The iF Design Trend Report 2026 is not a conventional trend forecast or a list of predictions. It is a globally informed, cross-disciplinary report that examines what design is being asked to do in a more complex and ever-changing cultural, technological, social, and ecological landscape. 

Drawing on expert interviews, case studies, research, and insights from the more than 10,000 entries submitted to the iF DESIGN AWARD each year from roughly 70 countries, the report treats design less as a finished result than as the connective work behind it. It presents design as connective intelligence: a way of linking decisions to wider consequences, and of understanding how people, technologies, environments, and systems affect one another.