Clerkenwell Design Week 2026: What to Expect at the Landmark 15th Edition
Fifty years of design culture distilled into three days across London's most creatively charged postcode, 19 to 21 May.
Clerkenwell Design Show, London 2025 installation.
There is a particular charge to Clerkenwell in May. The showrooms fill, and the whole postcode becomes a live argument for why design matters. This year, that argument arrives with more international weight than ever before. As Clerkenwell Design Week marks its 15th anniversary, the festival spreads across EC1 with six countries, dozens of international brand debuts and a programme dense with installations, talks, product launches and the kind of encounters that only happen in rooms where the right people are gathered. It is, by any measure, the most geographically and intellectually ambitious edition the festival has staged.
The headline themes this year, sound and sustainability, are not decorative gestures. They run as coherent threads through the installations, the talks and the material choices on display. CDW has always been good at atmosphere; in 2026, it is asking bigger questions about what design is actually for.
Photography left, Original BTC x Buchanan Studio. Right, Bette bathrooms.
A Festival That Has Grown Into Its Venue
CDW has always thrived on the tension between Clerkenwell's historic architecture and the very contemporary objects placed inside it. This year, that tension is more pronounced than ever, with new venues adding considerable depth to an already rich geography. Haberdashers' Hall arrives as The Luxury Edit, an international showcase for high-end commercial design that will also host the CDW Awards ceremony on the evening of Tuesday 19 May. The Museum of the Order of St John, originally built in 1504, opens for the first time as a CDW venue, its Chapter Hall given over to Interiors from Spain's El Salón installation. Workplace on the Square, positioned outside The Zetter hotel, and Material Source Studio, aimed squarely at architects and specifiers, complete a line-up of new additions that meaningfully extend the festival's footprint.
The returning venues each carry their own atmosphere. The House of Detention hosts Light, its underground Victorian prison corridors given over to international lighting brands and a 3D-printed light sculpture by MimStudios, AI Build and Seam Design. St Bartholomew the Great becomes the Church of Design, its 900-year-old nave carrying the Conversations at Clerkenwell programme and a monumental origami-inspired installation by Fung+Bedford suspended from the ceiling.
The Charterhouse brings together contemporary furniture, decorative lighting and luxury finishes from names including Laufen, whose E-Kiln technology represents the world's first net-zero ceramic production facility and whose VOLTA basin, designed in collaboration with Yves Béhar, makes its debut at the show.
Photography left, Fung Bedford Resonance. Right, The Pulse-of Becoming Herbashers Hall.
The International Collections
The scale of international participation this year reframes CDW as something more than a London event. Spain brings 27 brands to EC1, its most expansive representation yet. Designer Tomás Alonso transforms the Chapter Hall of the Museum of the Order of St John into El Salón, a curated installation produced in partnership with design journal Disegno, featuring exclusive launches including the Mediterranean Collection of handcrafted lights by Yonoh Studio for BPM Lighting, the stackable KLOK Chair by Stephen Philips for Sellex, and the Senso seating system by Mario Ruiz for Joquer.
Spain, Italy, Norway & Germany Return TO CLERKENWELL
Left, Sitia Armut Table, Italy.
Tile of Spain, meanwhile, has commissioned architecture studio LA ERRERÍA to create The Secret Garden in the Order of St John's garden, four seasonal parterres formed from Spanish ceramics by thirteen brands including Porcelanosa and WOW Design, taking its inspiration from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
The Spanish Collection at The Charterhouse, presented by ANIEME and ICEX, brings refined furniture and textiles by Ezpeleta, Expormim, Gandía Blasco and Naturtex to the Great Hall and Old Library. Cosentino arrives with two surface launches: Nomak, a carbon-neutral ultra-compact collection, and Éclos, a mineral surface for kitchen and bathroom applications.
Photography, Expormim, Spain.
Italy returns for the fourth consecutive year with around 40 brands across three distinct activations. At The Luxury Edit in Haberdashers' Hall, architect Giulio Cappellini, Design Ambassador of the 2026 Italian Design Day, has curated The Italian Hospitality in partnership with design magazine Interni: a lounge environment where Artelinea's Kubic glass washbasins sit alongside sculptural MILANO radiators by TUBES, Nuvola floor lamps by Siru in Murano glass, and steel panels engraved with Ginkgo leaves by Caino Design. The Italian Collection adds eight further brands including DOMOS DESIGN with three new natural stone collections, and the debut of OliveLab's Mutaforma modular ceiling lamp designed by Giulia Liverani. The Ceramics of Italy pavilion at St John's Square South features twelve brands, with CASALGRANDE PADANA launching its Saxum porcelain stoneware tiles exclusively at CDW.
