A First Look at LDF25
What's in store for September
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London Design Festival’s 23rd edition will take place 13 - 21 September 2025. Here's a peek inside this year’s programme.
London is once again the stage for a city-wide takeover of bold ideas and visionary design. The 2025 edition of London Design Festival lands at a time when the role of design has never felt more vital – or more ambitious.
From rethinking heritage through public installations to pushing the boundaries of sustainable materials, this year’s programme offers a compelling snapshot of design as both a provocation and a solution. Anchored by major institutions like the V&A and the Design Museum, and with exciting new additions like Space House - one of London's most iconic modernist buildings - joining the fold, the Festival reaffirms London’s status not just as a capital of creativity, but as a laboratory for design’s future directions.
The Festival is proud to announce the Mayor of London as Principal Supporter for 2025. With a city-wide network of Design Districts, headline talks at the Global Design Forum, and the return of the London Design Medals, 2025 continues the Festival’s legacy as a global force in design.
The annual London Design Medals will recognise the contribution made by leading design figures and emerging talent to London and the industry, with four London Design Medals awarded each year. The Festival will continue its long-standing partnership with Fortnum & Mason as Supporting Partner of the London Design Medals 2025. The Festival is also supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, with Bloomberg Connects being the Festival’s official digital guide. The free mobile guide will feature content exclusive to Connects.
The Festival continues to champion both emerging and established talent, fostering collaboration and innovation across the international design community. This year, London Design Festival is significantly investing in its partnership programme to provide enhanced support for the industry, ensuring that designers, manufacturers, and creative businesses have greater opportunities to showcase their work and connect with new audiences
Ben Evans, London Design Festival Director, said:
“Design is not just about aesthetics. It’s a fundamental driver of innovation, economic growth, and societal progress. This year's Festival demonstrates our commitment to supporting the entire design ecosystem, from emerging talent to established brands, all while showcasing London's unparalleled creative energy.”
Landmark Projects
What Nelson Sees, by Paul Cocksedge
Taking over Trafalgar Square, one of London’s best-known landmarks, What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge offers visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience London from Nelson's vantage point atop his column, revealing perspectives of the city never before accessible to the public.
The sculpture comprises a series of intersecting tubes that form a striking freestanding structure. These lines form telescopic viewing portals, inviting visitors to peer through and discover London's skyline from Nelson’s perspective.
The experience begins with live views of contemporary London before gradually rewinding through time, transporting viewers on a journey spanning centuries into the city's rich past. The voyage then moves seamlessly forward, offering glimpses of imagined future scenes—a vision of what London might become a century from now.
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Beacon, by Lee Broom.
Supported and produced by Brokis and Materials Assemble.
Beacon is a monumental sculptural lighting installation designed by Lee Broom and supported and produced by Brokis and Materials Assemble, positioned at an iconic riverside location, it is inspired by the area's architecture and legacy. Made from recycled cast glass, the installation reinterprets classic street lamps to form the structure collectively resembling a vast sculptural chandelier. It has been sustainably constructed so its components can be repurposed into individual light fixtures after deinstallation, ensuring both beauty and longevity. As a major piece of public art, Beacon has been conceived not only as a design installation but as a shared experience in the public realm, one that is open, accessible, and intended for all.
LDF at V&A Museum
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Co-curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, the V&A's programme during London Design Festival 2025 will explore design's critical response to crisis and urgent issues. Key installations will examine responses to natural resource extraction, at-risk cultural heritage, geo-political conflicts and AI through the work of global practices including artists and designers Alicja Patanowska, Jakkai Siributr and Ryunosuke Okazaki as well as the V&A Emerging Designer Commission recipient Roo Dhissou, highlighting the importance of care, restoration and resilience in challenging times.
The Design Museum
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The Design Museum will present several major exhibitions and displays as part of the Festival programme. Blitz: The Club that Shaped the 80s explores the legendary Blitz club night that transformed 1980s London style and generated a creative scene with enormous impact on popular culture, influencing fashion, music, film, art and design throughout the decade.
