LDF25 Landmark Project, Lee-Broom – Beacon, 2025. Photography by Luke Hayes

London Design Festival – the capital city as one big design exhibition.

This September, I'll be at London Design Festival – nine days when the whole capital turns itself into one sprawling celebration of design, and easily one of the highlights of my creative calendar. The 24th edition runs from 12–20 September 2026.

If you've not been, it's quite unlike a traditional design fair. There's no single venue and no ticket gate, and the festival spills out across the entire city. Hundreds of events, exhibitions, installations, talks, open showrooms and workshops span everything from furniture and fashion to architecture, craft, materials and digital design, with landmark moments at the V&A and the Design Museum alongside countless smaller gems. Much of it is organised around design districts, with the last edition taking in ten of them, from the Brompton Design District and Shoreditch Design Triangle to the William Morris Design Line. Half the joy is simply wandering between them and stumbling on something brilliant.

It's also got proper heritage. The festival was founded in 2003 by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans with a simple idea: to build on London's existing design activity and create an annual event championing the city's creativity, bringing together its best thinkers, makers, retailers and educators. Two decades on, it's become a genuine institution: more than 2,000 design businesses, brands and universities take part each year, and the 2019 edition alone welcomed a record 600,000 visitors from over 75 countries. See you there?

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