Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW) will return to London’s EC1 from 19th to 21st May 2026, marking its 15th anniversary with a new curated series of large-scale installations titled ‘Design Interventions’. Following a call-out to emerging and established designers and architects for innovative structures, the strongest submissions will be installed across Clerkenwell, encouraging interaction and sparking conversations about materials and the built environment.
The Design Interventions will be site-specific and interactive, appearing in parks, streets, green spaces, and festival venues, providing places to sit, reflect, and connect with others while exploring structural and material concepts. One of the selected installations, The Fountain of Technicolour Beads, created by Hong Kong-based One Bite Design, is an immersive terrazzo installation focusing on Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD). Another, The Crinkle-Crankle Bench by StudioFolk, is a series of half-crescent benches crafted from natural stone bricks.
This year, the expanded CDW Awards, presented with Design Milk, will celebrate the best new products and innovations, as well as disruptors, dreamers, and ‘doers of design’. The awards ceremony will take place on 19th May at Haberdashers’ Hall, a new venue for CDW, known as The Luxury Edit during the show. The Luxury Edit will also host the talks series Design Meets and a ‘living’ outdoor installation, The Pulse of Becoming, created by recent graduates Musab Umair, Amruta Ramesh Pullawar, and Sharath Binu John.
New venues for CDW 2026 include the Museum of the Order of St John, Material Source Studio, and Workplace on the Square outside The Zetter hotel. Returning venues include St Bartholomew the Great, which will host the Conversations at Clerkenwell programme and an origami-inspired installation by Fung+Bedford. The House of Detention returns as the host of Light, featuring a 3D-printed light sculpture by MIMStudios, AI Build, and SEAM Design.
Marlon Cera-Marle, Design Division Director at Media 10, the organiser of the annual design festival, said: “We’re thrilled to be back in Clerkenwell this May with our new Design Interventions initiative which acts as a creative platform for the incredible talent and imagination of the participating architects and designers. These thought-provoking installations are set to bring a new interactive dimension to the show. We’re looking forward to another successful year welcoming tens of thousands of people from the UK and abroad to EC1 to discover the latest that global design has to offer.”
