LAPADA returns to Berkeley Square from 27 October to 1 November 2026, over eighty dealers, everything vetted before it goes on a stand.
LAPADA is the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, founded in 1974 and now the largest body of professional dealers in Britain. Membership is not bought: an applicant is proposed, examined and held to a published code of practice, and the association belongs to CINOA, the international confederation that most national dealers’ associations sit under. That is the whole basis of the fair, because a dealer who can be expelled from a trade body behaves differently from one who cannot.
The vetting is where it becomes visible. Every object offered is examined before the doors open by a specialist committee of seventy people drawn from across the disciplines, and anything that cannot be substantiated comes off the stand. A buyer therefore does not need the expertise to authenticate a piece themselves, which at these prices is the service being sold as much as the object is.
The 2026 fair takes Berkeley Square from 27 October to 1 November, one of only two fairs a year given that ground. Over eighty exhibitors show across art, antiques, design and the decorative arts, from jewellery and silver to carpets, tapestries, antiquities and clocks. Prices run from £500 to well past £500,000, so a first purchase and a serious collection are answered from the same stand on the same afternoon. The association’s office is on the King’s Road, and it publishes collectors’ guides alongside the member list.