We're excited to be part of London Design Festival 2026, with our Soho Pop-up in the heart of the new Soho Design District, alongside Artemide Lighting and the iconic Heal's furniture store on Tottenham Court Road.
This September, Mark+Fold is bringing a stationery pop-up to Soho for the Festival's newest district — nine days of paper, print and the small rituals of putting pen to page, right in the middle of one of the city's most colourful design neighbourhoods.
Of course, LDF is a city-wide affair, so once you've stopped by our pop-up, here's our round-up of the other highlights well worth building a route around this year.
LDF Soho Highlights
Artemide Lighting Shop
Italian lighting brand Artemide has timed the reopening of its refurbished London showroom to coincide with the Festival, and it's worth the detour to Bloomsbury. Spread across two floors on Great Russell Street, supported by David Village Lighting, the space has been reimagined around the idea of light as an active architectural element — something that shapes perception and transforms a room, rather than simply illuminating it. The new setting takes in Artemide's full range across residential, professional, indoor and outdoor applications, from icons like the Tolomeo to newer additions to the catalogue. It's a quieter kind of LDF highlight than a landmark installation, but a good reminder that some of the Festival's best moments happen in permanent showrooms rather than temporary ones.
When: Open throughout LDF week, 12–20 September 2026 Where: 106 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3NB More info: bigfurnituregroup.com — Artemide reopens London showroom
Future Icons at Heal's
The designs that could define the next 20 years.
Mark+Fold Pop-up Shop
Mark+Fold goes 'back to school' in Soho with first London-made pencil cases and a Japan-Inspired 2027 Collection, in this rare opportunity to shop the British brand's beautifully-crafted paper goods in person during London Design Festival.
The pop-up also sees the launch of a new collection of London-made Mark+Fold Pencil Cases and A5 Pouches, as well as the Japan-inspired 2027 Diary and Planner Collection.
LDF Citywide Highlights
V&A x LDF26: Awakenings
The V&A remains the Festival's spiritual home, and its 2026 programme, Awakenings, is one of the most talked-about strands of the whole event. Co-curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, the show maps a journey through the museum's galleries exploring how design, craft and technology can spark new perspectives and bring invisible, interconnected forces into view. The line-up brings together Henry Svendsen, Sam Ghantous, Andre Williams, Nina Davies and Albert Yonathan Setyawan alongside major new commissions: Aziza Kadyri's Sender Unknown, which pairs Uzbek suzani embroidery techniques with a bespoke AI model, and Eunjo Lee's Digital Molting, inspired by the V&A's Buddhist art collection and partly 3D-printed from recycled clay. This year's Emerging Design Commission winner, Playfool, presents a game reflecting on human labour in the age of AI. Together the works trace a thread from the joyful to the unsettling, and it's the kind of show that rewards slowing down rather than rushing through.
When: 12–20 September 2026 (some works run to 18 October) Where: V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL More info: londondesignfestival.com/partners/victoria-albert-museum
Wood for the Trees
Organised by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) Europe with British studios Mitre & Mondays and Benchmark, Wood for the Trees looks past timber as a finished material to the forest it came from. Structured around six stages — Growth, Stewardship, Selection, Resilience, Timber and Design — the exhibition draws on AHEC's feature-length documentary Forested Future and asks what responsible forest management could mean for the future of UK design, at a moment when roughly 90% of the hardwood used in Britain is imported. It first showed in Copenhagen during 3daysofdesign, and arrives in London in an expanded form, with a programme of talks, workshops and live musical performances running alongside it. For anyone who cares where their materials come from, and not just what they look like once they're finished, this is a genuinely thoughtful addition to Shoreditch Design Week.
When: 15–20 September 2026 Where: Tab Centre, 3 Godfrey Place, London E2 7NT More info: dezeen.com/eventsguide — Wood for the Trees
The Point of Unity and Soul, St Paul's Cathedral
One of this year's two official Landmark Projects, and arguably the most moving thing on the programme. Ukrainian lighting designer Mykola Kabluka, founder of Kyiv-based studio Expolight, brings two works to St Paul's churchyard: Soul, an audiovisual installation projected onto the Cathedral's west front each evening, and The Point of Unity, a freestanding sculpture of mirrors and 3,500 fibre-optic points making its UK debut after appearing at Burning Man in 2025. Made by an artist working from a country at war, neither piece depicts conflict directly — instead they sit with quieter questions about holding onto an inner light through dark times, and how hope becomes action. Placing that inside a building built for gathering and reflection is a smart, and quietly powerful, piece of curation. Free guided artist tours are also scheduled over the opening weekend.
When: Soul, evenings from 14–27 September; The Point of Unity, daytime from 16–26 September Where: St Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8AD More info: londondesignfestival.com/activities/the-point-of-unity-and-soul
The Art of Sound, Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
Getting a huge amount of praise from design writers this year, and for good reason: this is the first time in thirteen years that Wapping Hydraulic Power Station has opened its doors to the public. Built in 1890 and now under the custodianship of the Glass Castle Foundation, the Grade II*-listed building provides an extraordinary backdrop for The Art of Sound, an immersive spatial audio experience powered by L-Acoustics. Multi-disciplinary artist Max Cooper presents Feeling is Structure, a twenty-minute piece originally developed for a live performance at the Royal Albert Hall, alongside field-recording artist Chris Watson's Trent Falls, which traces the Humber estuary from bridge to open sea through sound alone. It's free, it's unticketed, and several reviewers have called it one of the best free things to do at the Festival full stop — a rare chance to get inside a genuinely remarkable piece of Victorian industrial London.
When: 12–20 September 2026 Where: Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London More info: londondesignfestival.com/activities/the-art-of-sound-featuring-max-cooper-chris-watson
That's our pick of the Festival — but with over 300 events across 11 Design Districts, there's plenty more to discover. If you're heading to Soho for the Festival, come and find us — we'd love to show you what we've been working on.
