The 24th London Design Festival ran from 12 to 20 September 2026, hubbed at the V&A with the commissioned programme V&A x LDF26: Awakenings.
The 24th London Design Festival ran across the city from Saturday 12 to Sunday 20 September 2026, with the V&A South Kensington as its hub.
Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans launched the Festival at Bloomberg on 25 March 2003, backed by the design trade, the universities, government and the city’s cultural institutions. It has run every September since.
The V&A has been the hub for most of the Festival’s life. Its commissions go into the permanent galleries, so a new piece is seen against the museum’s own collection.
Eleven design districts carried the rest of the city in 2026, from Bankside and Brompton to Park Royal and Shoreditch. The Design Museum and the fairs Material Matters and Shoreditch Design Week joined the programme.
The museum’s commissioned programme, V&A x LDF26: Awakenings, threaded site-specific installations through the galleries. Its subject was design at a time when artificial intelligence mediates the result. The Global Design Forum talks ran alongside it, and light and media art was installed at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The London Design Medals went to Jonathan Anderson, Anab Jain and Solveiga Pakštaitė, with the Lifetime Achievement Medal to Sir Christopher Frayling.