Australian Furniture Design Award 2026 – Living Well Living Small

Visit the new Stylecraft showroom during Melbourne Design Week to see the winning and shortlisted entrants in the sixth edition of the biannual Australian Furniture Design Award – including new work responding to the theme Living Well Living Small by Joanne Odisho, Isabel Avendano Hazbun, Nika Biggs, Besley & Spresser, and Aileen Sage Architects. View the exhibition on the ground floor, then continue to Level One to explore Stylecraft’s Celebrating Australian Design exhibition.

Living Well Living Small: As urban living becomes denser and Australians increasingly inhabit smaller homes and apartments, AFDA 2026 challenges designers to imagine furniture and lighting that enhance comfort, functionality, and wellbeing within compact spaces – revealing intelligent approaches to space, material, and making with proposals that are innovative, thoughtful and practical. Ultimately, AFDA 2026 is about design that elevates everyday life. Showing that even within compact spaces, furniture and lighting can be beautiful, purposeful, sustainable, and adaptable, enabling Australians to live consciously and comfortably in the homes they have today, and the homes of tomorrow.

Founded by Stylecraft and presented in collaboration with the NGV, the Australian Furniture Design Award is one of the nation’s most significant furniture and lighting design competitions with a $20,000 prize that celebrates the most interesting and innovative furniture and lighting design being created in the country. The winner will also receive the opportunity to develop a commercial range or product with Stylecraft.

The 2026 AFDA Jury are: Ross Gardam – Founder & Director, Ross Gardam, Pascale Gomes-McNabb, Brian Parkes – CEO at JamFactory Adelaide, Tony Russell – Brand Director at Stylecraft, Ewan McEoin – Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, NGV