Norway makes its CDW debut with The Norwegian Boutique Bedroom in the cloister of the Church of Design, a deeply considered Scandinavian interior combining revived mid-century furniture from Eikund, including Fredrik A. Kayser's Fluffy chair, world-leading sleep systems from Jensen Beds, Larvikite and Anorthosite stone surfaces from Lundhs, and ethical premium goose down from Norsk Dun.
Thonet and Jil Sander, S 411 lounge chair, Germany.
Left, Eikund Fluffy chair, Norway. Right, Milano Totalcolour by Tubes, Design Antonia Astori and Nicola De Ponti, Italy.
The German Collection at Catapult on Sekforde Street presents engineering-led precision from names including wineo, JUNG, THONET and KRALL + ROTH, whose SINUX range of foamless soft seating launches at the show, while German flooring brand Parador unveils its Harmonia engineered wood collection from its Great Sutton Street showroom. Austria's contribution, The Austrian Collection at The Crypt, showcases tailored timber flooring from AUSTRIAWOOD and mafi, furniture from HUSSL and BRAUN LOCKENHAUS, and sculptural lighting from STUDIO PALATIN and WOKA LAMPS.
British Design and New Design Interventions
Barnby Design, Claydon Console 7, Lucy Gold.
Photography left, Chelsom Portables. Right, Regenta GRESTEC TILES.
For a decade, St James's Church has hosted the British Collection, and the 2026 edition continues that tradition with contemporary releases from Barnby Design, whose Clayden Console Table is crafted from sustainably sourced oak, Fox & Furb Design Studio's typographically-driven Sit Chair, lighting from Chelsom and the Lollipop Chair from Deadgood, bold and graphically unapologetic. Premium outdoor furniture brand Nth Degree opens a new showroom with the Microskin Edition of its Pietra Collection, and Viaduct unveils its new 454 Chair. Design studio Spared contributes an installation that transforms post-consumer waste into prototype tables, making circularity tangible rather than rhetorical.
The most formally adventurous strand of CDW 2026 is the newly launched Design Interventions series, a call-out to emerging and established architects and designers that has produced a scatter of site-specific structures across Clerkenwell's streets, parks and interiors. On Clerkenwell Green, One Bite Design's Fountain of Technicolour Beads uses terrazzo and spatial design to address Colour Vision Deficiency.
Next to St James's Church, StudioFolk has designed The Crinkle-Crankle Bench from natural stone bricks. Outside The Luxury Edit, The Pulse of Becoming, created by recent Portsmouth graduates Musab Umair, Amruta Ramesh Pullawar and Sharath Binu John, sees chia seeds embedded in crescent shells that will visibly sprout during the festival days. These installations position CDW not simply as a product showcase but as a genuinely civic event, one that changes what it feels like to walk through Clerkenwell during those three days in May.
Photography, J ADAMS & CO Flume Collection.
VitrA brings its London Specification and Design Hub to full activation, with product launches including the Glora and Sareta furniture collections and the V-Care 3 smart toilet, alongside two In Conversation talks. On Tuesday, VitrA's head of design Nisan Tunçak discusses the Plural collection with designer Terri Pecora. On Wednesday, Anne-Rachel Schiffman of Snøhetta joins to discuss the ceramics installation shown at Interni during Milan Design Week. The talks programme across all CDW venues is extensive, with Conversations at Clerkenwell, Design Meets at The Luxury Edit, Design Dialogues by Design Milk and the CDW Awards all shaping a schedule that rewards a full three-day investment.
Clerkenwell Design Week 2026 runs from 19 to 21 May across EC1, London. Free visitor registration and the full programme are available at clerkenwelldesignweek.com.
Where is Clerkenwell Design Week held? The festival spans multiple venues across EC1, including The Charterhouse, Haberdashers' Hall, the Church of Design, the House of Detention and the Museum of the Order of St John.
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