Belfast Design Week is an annual multidisciplinary design festival celebrating design in Northern Ireland and beyond. We began BDW in 2015 with our first festival as part of the Year of Irish Design and have since gone on to deliver hundreds of events such as talks, workshops, conferences, pop ups, tours, exhibitions & more. Alongside this, we have worked on several “special projects” such as podcasts, publications, competitions and local and international collaborations.
Our largest festival took place in 2019, pre-pandemic; we had around 100 events taking place all across Belfast including UX Design panels, running Family Design Days and setting up a hub in The Butcher’s Building in Smithfield Market. When the pandemic lockdown measures were in place, we continued our work online and also delivered podcasts and an external pop up design museum that appeared in windows and walls across Belfast city centre.
We have been lucky to work on some amazing projects over the past few years including a visit to Vietnamese artisans with the British Council and Kilomet 109, a pilot project for the general public to grow their own plants and produce with Belfast 2024, a design collaboration in Hong Kong for wellbeing and pop up museums with the RE[act] Festival (Sustainability) and Irish Design Week (The ties that tie and the links that link).
Since we started, we have run our festival each November, but this year we are emerging at a different time of the year and running the festival from 01-07 May 2026.
“Season” marks a new chapter for Belfast Design Week: a time of renewal, growth and transformation. After years of gathering in November, we’re shifting our festival into a brighter moment of the year, when spring edges toward summer and inspiration feels fresh in the air. This is a season of emergence: of ideas, of people and of possibilities. It’s a time when students and emerging designers are sharing their work with the world for the first time, when nature begins to bloom again, and when the rhythm of the city and its creative community begins to change.
“Season” marks a new chapter for Belfast Design Week: a time of renewal, growth and transformation. After years of gathering in November, we’re shifting our festival into a brighter moment of the year, when spring edges toward summer and inspiration feels fresh in the air. This is a season of emergence: of ideas, of people and of possibilities. It’s a time when students and emerging designers are sharing their work with the world for the first time, when nature begins to bloom again, and when the rhythm of the city and its creative community begins to change.
Season also speaks to the cyclical nature of creativity itself. In design, as in life, there are periods of activity and rest, of idea generation and reflection. We want to acknowledge this natural ebb and flow and that creativity doesn’t always fit neatly into a 9-5 pattern. Instead, designers move through busy seasons of experimentation and quieter ones of regeneration. This perspective invites conversations about wellbeing, balance and the sustainable rhythms of creative work.
Season is about our connection to place, people and the environment. Just as nature moves through cycles, so must we - adapting how we work, design and live with greater awareness of our surroundings. It’s about embracing seasonality in a sustainable sense, being responsive to local materials, community needs and environmental change.
Season also reflects the shifts shaping the design world itself. Technology and AI are redefining creative practice, opening new terrains for innovation and collaboration. In this time of transition, Belfast Design Week is exploring how designers can not only adapt to change but lead it, cultivating new ways of making that are rooted in curiosity, care and human connection.
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