PAD London takes Berkeley Square from 13 to 18 October 2026 — a Collectors Preview on the Tuesday, a VIP opening on the Wednesday, public days from the Thursday.
Patrick Perrin, a fourth-generation Parisian antique dealer, founded PAD in the Jardin des Tuileries in 1998 and brought it to London in 2007. It is the only fair in Britain given wholly to design, historical and contemporary together, which is a narrower brief than it sounds: a Jean Prouvé chair, an eighteenth-century commode and a piece made this year are judged on the same floor by the same standard. The Paris fair still runs every April and the two share a selection committee.
Design is bought differently from art, and that is the argument for a fair of its own. A piece has to be sat on, opened or lived with, its condition and its edition matter as much as its authorship, and a collector wants the maker’s other work in the same room for comparison. A gallery stand here shows fifteen objects rather than fifty.
The 2026 fair takes a pavilion on Berkeley Square from Tuesday 13 to Sunday 18 October, with the Collectors Preview on the Tuesday and a VIP opening on the Wednesday before it opens publicly from the Thursday. Dover Street and Bruton Street are a few minutes’ walk away. It runs to the same week as Frieze, so the design trade and the art trade are in town at once, and the Tuesday preview rather than the Thursday opening is the session collectors hold.