Clerkenwell Design Week 2026 considers the creation and consumption of design

Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW) returns to London’s EC1 from May 19 – 21, 2026, for its milestone 15th edition. Marking the occasion, the design festival introduces Design Interventions, a new series of large-scale, site-specific installations that invite designers to rethink how we ‘build, consume, celebrate and experience the spaces around us,’ as the official press release states. These additions expand what is perhaps already one of the UK's most extensive multi-national design showcases, while reinforcing this year’s thematic focus: Sustainability and Sound.

Alongside the new interventions, Clerkenwell Design Week 2026 continues its longstanding custom of activating Clerkenwell’s network of showrooms and historic buildings into sites for exhibitions and creative exchange. Design is experienced through movement across the neighbourhood as adaptive reuse, and the site’s history becomes part of exhibition design itself.

Some participating brands include Actiu, Modus, Humanscale, Andreu World, Camira, Domus, Herman Miller and Knoll, among hundreds of others presenting fresh ideas in contemporary design and architecture across heritage structures in the neighbourhood. This year, Norway debuts as a participant, joining Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria and the UK in presenting their latest in design through thematic displays, installations, talks and workshops.

As an official media partner, STIR highlights key events and projects from this year’s design week at Clerkenwell.

Contemporary designs against historic backdrops

Historic venues once again become an integral part of the festival’s creative landscape as active scenography for contemporary designs. This year, Habersadher’s Hall joins CDW’s programme as The Luxury Edit, hosting the Italian Collection alongside the expanded CDW Awards. Meanwhile, the Museum of the Order of St. John becomes the temporary home of interiors from Spain’s El Salón and the Austrian Collection by Advantage Austria. Material Source Studio showcases architectural materials and product designs, while the Workplace on the Square venue outside the Zetter Hotel displays innovations in workplace design. Other venues include

These additions extend the rhythm of the festival through Clerkenwell’s layered architectural history and urban fabric. St. Bartholomew the Great returns as the Church of Design, housing the Norwegian Collection along with a selection of international brands; The Charterhouse hosts an array of furniture, rugs and textiles with the Spanish Collection; St. James’s Church once again becomes the home of the British Collection; St. John’s Square hosts Ceramics of Italy   , a showcase of inventive ceramics and porcelain products from the country; while the German Collection takes over Catapult. The House of Detention returns as Light, dedicated to leading lighting design brands. Other returning venues include The Goldsmiths’ Centre, Old Sessions House, Future Talent (formerly Platform), St. John Priory Church, Commercial Design in the Park (formerly Project), Commercial Interiors on the Green (formerly Clerkenwell Green Pavilions) and Interior Hardware (formerly Elements).

New, interactive ‘Design Interventions’

This 15th edition seeks to reshape the movement and spatial experience of the festival through Design Interventions, a series of site-specific, large-scale installations conceived by the architects and designers across Clerkenwell’s public nodes, such as parks, streets and gardens. Positioned throughout the neighbourhood, these offer pockets of rest, interaction and contemplation, while probing broader questions around how design is created and consumed.

Among the highlights here is Resonance byUK-based designers and sculptors Fung+Bedford, a series of large-scale luminous ribbons suspended within the nave of the Church of Design. Through intricate folded patterns and shifting light, the installation creates an almost immaterial presence within the medieval interior, while celebrating the designer duo’s decade-long journey since their beginning at the Clerkenwell Green Association.

Further north, at Commercial Interiors on the Green, Hong Kong-based multidisciplinary studio One Bite Design presents The Fountain of Technicolour Beads, an immersive installation in terrazzo that attempts to raise awareness around Colour Vision Deficiency. At Charterhouse Square, Recreatura by Friends & Co. reconstructs fragments of the site’s historic fabric through sound, memory and visual expression, while The Pulse of Becoming, a ‘living’ outdoor installation suspended outside the Luxury Edit venue, reflects on the cycles of life, death and rebirth by means of crescent shells embedded with sprouting chia seeds. 

The ‘other’ destinations

Beyond the design displays and installations, the discourse around the present and future of design will unfold through a series of curated talks across Clerkenwell. Hosted at the Church of Design, Conversations at Clerkenwell, presented by Dulux and curated by London-based PR and Brand consultant Katie Richardson, brings together leading and emerging voices from across architecture and design. Some of the speakers include Níall McLaughlin, who will reflect on three decades of shaping British architecture following his 2026 RIBA Gold Medal win, alongside discussions such as The New Luxury featuring Dimorestudio, Giles Miller and Tatjana von Stien.

The programme also turns towards the growing relationship between craft and emerging technologies through The Trained Hand: Craft, Intuition and the New Digital Makers, where designer and filmmaker Anab Jain, artist and designer Paul Cocksedge and Bo Hellberg, CMO of String Future, discuss how AI is reshaping material cultures and upcoming contemporary design practices, in a panel chaired by Samta Nadeem, curatorial director, STIR. Visitors can also look forward to the Design Meets at The Luxury Edit and [d]arc thoughts on lighting design by [d]arc media.  

Return of the CDW Awards

Following their debut last year, the CDW Awards return in partnership with Design Milk to recognise notable contributions in the fields of furniture, lighting, materials and interiors. This year’s edition also intensifies through new categories dedicated to individuals, teams and novel concepts. The trophies for the awards are designed by Henry Marks as sculptures of interlocking pieces of cherry wood, highlighting the material’s natural potential in timber construction.

A call for conscious creation and consumption

In addition to the installations, exhibits and talks, several presentations respond directly to the festival’s broader focus on sustainability and sound. Among them is Brew House by Studio Egret West, a pavilion design made of 600 ‘Brew Bricks’ produced from 300kg of London’s coffee waste. Elsewhere, Parkside presents Marmara Terrazzo, developed using waste from Turkish quarries, while SPACEMANN showcases Odyssey, a series of acoustic work-pods responding to evolving workplace environments.

Across its networks of showrooms and monumental venues, Clerkenwell Design Week has established itself as a relevant international platform for furniture, lighting, textiles, home accessories and products. This year, the festival furthers that through public interventions, critical conversations and material inquiries that reflect the concerns of an increasingly shifting cultural and design landscape.