Shoreditch gets its own Design Week at London festival
East London has a new date on the design calendar. Shoreditch Design Week has staged its inaugural edition as part of the 2026 London Design Festival, the city-wide annual festival, with Duncan Riches as creative director, Dezeen reported.
Riches spoke to Dezeen about the launch and his aim to bring design back to the Shoreditch neighbourhood in east London. He is no newcomer to the patch. He founded Unit.d, a design gallery in London, and also leads the Shoreditch Design Triangle, a local route of shows and open studios.
His pitch for the area is blunt. Shoreditch has "the best architecture and interior design community in the whole of Europe", Riches told Dezeen.
The new week is built around four curated trade exhibitions, meaning selected shows aimed mainly at professional buyers such as shops, architects and interior designers. Three of them are named in the interview. They are House of Icon at Shoreditch Town Hall, the municipal hall turned arts venue, the New Designers graduate showcase for recent college leavers, and Material Matters, a fair focused on materials.
It is not only about exhibition halls. Local showrooms opened their doors to the public for the week. Fashion accessories label Ally Capellino and furniture and lighting designer Lee Broom both hosted product launches and drinks in their own spaces.
Listings give the dates as 15 to 20 September, according to Shoreditch Design Week. That puts the first edition right inside the London Design Festival period.
What makes this stand out is the format. Visitors can move between a town hall show, a graduate display, a materials fair and a working showroom on the same streets. For anyone new to design weeks, this means no ticket maze. Walk in, look close, ask who made it.
