RCA Design Futures Symposium 2026
Untangling Tomorrows
📍 Royal College of Art Battersea, London, United Kingdom
📅 18 July 2026
The RCA Design Futures Symposium returns for its third edition, bringing together designers, futurists, policymakers, academics, and practitioners to explore how futures thinking can help us navigate an increasingly complex world.
Organised by students from the MDes Design Futures programme at the Royal College of Art, this year’s symposium is centred on the theme Untangling Tomorrows—an invitation to explore how design can help make sense of interconnected systems and contribute to more resilient and desirable futures.
About the Symposium
As today’s societal, technological, environmental, and organisational challenges become increasingly intertwined, the symposium asks how futures thinking and speculative practice can help us move beyond linear solutions.
The programme brings together practitioners from government, industry, consultancy, and design to share how foresight is being applied across different sectors to anticipate change, imagine alternatives, and design meaningful interventions.
Alongside invited speakers, students from the Royal College of Art’s Design Futures programme will present experimental work developed throughout the year. Rather than traditional presentations, these projects are communicated through performative and embodied practices—including storytelling, movement, objects, collective participation, and immersive experiences—to explore how futures can be experienced as well as discussed.
Confirmed Speakers
Confirmed speakers include:
Papa Akuffo — Director, Product, Projects by IF
Jess Jorgensen — Founder, Sporesight
Christos Koukis — Architect & Design Lead, The Place Bureau
Jonathan Nunn — Head of Futures Advice, UK Government Office for Science
Rosanna Vitiello — Founding Director, The Place Bureau
Additional speakers and the full programme will be announced closer to the event.
Part of the RCA School of Design Expo
The symposium takes place during the Royal College of Art School of Design Expo 2026, giving attendees the opportunity to continue exploring student work through the Design Futures exhibition and meet the designers behind the projects.
Why Attend?
The RCA Design Futures Symposium offers a window into the next generation of futures practice—where strategic foresight meets speculative design, systems thinking, and embodied experimentation. It is an opportunity to learn from both established practitioners and emerging designers who are pushing the boundaries of how futures can be imagined, communicated, and created.