Design Week Lagos: From Material to Market brings 180 New Ideas, a major Demas Nwoko exhibition, an Aliko Dangote keynote and honours for Lesley Lokko, Marva Griffin and Yinka Shonibare to the National Theatre Lagos
Design Week Lagos returns from 18 to 25 October 2026 under the title Making a New Africa: From Material to Market, gathering design, research, manufacturing, culture and commerce at the National Theatre Lagos and across the city around a single question: what will Africa make next?
“The next chapter of African design cannot be about visibility alone,” says Titi Ogufere, Founder of Design Week Lagos. “Africa has extraordinary materials, knowledge and creative talent. The opportunity now is to transform those ideas into products, production and industries. This edition asks what Africa will make next, how we will make it, and how design can become part of a much larger story of enterprise and industrial growth across the continent.”
Courtesy of Design Week Lagos
The centrepiece is 180 New Ideas, a major presentation of new African thinking across furniture, lighting, materials, textiles, product and industrial design, architecture, prototypes and experimental work. More than 100 designers, studios and innovators take part in the flagship Design + Innovation Exhibition at the National Theatre, organised across five perspectives: Nigeria, the African diaspora, Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa. The wider programme reaches participants, partners and audiences in 58 countries. The point is plurality. Rather than a single African aesthetic, the exhibition sets different material cultures, geographies and ways of making side by side, a picture of what the continent is designing, developing and producing now.
Chicago-based designer and curator Norman Teague, founder of Norman Teague Design Studios, leads the curatorial programme, with Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Ousmane Mbaye and Júlio Rafael curating the Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone perspectives respectively.
The From Material to Market framing pushes past representation to the harder question of how African materials, knowledge and creative talent become products, businesses and industries, following the route from raw material and craftsmanship through innovation, manufacturing, branding and market access.
IDEA Honours
The festival opens officially at the National Theatre on 21 October with the IDEA Honours, recognising three figures whose work has shaped architecture, design and culture internationally. Professor Lesley Lokko OBE receives the Architectural Leadership Honour, Marva Griffin, founder and curator of SaloneSatellite, receives the Architectural Legacy Honour, and Yinka Shonibare CBE receives the Cultural Impact Honour. The award plaques are designed by Pa Demas Nwoko, MFR, winner of a Venice Architecture Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, linking this year’s honourees to one of Africa’s most important multidisciplinary practitioners.
Courtesy of Design Week Lago
Demas Nwoko: A Living Legacy
Nwoko is also the subject of a major presentation, Demas Nwoko: A Living Legacy, covering architecture, art, design objects and cultural thinking. The exhibition declines to split his output by discipline, treating building, art, objects, materials and ideas as the connected practice they have always been. Selected material from his Venice Architecture Biennale presentation forms part of a broader portrait of Nwoko as architect, artist, designer, maker and thinker. Staged in the year he turns 90, it places his work alongside a new generation of African designers and makers.
Courtesy of Design Week Lago
Five Schools. One Continent.
A new international research project brings together selected student work from five leading schools of architecture and design, including Yale and the Royal College of Art, in a single curated installation examining Africa through five lenses: Material, Making, Climate, City, Culture. Instead of separate school displays, drawings, prototypes, material studies, films, maps, texts and physical artefacts are gathered around one question: what knowledge, materials and new models of making will shape the next Africa? The project is conceived as the start of a longer-term research platform connecting international student research with African researchers, designers, manufacturers, students and institutions.
Industry Forum
Aliko Dangote, Founder and President/Chief Executive of the Dangote Group, delivers the opening keynote at the Design Week Lagos Industry Forum, which convenes African industrialists, manufacturers, investors, financial institutions, policymakers, entrepreneurs and designers to examine what it takes to move from raw material to production, from production to scale, and from African ideas to competitive industries. The wider Talks programme covers manufacturing, finance, material innovation, product development, investment, cities and market access, with speakers including Jomo Tariku alongside manufacturers, architects, investors and business leaders.
Courtesy of Design Week Lagos
Commissions and installations
The National Theatre is reworked through a series of new commissions, installations and exhibition environments. Tosin Oshinowo and Studio Contra, founded by Olayinka Dosekun-Adjei and Jeffrey Adjei, each create a major public installation for the festival hub. Adeyemo Shokunbi leads the exhibition architecture, drawing on the African courtyard and the language of breeze-block screens to produce a connected sequence of spaces for encounter, movement and exchange.
Made by Design at ten
The 2026 edition 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. For a decade it has operated as a marketplace where products launch, partnerships form and deals close, which makes it the practical proof of the festival’s thesis: design does not end with the idea.
Design Museum Africa
The festival also hosts the pre-launch of the Design Museum Africa at the Yoruba Museum. The new institution is being developed as a long-term platform for identifying, documenting, developing, collecting and presenting African design, and for building links between designers, manufacturers, collectors, galleries, museums, retailers and international markets. The pre-launch introduces its vision to collectors, patrons, cultural leaders and the international design community, the first step towards a permanent platform that carries the work of Design Week Lagos beyond the festival week.
Courtesy of Design Week Lagos
All Roads Lead to Lagos
After presentations in Milan and Paris, All Roads Lead to Lagos returns home with a new generation of Nigerian designers, among them Adaora Enwonwu and Athanasius Johnson. Enwonwu works across spatial and lighting design, drawing on memory, ancestry and emotional terrain; her sculptural lighting and forged-metal pieces pair traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design to connect cultural heritage with modern living. Johnson, a multidisciplinary designer and founder of Polar Bear Studios, works between architecture, object design and spatial narrative, making furniture and objects concerned with balance, structure and collective form, strength arriving through connection rather than force.
The Milan to Paris to Lagos route is deliberate. Rather than exporting African design to established centres, the programme builds a circular network that returns international relationships, audiences and opportunities to Lagos, and positions the city itself as a destination for design, creativity and exchange.
The city as district
From 19 to 25 October the festival spreads across museums, showrooms, hotels, studios, creative hubs, architectural landmarks and cultural spaces, with exhibitions, installations, launches, talks, receptions and design experiences linking the National Theatre to Lagos’s wider creative and commercial ecosystem. The full programme includes Design Week Lagos Talks, the Industry Forum, Architecture Forum, National Interior Design Congress, workshops and masterclasses, student design tours, the DWL Student Competition, Sound by Design, Made by Design and the IDEA Awards.
Design Week Lagos 2026, Making a New Africa: From Material to Market, runs 18 to 25 October 2026 at the National Theatre Lagos and across the city, Lagos, Nigeria.
© 2026 Design Week Lagos
Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.
