Walpole holds its Christmas Carol Service at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, on Wednesday 2 December 2026, followed by a reception at Fortnum & Mason.
Robert Walpole is generally counted the first British prime minister, and the sector body that took his name in 1992 has spent more than thirty years doing the thing he was good at: convening people who would not otherwise be in a room together. It speaks for 270 British brands across manufacturing, hospitality, retail, the arts and design, a sector valued at £48 billion to the economy in 2019, and it spends most of its year on trade policy, tax, skills and export campaigning rather than on parties.
A carol service is therefore an odd fixture for it, and it does something the awards and the summit cannot. There is no ranking, no shortlist and nothing at stake, so the same people are in the room in an entirely different posture, singing rather than competing, at the point in December when the trading year is effectively finished and nobody is selling anybody anything.
The 2026 service is on Wednesday 2 December. Readings are given by figures from across the membership, with music, and a reception follows. It is the closest the British luxury industry comes to an annual act of collective informality, and the only Walpole evening in the year with no shortlist attached to it. The membership has grown from a handful of founding companies in 1990 to 270 today, and a good part of that membership turns out for this.