designer Rich Aybar with books from Tenderbooks. Ideal for a leisurely morning rather than a frantic checklist, galleries are close enough together to wander between, and the surrounding streets provide considerably better coffee opportunities than some of the more industrial festival outposts.
Under Wraps at Charles Burnand Gallery
There is a new address in Mayfair worth knowing about, too. Charles Burnand Gallery is opening its permanent home on Bruton Place with Under Wraps, an inaugural exhibition that has taken its title rather literally. Works are concealed beneath semi-translucent architectural sheeting before being revealed through a series of automated unveilings. Unlike many festival exhibitions, Under Wraps will remain open well beyond LDF, running from September 12 through January 9, 2027.
The best installations to see at London Design Week 2026
The Pangolin Shield on the Strand
There is a certain pleasure in encountering good design when you weren’t expecting it. The Pangolin Shield, by Studio Saar with structural engineers Atelier One, will do exactly that on the Strand. The temporary pavilion is built from a bamboo grid shell covered in two kinds of traditional Indian shields: police shields and woven rain shields, or knups, used by farmers in north-eastern India. Arranged across the structure like scales, they create a canopy inspired by the armour of the pangolin, the world’s most trafficked mammal. It’s a powerful but not preachy exploration against power and exploitation – but it’s also an installation you can actually touch, walk into (and take shelter from the unpredictable September weather)
Soul and The Point of Unity at St Paul’s
Ukrainian artist and lighting designer Mykola Kabluka is bringing two works to St Paul’s Cathedral: Soul, an audiovisual projection across its facade, and The Point of Unity, an immersive light sculpture inside. Soul will run from September 14–27, using real-time generated imagery, light, glass, and sound to transform the building after dark. The Point of Unity makes its UK debut from September 16, with 3,500 points of fibre-optic light creating what amounts to an indoor constellation. It is a suitably grand setting for work that deals in light and atmosphere.
The Art of Sound at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
After almost 12 years unused, Wapping Hydraulic Power Station provides the setting for one of the festival’s less visually obvious installations, and its first foray into sound design. L-Acoustics is turning the former Victorian power station into an immersive sound environment, with new spatial-audio works by Max Cooper and Chris Watson. Cooper’s Feeling Is Structure explores the relationship between sound, physical form and perception, while Watson’s Trent Falls draws on the landscape around the Humber estuary. It runs from September 11–15, so this is one to put in the diary early rather than assume you will get around to it on the final Sunday. Admission is free, but tickets are required.
The best showrooms to see at London Design Festival 2026
Max Radford Gallery at Christopher Farr
Max Radford Gallery has made a name for itself as one of London’s more interesting destinations for collectible design, and during LDF 2026 it is moving into Christopher Farr’s Shoreditch showroom. Progressive Permanence pairs contemporary furniture and objects with Christopher Farr’s archival rugs. London designers LS Goma and Tessa Silva will show pieces that have not previously been exhibited in their home city, alongside work by German designer Carsten in der Elst.
Lalique: Alizé
Lalique is using the festival to spotlight Alizé, the second chapter of its Air de Lalique collection. The new series moves into lighting, with portable, desk, table, wall, and ceiling lamps made from Lalique crystal. Inspired by the movement of air, the pieces use pleated crystal forms to catch and diffuse light, giving the material a softer role than the house’s traditional decorative objects. The collection launched on September 1, making the festival the perfect opportunity to see it while wandering through the wider Mayfair program.
Faye Toogood: Johnny
One for someone with a sense of humor and a design eye. Faye Toogood is launching Johnny, a new lighting collection, at her Union Street space during the festival. The name is slightly less decorous than the work itself: the collection’s sculptural forms acquired the nickname in the studio because of their somewhat phallic resemblance. Don’t clutch your pearls at that description, though. The lights themselves are rather more refined, designed as illuminated objects that retain their sculptural presence when switched off. The presentation is short and sweet (September 14–15), making it one to schedule rather than something you can leave until later in the week.
