The 23rd London Design Festival ran for nine days in September 2025, with the V&A as its hub and Lee Broom lighting the Royal Festival Hall plaza.
The 23rd London Design Festival ran across the city for nine days, from Saturday 13 to Sunday 21 September 2025, with the V&A South Kensington as its hub.
Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans launched the Festival in 2003. They argued that London had the designers, the schools and the buyers but no single week to show them together.
Ten design districts carry most of the programme, among them Bankside, Brompton, Mayfair, Park Royal and the Shoreditch Design Triangle. Each is a cluster of studios, showrooms and galleries with its own curator, while the V&A and the Design Museum anchor the centre.
The V&A’s 2025 programme, co-curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, took design’s response to crisis as its subject. It included installations by Alicja Patanowska, Jakkai Siributr and Ryunosuke Okazaki, and a commission for the emerging designer Roo Dhissou.
Two landmark projects stood outdoors. Paul Cocksedge’s What Nelson Sees, a frame of steel tubes aligned to Nelson’s Column, stood in Trafalgar Square. Lee Broom’s Beacon, a 4.9-metre structure of recycled cast glass, lit the plaza of the Royal Festival Hall.
The four London Design Medals went to Michael Anastassiades, Norman Foster, Sinéad Burke and Rio Kobayashi.