As many of the regular world remains to be immersed in finish of 2025 festivities, many of the design world has been 2026 for some time. Publishing {a magazine} is an effective way to be projected into the long run, as we’re consistently planning forward: the subsequent problem of Wallpaper*, the subsequent launch to find, the subsequent design week to journey to.
So whereas we look forward to 2026 to wow and enchant us, we requested 5 creatives to inform us what they anticipate for the yr forward, what they’d wish to see in design, and what they sit up for discovering. Aniina Koivu, Max Radford, Hugo Macdonald, Annalisa Rosso and Jenny Nguyen all took to the problem and responded to our invitation providing us perception into the place the design world is (or needs to be) going. Their predictions look extra to substance and fewer to aesthetics, as they anticipate 2026 to convey a extra in-depth strategy to the follow of design, how we conceive it, share it and join with it.
Anniina Koivu
(Picture credit score: Justus Hirvi)
‘Earlier this yr, a researcher of happiness instructed me that happiness would not come from idealising the previous, or obsessing in regards to the future. Fairly, happiness comes from being current within the now. If that’s true for design, then 2026 will be the yr we alter our angle: much less hypothesis, extra relevance. Much less styling, extra substance. Probably the most forward-thinking work would be the variety that makes our current genuinely higher to stay in.’
Anniina Koivu is an unbiased design curator and strategist. Amongst her most up-to-date tasks is an exhibition on Happiness and the knitwear label Koivu.
Max Radford
The Rhine by Evening cupboard and chair by Ralph Parks, proven as a part of a March 2025 exhibition curated by Jermaine Gallacher and impressed by deconsecrated monasteries
(Picture credit score: Oskar Proctor)
[I see a lot of design referencing] Modern Gothic and Medieval: particularly, using timber within the work of Ralph Parks displays this completely. I really like something a bit medieval or satanic, and it looks like we’re initially of what’s going to change into a bigger style right here.
My want for 2026 is to see extra platforming of rising, UK-based design & craft practices. Now we have a burgeoning scene right here and from our interactions with individuals over the previous 12 months, this appears to be regarded very extremely internationally. There was definitely extra platforming this yr throughout occasions resembling Frieze and London Design Pageant’s Shoreditch Design Triangle, with the refreshing new path set by Duncan Riches – I sit up for seeing his plans for the upcoming yr.
Max Radford is an inside designer and founding father of the Max Radford Gallery in London.
Hugo Macdonald
‘AI – Brilliantly Unhealthy’, a undertaking by Entrance
(Picture credit score: Andy Liffner)
In preparation for gazing into my crystal ball, I unearthed a listing from my cellphone that I began throughout Milan Design Week 2025 of all of the issues I discovered outstanding. I’m struck by how vapid my observations have been: a lot inexperienced; sand-blasted wooden; loooong tables; books; double-sided shelving; paparazzi at dinners; picnic tools; captions like poems. While you’re within the thick of a stay design occasion, it may be arduous to see the wooden for the timber, nonetheless sand-blasted it could be. Or is design, as an trade, as we all know it, only a bit misplaced in the mean time?
As a substitute of predictions, I’m choosing hopes. My principal one could be to see extra AI wonderment. There are cases that spring to thoughts already, resembling Entrance’s ongoing explorations seen of their Brilliantly Unhealthy! undertaking at Nordiska Galleriet in Stockholm. It’s bonkers. And unusually uplifting as proof that human ingenuity nonetheless trumps our synthetic overlords, creatively at the least. I take into consideration this undertaking typically and the way a lot it reveals, of us and them. I’m additionally an ardent fan of the humorous, attractive, macabre temper in Simon Foxton’s AI-prompted storytelling by way of his Instagram account. Southpark’s Trump-baiting was one other degree of AI-aided bravado. It made us really feel issues.
Within the yr passed by, I’ve been by way of the seven levels of AI embracement: ignorance, disbelief, concern, acceptance, curiosity, pleasure, obsession. Nevertheless thick the partitions of that bubble could also be, and nonetheless the trade types out its funding and worth proposition, it’s clear that AI is right here to remain. It’s subsequently incumbent on us to work out the right way to work it, and work with it. It’d simply save us, even when it will definitely decides to exchange us. Within the meantime, let’s push its buttons and discover its limits. Let’s even be trustworthy and share when and the way we’re utilizing it. Manufacturers, designers, college students and public at giant take be aware: we’re all for seeing AI change into an efficient instrument in a artistic course of; we don’t want to see it write our copy or mimic our artistic path for cheapness or laziness. That approach, a really sloppy future lies.
Hugo Macdonald is Wallpaper’s Design Critic and co-founder of Edinburgh gallery Bard.
Annalisa Rosso
(Picture credit score: Marco Previdi)
Greater than varieties or objects, what I believe will actually matter in 2026 is the standard of encounters. The likelihood for various factors of view to fulfill and generate one thing new, not by repeating established fashions, however by way of open confrontations, even troublesome ones. This implies rethinking our habits in a radically completely different approach.
That is about relevance, that means, and understanding design as a subject that good points energy when it turns into a shared territory, open to dialogue, friction, and real listening. In 2026, I consider surprising alliances will emerge, creating areas the place completely different types of data can coexist throughout geographies, disciplines, and cultures. I see us shifting from acceleration towards consciousness, and from following habits to questioning attitudes. Design is reconnecting with broader cultural, social, and environmental questions, the practices that matter right this moment are these in a position to decelerate and to create circumstances for deep reflection. We’re not working impediment programs, now it’s time for archery. And that requires time, focus, and precision.
Annalisa Rosso is co-founder of artistic technique consultancy Mr Lawrence, Editorial Director and Cultural Occasions Advisor for Salone del Cell and Doha Biennale’s Deputy Director
Jenny Nguyen
In 2026, I believe we’ll see a rising urge for food for design extra intently. Individuals don’t simply need the ultimate object _ they need the story behind it. Brief-form video is de facto dominating picture tradition, so it is no shock that it has change into one of the vital efficient mediums for exhibiting the nuances of design work.
What’s attention-grabbing is that video hasn’t made design extra disposable; it has made it extra legible and made audiences extra curious. While you hear a designer or a curator clarify why a cloth alternative issues, or how a chunk got here into being, you begin to perceive the life it had earlier than it grew to become a product. I believe there’s a brand new want to purchase fewer issues, however to know extra about them, to know their lineage, their labor, the why behind them.
Some creators are utilizing video fantastically to open up the tales behind the work — the success of accounts like Rarify, Brandinowang, and Structure Digests You present there’s a actual starvation for design tales instructed with voice, emotion, and context.
My want for 2026 is that extra unbiased and underrepresented designers really feel empowered to doc their work on this approach. Not as efficiency, however as preservation.
And what I’d like to see disappear is the notion that design should stay in just one format. Nonetheless photos will all the time matter, however pairing it with the human narrative behind an object feels more and more important in an AI-saturated world.
New York-based Jenny Nguyen is the founding father of artistic PR company Good day Human
Supply: Wallpaper
