September is here, which means the London Design Festival is back for its 24th edition, running from 12–20 September.

The map has shifted a little. There are 11 districts, with Soho joining for the first time. Shoreditch Design Triangle has rebranded as Shoreditch Design Week and is now the biggest on the programme, with more than 60 showrooms and galleries taking part. Over in Waltham Forest, the William Morris Design Line has become Blackhorse Creates.

There’s shows taking place at the city’s biggest instituions, as well as buildings that have long been closed to the public. But, as always for us, the real story is at the smaller end. We’re particularly excited for the shows that are the result of an open-call or graduate-led, and the galleries that were working out of vans and borrowed rooms two years ago now have real spaces.

See below for our picks.

With Limitations
Design Everything x Aram

Last year Design Everything showed furniture out of the back of a Luton van. This year it has Aram’s downstairs gallery, done up as a young designer’s flat and filled with work by 102 emerging practitioners, each responding to a limitation — space, time, budget, access. Exhibiting is free.

Aram, 110 Drury Lane, WC2B 5SG

Studio Iron

Isamaya Ffrench’s design gallery debuted at Saatchi Yates earlier this year and lands at The Lavery with a group show about the line between experimentation and craft. Andu Masebo, Buchanan Studio, Completed Works, Kelly Wearstler x ARCA, Kouros Maghsoudi, Paul Coenen, Barnaby Lewis and Wretched Flowers are all in it.

The Lavery, 4 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE

Craft x Tech
Various designers

Back at the V&A for a second year, Craft x Tech pairs six craft regions from Japan’s Tokai area with six international designers. Bethan Laura Wood is working with the shibori dyers of Arimatsu Narumi, Atang Tshikare with the braid-makers of Iga Kumihimo, alongside Philippe Malouin, David Caon, Eugene Kangawa and Lanzavecchia + Wai. It runs until 18 October, so this is the one you’re allowed to leave until later.

V&A, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL

Homenkà: Our Parlour
Ncheta Collective

Zoë Chinonso Ene has turned one of The Lavery’s rooms into a parlour built around Nchọ, the game known globally as mancala. She’s been developing it for a few years — the first prototype was played at Seed Archives’ pop-up library during LDF 2024 — and treats it as furniture, ritual and display at once.

The Lavery, 4 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE

A Veiled Boundary
Jesse Butterfield

Butterfield has had a good year: a Milan standout, a mirror in the Studio Iron line-up, and a slot in the All Ears show. This continues the work he’s best known for — sheet steel bullied into behaving like paper, scaled up from small maquettes without losing the naivety of the originals.

The Lavery, 4 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE All Ears

Several practices are opening their workshops at Hackney Downs Studios, but All Ears has given its space over to other people entirely. More than 30 makers from London’s emerging collectible design scene, curated by Demi Oyeyinka, who is also showing. Look for Jane Wright, Andu Masebo and Amelia Stevens, who has built a practice out of ashtrays.

Hackney Downs Studios, 17 Amhurst Terrace, E8 2BT

Progressive Permanence
Max Radford Gallery x Christopher Farr

Max Radford takes over Christopher Farr’s Shoreditch showroom, hanging contemporary furniture against archival rugs. The rugs give the furniture a lineage; the furniture keeps the rugs from feeling like heritage. LS Goma and Tessa Silva are both showing in London for the first time, alongside Carsten in der Elst.

Christopher Farr Shoreditch, 18 Calvin Street, E1 6HF

You Can Sit With Us
2LG Studio

Now in its fourth year at Shoreditch Town Hall, 2LG’s showcase has a reliable knack for picking people a season before everyone else does. This time that means Jabez Bartlett, Hanna Fastrich, Mara Bragagnolo and JoshJen, plus a new 2LG lighting collection with Indian studio North South AD.

Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, EC1V 9LT

Hanging Baskets
Slancha x Awaykin

Slancha handed ten designers the hanging basket and let them get on with it. Six Dots Design, Marc Sweeney, This Is Byron and Hanna Fastrich are among them, and the results range from wall-mounted vessels to things that barely acknowledge the brief. Slancha is also taking over the gift shop at The Hoxton.

Awaykin, Unit 5, 39 Gransden Avenue, E8 3QA

10,000 Rivets
Tom Pearson Studio x APOC Store

Tom Pearson’s debut collection is built from planes of aluminium sheet held together by lines of rivets, with tubular spacers between them so the faces hover slightly apart. He anodised all of it himself in a bath he built in his Lewisham workshop, applying dye with brushes, airbrushes and pipettes until the surfaces read like beaded water. Each piece is named for its rivet count, from a £36 candlestick to a £3,600 cabinet.

APOC Store, Unit 41 Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, E8 4QN

The Masur Edition
Béton Brut x Isokon

Ninety years on from Marcel Breuer’s 1936 designs for Isokon, Béton Brut has reissued four of them in masur birch. The point being that the plywood pieces were never meant to stay plain — historical examples came in sycamore, zebrano, mahogany and Australian walnut. Made to order, from £1,300.

Béton Brut, Unit 2, 30 Felstead Street, E9 5LG

Motion Sickness
Isabel + Helen x The Conran Shop

Ten years of Isabel Gibson and Helen Chesner making things move, from a windmill at Coachella to inflatable towers for Craig Green’s Moncler show. There’s work to buy too: kinetic sculptures they call Blimps, stools in stained birch ply, and paintings made by pressing a rotating canvas onto 20 paintbrushes.

16 Sloane Square, London, SW1W 8ER

Single, Irish, Non-conformist: Notes on Eileen Gray
Jasper Morrison Shop

Morrison holds one exhibition a year, during the festival, in the shop behind the black door on Kingsland Road. This year it’s Eileen Gray — a logical subject for a shop built on the quiet superiority of well-resolved objects, and an overdue one. Ring the bell.

Jasper Morrison Shop, 24b Kingsland Road, E2 8DA

USM Record Shop
USM x Symbol

Symbol Audio make its UK debut with its new speaker modules that drop straight into the USM Haller frame. It follows the vinyl storage the two have made together since 2024, and it’s the neatest answer yet to where to put your speakers without redesigning the room.

USM, 12 Cramer Street, London, W1U 4EA

Kiln Shift
Clink Street Ceramics

Bankside’s ceramics programme has been building steadily and this year’s group show is the one to catch. Pair it with Abid Javed’s An Egg, A Vessel in the Clink Street Window Gallery a few doors down.

Clink Street Ceramics Gallery, 16A Winchester Walk, London, SE1 9AG

In Living Colour
Resident

A great one to go to if you want to see some really furniture-y furniture, in a very beautiful setting. A 15 year retrospective Resident’s entire catalogue laid out under one roof, ft the latest collections from designers including Philippe Malouin, Note Design Studio, Daniel Schofield, ASCA, Jamie McLellan and Tim Rundle.

5th Floor, 4 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9HF

Wood for the Trees
Mitre & Mondays x AHEC

After debuting during Copenhagen’s 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, Wood for the Trees arrives in Mitre & Mondays’ home town of London, traces timber’s journey from forest to finished object. The space is transformed into an abstract woodland, combining tactile installations and audio-visual storytelling to make the case for responsible forestry.

Tab Centre, 3 Godfrey Place, London, E2 7NT