Fashion's own industry votes each year at The Fashion Awards, when the British Fashion Council fills the Royal Albert Hall to honour its most influential names.
The British Fashion Council holds The Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington on Monday 30 November 2026. The ceremony closes the British fashion year, after the September shows and before the February ones.
The Council established the awards in 1989 to recognise the people and houses making the largest contribution to fashion in a given year. They were called the British Fashion Awards until 2016.
The new name marked a wider scope. The ceremony now honours international designers, models and businesses alongside British ones, and the Council treats the evening as the industry’s own annual assessment.
A committee decides the categories, with no academy and no long voting season. The Council announces the shortlists only weeks beforehand. The value of a win shows in the buying orders and investment conversations that follow, and Designer of the Year has reordered several careers.
Once a year, the designers, the houses, the buyers and the models are in one room. Money raised on the night goes to the Council’s education and talent programmes.