LAGOS.- Design Week Lagos 2026 was officially inaugurated at the National Theatre in Lagos on 22 October with the 180 New Ideas exhibition and IDEA Honours awards ceremony.
Design Week Lagos runs until 25 October 2026 at the National Theatre Lagos and venues around the city. Making a New Africa: From Material to Market is the theme running through Design Week Lagos 2026, which features a programme exploring how African design can move beyond international recognition to shape manufacturing, commerce and industrial development. Centred on the question of what Africa will make next, the festival positions Lagos as an increasingly significant destination for global design, creative exchange and innovation.
Leading the curatorial programme of Design Week Lagos 2026 is Norman Teague, founder of Chicago-based Norman Teague Design Studios. Teague worked closely with curators Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Ousmane Mbaye and Júlio Rafael across the Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone perspectives.
Bloom Against Violence. Studio Contra. Photograph byTobi Oluwarotimi for Design Week Lagos.
180 New Ideas
At the heart of this year’s edition is 180 New Ideas, a major showcase spanning furniture, lighting, textiles, material innovation, product and industrial design, architecture and experimental work. More than 100 designers, studios and innovators will participate in the flagship Design + Innovation Exhibition at the National Theatre Lagos, with the wider programme connecting participants and audiences across 58 countries.
Rather than presenting African design as a single aesthetic, the exhibition explores the continent’s diverse material cultures, geographies and approaches to making. Five perspectives – Nigeria, the African diaspora, Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa—provide a framework for examining how designers are responding to local contexts while engaging with international conversations.
IDEA Honours Awards Ceremony
The IDEA Honours awards ceremony took place at the National Theatre in Lagos on 21 October, and recognised three influential figures whose work has helped shape architecture, design and culture internationally. Professor Lesley Lokko OBE received the Architectural Leadership Honour; Marva Griffin, founder and curator of SaloneSatellite won the Architectural Legacy Honour; and Yinka Shonibare CBE was awarded the Cultural Impact Honour.
Demas Nwoko
The awards connect established international influence with African creative heritage. Their plaques were designed by Demas Nwoko, the multidisciplinary Nigerian architect, artist and designer whose work is also the subject of a major presentation at this year’s festival.
Professor Lesley Lokko OBE said of receiving the Architectural Leadership Honour: “To receive such a prestigious award here in Lagos, from our Nigerian neighbours and cousins, means a great deal to me. I also receive it as an affirmation of something that matters deeply to me: Africa’s responsibility for the ways in which our art, design and architecture are seen, discussed and valued.
We have spent a great deal of time explaining ourselves, often in conversations whose terms have already been decided elsewhere. What interests me now is the work of establishing those terms ourselves. What do we consider important? Which questions deserve our attention? What constitutes excellence in the places in which we live and work? And who gets to decide?
Africa contains many voices, many histories and many ways of imagining a life. Our cultural confidence should make room for that complexity. We need to be able to celebrate one another and to challenge one another. To sustain a conversation long enough for it to become a culture. As an architect, I am interested in what we build. As an educator, I am equally interested in what our building makes possible for someone else.”
Design Week Lagos 2026. Photograph by Tobi Oluwarotimi for Design Week Lagos.
Demas Nwoko: A Living Legacy
A highlight of Design Week Lagos 2026 is Demas Nwoko: A Living Legacy, an exhibition exploring the breadth of Demas Nwoko’s practice across architecture, art, design objects and cultural thought. Nigerian Architect Demas Nwoko was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (The Laboratory of the Future) in May 2023.
Presented in the year he turns 90, the exhibition brings together different dimensions of a career in which buildings, materials, objects and ideas have remained interconnected.
Drawing on material associated with his acclaimed presentation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the exhibition positions Nwoko’s work in dialogue with a new generation of African designers and makers. It offers an opportunity to consider how his multidisciplinary approach continues to inform contemporary thinking about architecture, craftsmanship and cultural identity.
Pre-Launch of Design Museum Africa
On Saturday 24 October the Yoruba Museum in Lagos will host a pre-launch of Design Museum Africa with fundraising auction as part of Design Week Lagos 2026. Conceived as a long-term institution for identifying, documenting, developing, collecting and presenting African design, Design Museum Africa will open in 2028 and aims to strengthen connections between designers, manufacturers, collectors, galleries, museums, retailers and international markets.
Ajayi Kehinde Gabriel - Àjàyí Studio. Ijapa chair. Photograph by Tobi Oluwarotimi for Design Week Lagos.
Building on years of exhibitions, talent development, documentary filmmaking and collaborations with manufacturers, the museum will establish its first home in Ikoyi, Lagos, while its permanent facility, designed by Studio Contra, is developed for a planned 2028 opening.
Its proposed role extends beyond exhibition-making, offering a permanent platform through which African design can be researched, preserved and presented to broader audiences. The initiative reflects the festival’s ambition to build lasting infrastructure for the sector beyond its annual programme.
10th Anniversary of Made by Design
The 2026 edition of Design Week Lagos also marks the tenth anniversary of Made by Design, the curated trade platform connecting architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, materials and product design with buyers, architects, developers and industry. Over the past decade, the platform has provided a setting for product launches, commercial partnerships and business development. Its anniversary edition reinforces the festival’s emphasis on connecting creative ideas with production and market opportunities.
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