Seoul Design Award 2026 Names Top 10 Finalists, Opens Global Voting

The Seoul Design Award 2026 has whittled more than 1,200 submissions from 91 countries down to ten finalists — and for the first time, the public can vote alongside the expert jury.

The organization has launched online global public voting, open worldwide until October 7th, 2026, at seouldesignaward.or.kr/vote2026. The ten shortlisted teams will then travel to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul on October 14 for on-stage evaluations, a departure from the traditional closed-door judging format. The award frames this hybrid as an open, interactive exchange on the future of sustainable design.

The competition honors designs that support balance between people, society, and the environment. It measures projects by their social utility and ecological impact rather than commercial gain, and operates within Seoul's legacy as a UNESCO Creative City of Design.

A Nine-Member Jury on Stage

A nine-member international jury will lead the live evaluations at DDP. Confirmed members include Mauro Porcini, President and Chief Design Officer at Samsung Electronics; Sungwon Jee, CMO and Executive Vice President at Hyundai Motor Company; Andrea Cancellato, Director of ADI Design Museum; and Martin Zelger, CEO of DAAily platforms AG / designboom.

The 2026 program also expands recognition: three designboom Special Prize winners will receive dedicated editorial coverage, giving both the projects and their designers global visibility.

The announcement forms part of the broader Seoul Design Conference 2026: THINK · MAKE · CHANGE, a full-day event at DDP exploring how creative fields respond to global shifts. Beyond the live competition, the conference features presentations from the inaugural ESG Design Impact Award recipients — Hyundai Motor Company, Patagonia, athome, and RHINOSHIELD — focusing on corporate sustainability systems. A dedicated session co-hosted with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will examine policies and global frameworks for circularity in electronics.

Session 3 closes the event with a first look at the World Design Congress Seoul 2027 and a ceremony unveiling its official brand identity. According to the organizers, the visual identity reflects dynamic connectivity and circular thinking and sets the direction for Seoul's next chapter as a global design epicenter.

The Finalists: Social Impact and Circularity at Scale

The top 10 reflect a clear shift toward community-driven resilience and circular design systems. On the social impact side, Otter Newborn Warmer offers a portable conductive device to prevent neonatal hypothermia in low-resource healthcare settings. WheeLog! functions as a crowdsourced accessibility platform that lets wheelchair users map urban mobility barriers.

Urban and cultural projects include Kampung Mrican Phase 1, which applies targeted interventions to revitalize a dense riverfront village in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Na-Eh Karen Cultural Market, a community-owned forest food hub celebrating Indigenous Karen identity; and Suber Design, which converts recycled cork into circular furniture produced by disadvantaged groups.

The industrial and material finalists demonstrate how circularity scales across manufacturing, waste, and marine management. Lavazza Group's Tablì redefines capsule coffee through a single-serve system using pure coffee without plastic or aluminum waste. LAKAT Sustainable Sneakers transforms pineapple agricultural by-products and natural rubber into footwear.

At the systems level, Process-Controlled Waste Sorting Rear Module | ET35 connects public recycling drop-offs directly to frontline sanitation operations. SMALLrevolution creates a closed-loop tracking mechanism that turns plastic waste into documented raw materials. Reef Tiles by ReefCircular uses region-specific computational design to restore fragile marine ecosystems.

With the public vote closing October 7th and the live finals a week later, the 2026 edition positions the Seoul Design Award as a test case for whether open, participatory judging can amplify the reach of design aimed at urgent social and ecological challenges.