Global Design Forum

A curated thought leadership programme, celebrating design and the minds shaping its future.

The Global Design Forum will take place from 12-14 September and returns to the V&A South Kensington's Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre.

The forum is guest-curated by Rhiarna Dhaliwal and supported by Programme Partners Bowmore and Sun Media Group.

The theme of this year’s edition is Worlds of Motion and the programme will explore the exchange of ideas, culture, context and expertise. Across three days, the programme will bring together speakers from a range of disciplines and geographies to discuss new practices and forms of design, those that will inform our way of living – looking at how design is a catalyst for global change.

Highlights include talks from Es Devlin, Liam Young, Anab Jain and Natalie Melton. The curated talks programming will be free to attend and tickets will be available soon.

Talks Programme

Stories

A new international platform for Design in İstanbul.

In May 2026, in collaboration with People Places Ideas, Global Design Forum launched a new programme of talks, installations and citywide experiences in İstanbul.

Design At / From The Seams: GDF returns to London Design Festival from 13–15 September 2025.

Global Design Forum returned to the V&A South Kensington's Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre to tackle Design At / From The Seams.

The theme went beyond a singular anything – spotlighting interconnectedness between peoples, practices and the planet – examining radical interdependence that causes, affects and shifts paradigms in our designed world.​​

This edition was guest-curated by Samta Nadeem, in partnership with STIR

Across three days, design was inspected, explored and unpacked through the words and works of diverse practitioners in design, architecture, technology, films, curation and more.

With thanks to our Curatorial Partner STIR, Programme Partner Lotus and Session Partners Sony, L-Acoustics, and ADFF:STIR.

As part of the London Design Biennale programme, from 10–12 June 2025 the Global Design Forum hosted a series of talks and panel discussions at King's College London, under the title ‘Design and the Invisible’.

How can we dismantle outdated systems and forge radical new ones? Over three days, Samuel Ross, Mariana Mazzucato, Kengo Kuma and dozens more of the world’s most exciting designers and thinkers came together for a series of talks to rethink the hidden powers shaping our world. 

Beneath every object, building and space lies an entangled network of invisible forces – financial flows, digital networks, contested borders and unspoken cultural codes that shape lives and govern the world.  

Inspired by artistic director Samuel Ross’ Biennale theme, Surface Reflections, we pulled back the curtain on these unseen drivers of design. Leading designers, architects, economists, activists and technologists will shone a light on the impulses that come from within us, those that lie outside us and those that connect us, and envisage a future where design’s transformative power is freed from invisible constraints.

This edition was supported by our Digital Media Partner, STIR.

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  • Mayor of London
  • Bloomberg Philanthropies
  • Victoria & Albert Museum Logo
  • RH London logo
  • Fortnum & Mason logo
  • Pentagram logo

Design Notes

Weekly newsletter spotlighting creativity from London and beyond.

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