More Than Human brings together art, science and radical thinking to examine how design can help our planet thrive by shifting focus beyond human needs, and will be accompanied by a symposium. The annual PLATFORM display will showcase the fascinating work of Bethan Laura Wood, including a workshop during the Festival, while an audio-described tour of the museum's architecture will also be available.
Design Districts
From North to South, East to West, the Design Districts are a key component of the Festival makeup. Each District has its own unique personality that reflects the local community and enables visitors to explore events a short walking distance from each other.
There will be 10 Design Districts as part of this year's Festival: Bankside, Brompton, Chelsea, Dalston To Stokey, EC1, Fleet Street Quarter, Mayfair, Park Royal, Shoreditch Design Triangle and William Morris Design Line.
Design Fairs
As part of the programme, Design Fairs are the commercial pillars of the Festival and key meeting places for designers, manufacturers, buyers, specifiers, the media and design enthusiasts to discover new product releases and identify current trends.
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Design London Shoreditch
Design London Shoreditch
is is a bold new addition to the London Design Festival taking place from
16-18 September 2025. Featuring three curated exhibitions: Design at Work (Protein Studios) explores innovation in workplace design; Design Culture (Kachette) investigates design’s intersection with culture and sustainability; and House of ICON (Shoreditch Town Hall) showcases interiors from Scandinavian minimalism to bold maximalism. Expect installations by 2LG Studio, artist Ben Cullen Williams (in collaboration with Google DeepMind), and the British Council’s Ancient Futures. Participating brands include BAUX, Dare Studio, Isomi and more. Talks co-curated by Roddy Clarke and creative workshops by Moleskine round out the experience. Located in the heart of the Shoreditch Design Triangle, this immersive event is set to attract global designers, architects and enthusiasts.
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Material Matters
Material Matters
returns for its fourth edition from 17–20 September 2025
at new venue, Space House. It will take over an entire floor of the building, bringing together designers, brands, and thinkers to explore the importance of materials in design and architecture.
The fair will be organised into three distinct zones: Knowledge, housing the talks space and café alongside finalists of the Only Natural Design Competition, the Wood Awards 2025 shortlist, and an installation from design consultant PriestmanGoode; Specification, featuring market-ready materials from brands such as 3M, Filie Material, and MycoWorks; and Experimental, focusing on designers pushing material boundaries, including Micaella Pedros, Jacob Marks, and Revive Innovations. Other highlights include showcases from The Material Way and ForEverydayLife, while the In The Making exhibition, curated by tp bennett and The Furniture Practice returns. with work from the likes of Arper, Tarkett, and Domus Tiles.
Global Design Forum
Global Design Forum, London Design Festival's curated thought leadership programme, returns to the V&A celebrating design and the minds shaping its future. The programme will focus on some of the most pressing and crucial challenges that designers currently face, bringing together leading voices from across the global design and creative community to share new perspectives on how design can be more accessible, inclusive and sustainable.
Graphic Identity by Pentagram
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World-renowned creative agency Pentagram continues its partnership with London Design Festival, having produced the annual graphic identity since 2007. This year's identity explores the concept of connection and collaboration.
Certain elements of the identity remain constant - the Festival’s colour palette of white on red has been proved to be one of the Festival's most recognisable elements. This has allowed Pentagram to adapt the brief each year to produce distinctive visual identities ensuring that each edition of the Festival feels fresh and dynamic.
Domenic Lippa, Partner at Pentagram, said:
“This year we have created a typographic thread that expresses the purpose of what the festival is all about – creating connections throughout the London design community and beyond. The thread ties together creativity and collaboration, partners and projects, districts and designers. All in pursuit of collective progress. As with every LDF campaign there is a need for the identity to be flexible across digital and print, to be an expressive device in motion and to have impact when viewed as a static graphic. The flex of the thread identity stretches and compresses across campaign imagery and continues the legacy of being bold and distinct when paired with the iconic red of London.”
Further information for this year’s programme as well as details of the Global Design Forum, London Design Festival’s curated thought leadership programme, and this year’s London Design Medal winners will be announced over the summer.
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