Clerkenwell Design Week 2027

CDW 2027 runs across three days, 25-27 May 2027, in Clerkenwell, London EC1. The festival is organised by Media 10 and is free to attend with registration through the official CDW website.

Unlike a single-hall trade show, CDW is a street festival. Exhibitions occupy historic buildings and public spaces across the district, and the permanent showrooms of Clerkenwell open their doors alongside them. That layout is the reason a guide matters: the programme is spread across a walkable but dense square mile.

The programme is grouped into districts, each with its own character and cluster of venues. Alongside the curated exhibitions sit a talks programme, installations commissioned for the festival, and showroom events hosted by the brands headquartered in the area.

Clerkenwell holds one of the highest concentrations of architecture and design practices and showrooms anywhere in the world, which is why the festival was sited here in the first place. For most visitors the day is a route between showrooms rather than a circuit of a single venue.

Two patterns work. Specifiers with live projects tend to plan by category, building a route around the material or product type they need to resolve. Visitors coming for the wider picture plan by district, working through one area per day.

Either way the practical detail matters more than the programme: opening hours, which stations put you closest to which district, and where you can reasonably walk between two appointments. That is covered in the visitor guide.

If you are showing at CDW 2027, or have a Clerkenwell showroom, the Official Design Guide is how visitors find you before they set out. See how exhibitor listings work and what the guide is.