Clerkenwell Design Week 2026

Clerkenwell Design Week presents a design festival centred on Clerkenwell’s concentration of creative businesses, architects and design showrooms. Its programme focuses on presenting established interior brands and emerging design talent through curated exhibitions, showroom activities, installations, and talks. Subject coverage spans furniture, lighting, textiles, surfaces, accessories and product design, with additional strands addressing decorative lighting, design dialogue and industry debate. The current edition also includes “Design Interventions”, a series of large-scale installations intended to prompt discussion of materials and the built environment, and an expanded CDW Awards programme presented in partnership with Design Milk.

The event is primarily directed at a professional design audience, including architects, interior designers, brands, craftspeople, material specialists, and related creative industries. Its content also speaks to sectors such as property, workplace, and hospitality, as reflected in programme topics on office design, hospitality environments, neuro-inclusive spaces, and architect- and interiors-led tours.

Across the talks and wider programme, the main themes are current design and specification issues. These include sustainability, ethical specification, circularity and regenerative materials, artificial intelligence in creative design processes, colour and material trends, wellness in domestic and commercial settings, storytelling in design, community co-design, and the future of workplace and hospitality design. This framing positions the event as both a showcase of products and interiors and a forum for professional discussion of environmental, technological, and social change affecting the design industry.

Speakers and panellists named in the programme include Mary Portas OBE, described as a businesswoman, broadcaster, author and activist; Tom Dixon, Creative Director at Tom Dixon; designer Alex Chinneck; designer Bethan Laura Wood; designer Sabine Marcelis; Deepak Parmar, Design Director at MCM; Dana Salmanzadeh of BLOND; Lorena Espaillet Bencosme of Zaha Hadid Architects; Sophie Thomas, founder of Thomas.Matthews; Paula Chin, Senior Policy Advisor at WWF; Max Fraser, Editorial Director at Dezeen; and Umesh Thakur, Principal Industrial Designer at House of Rohl. Organisations involved across the programme include BIID, Design Council, NLA, POoR Collective, WGSN, Gensler, Pantone, Ultrafabrics and House of Rohl.

Taken together, the published programme presents Clerkenwell Design Week as an industry-facing event that combines product and interiors presentation with structured discussion on the practical and strategic issues shaping contemporary design practice.