PAD LONDON

PAD London is a fair of design under a tent in Berkeley Square, in Mayfair, for six days in the middle of October: around seventy galleries showing furniture, lighting and decorative art of the twentieth century and of today, with jewellery and some art beside them, opening with two days of previews before four days for the public. It is pitched in the same week as Frieze, and has been since it began in 2007. It calls itself the only fair in Britain given wholly to historical and contemporary design.

Its founder is a Paris antique dealer of the fourth generation, and buys at his own fair. “I always say to everyone that I am PAD’s best client.”

The Cabinet of Curiosities

Patrick Perrin founded PAD in Paris, where the fair was launched in 1998 and is held every April in the Jardin des Tuileries. In 2007 he brought it to London. The first London fair was announced that summer as DesignArt London, for 12 to 14 October, with twenty galleries showing modern and contemporary design and furniture, organised by Perrin’s Société d’Organisation Culturelle and timed to coincide with Frieze. Its selection committee was Juliet Burrows of Antik in New York, Pearl Lam of Contrast in Shanghai, David Gill of London and François Laffanour of Galerie Downtown in Paris.

The fair describes itself as “rooted in the tradition of French Decorative Arts and the aesthetic of a Cabinet of Curiosities”, and claimed in 2016 to have been the first London fair to bring art and design under one roof. That year it had sixty-six galleries, and Ruinart poured the champagne. There is now a third PAD, at Saint-Tropez.

Perrin has kept the London fair small, at around seventy galleries, and has said he wants it to keep “an intimist side, a cosy affair, rather than a big event”.

The square is older than any of it. William Kent laid it out in the middle of the eighteenth century, and its London plane trees, planted in 1789, are among the oldest in central London. The tent goes up beneath them.

The Week

The fair opens on a Tuesday with the Collectors’ Preview, from eleven until eight, and the VIP Opening follows on the Wednesday. From Thursday to Sunday it is open to the public, from eleven until seven, and until six on the last day.

The material runs from twentieth-century and contemporary design and the decorative arts to collectible and high jewellery, with modern art, tribal art and photography shown in past years.

A jury under Tim Marlow gives three prizes each year: one for a stand, one for contemporary design and one for historical design. In 2025 the contemporary prize went to Friedman Benda for Faye Toogood’s “Maquette 208 / Paper Chair”, of 2020; the historical prize to Laffanour and Galerie Downtown, one of the fair’s first galleries, for rosewood panelling and a fireplace by Pierre Chareau, of 1924; and the stand prize to Sceners Gallery. Sixty-seven galleries came that year from twenty countries, PIK’D of Beirut the first from the Middle East.

In 2026 the fair runs from 13 to 18 October, with the Collectors’ Preview on Tuesday 13 October and the VIP Opening on the Wednesday. Frieze opens in Regent’s Park the next day, 14 October, and runs to the same Sunday.

What to Know

It runs for six days in the middle of October, from a Tuesday to the Sunday, in Frieze week. The 2027 dates have not been announced.

In 2026 the Collectors’ Preview ticket cost £100 and admits for the whole six days, as often as one likes; the VIP Opening ticket, £75, does the same from the Wednesday. An adult ticket for the public days costs £30, and a student’s £15. Coats are checked for £2.

Nothing is published. A lounge suit: it is a Mayfair collectors’ preview, and the Court dresses for one.

The fair is in Berkeley Square, London W1J 6EN, and names no hotel. Stay in Mayfair, and walk.

The mistake is to buy the adult ticket. It admits once, and not before the Thursday; the two preview tickets admit as often as one likes for the week.

The Court

PAD London is not the Court’s own. Preview tickets for the Tuesday are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Mayfair, and the table afterward. The Court is at Frieze London and Frieze Masters in the same week.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.