Design bought and sold on its own terms, PAD London occupies a Berkeley Square pavilion this October with a century of work judged to one standard.
PAD London, the only British fair given wholly to design, fills a pavilion on Berkeley Square in Mayfair from Tuesday 13 to Sunday 18 October 2026.
Patrick Perrin, a Paris antique dealer four generations into the trade, opened the first PAD in the Jardin des Tuileries in 1998. He brought a London edition to Berkeley Square in 2007. The Paris edition still runs every April, under a shared selection committee.
Design is the whole brief here. A Jean Prouvé chair, an eighteenth-century commode and a piece finished this year stand on the same floor, judged to the same standard.
Design is bought differently from art. A piece has to be sat on, opened or lived with, and its condition and edition matter as much as its authorship. A collector wants the maker’s other work in the same room, so a stand shows fifteen objects rather than fifty.
The Collectors Preview falls on the Tuesday and a VIP opening on the Wednesday, before the fair opens publicly on the Thursday. Frieze runs the same week, so the design trade and the art trade are in town together.