Lagos Fashion Week 2026: 'Crafted' opens on 28 October with three days of runway shows

Lagos Fashion Week opens its 2026 season on Wednesday 28 October with a welcome party, under the theme Crafted: Heritage. Innovation. Circular Futures. Runway shows follow from 29 to 31 October in the LagosFW Tents at the Federal Palace Hotel on Victoria Island, and the week closes with shows at other venues around the city on Sunday 1 November.

What 'Crafted' means

The theme puts the making of clothes at the centre of the season: weaving, dyeing, beadwork and the knowledge of the artisans behind them, set beside modern design and a fashion system that wastes less. The photographer Daniel Obasi shot the campaign as a fresh take on the African studio portrait, a form long used across the continent to record who people are and how they want to be seen.

Play on YouTube

The week is run by Style House Files, the agency founded by Omoyemi Akerele, who started Lagos Fashion Week in 2011. Its aim has always been commercial as well as creative: putting African labels in front of buyers, editors and customers who can turn a collection into a business.

Play on YouTube

Green Access: the new names to watch

The season's showcase for young talent is Green Access, the week's accelerator for emerging designers, now in its eighth edition. This year's cohort works to the brief Crafted in Practice, with mentoring, material workshops, factory tours and visits to artisan communities, ending in a presentation at the fashion week itself. The programme asks designers to work in four ways:

• Materials: deadstock, reclaimed textiles, indigenous fibres and natural materials.
• Heritage techniques: weaving, embroidery, dyeing, beadwork and leatherwork, used in new products.
• Circular production: pieces designed to last, to be repaired and to leave no waste.
• Community: working hand in hand with artisans, manufacturers and local makers.

How Lagos got here

1. 2011Omoyemi Akerele launches Lagos Fashion Week, run by her agency Style House Files.
2. Nov 2025The week wins the Earthshot Prize's Build a Waste-Free World category in Rio de Janeiro, worth £1 million.
3. Apr 2026Woven Threads VII, the week's showcase of craft-led design, first uses the 'Crafted' theme.
4. Jun 2026The African Fashion Coalition presents its Blueprint for a Regenerative Fashion Future at London Climate Week.
5. 28 Oct 2026The 'Crafted' season opens in Lagos.

The Earthshot Prize recognised a rule that sets Lagos apart: every designer who wants a place on its schedule must show how their materials are sourced and dyed, and how their clothes are made and moved. The organisers plan to use the prize money to take the model to fashion weeks in Kigali, Dakar and Accra by 2030, and Bird Story Agency reports that this year's edition will carry the coalition's blueprint to the whole continent.

Play on YouTube

What isn't known yet

With a week to go, the designer line-up and the daily schedule have not been published, and the official tickets page still lists last year's days. Last year's 15th-anniversary edition, In Full Bloom, was billed by its organisers as the largest yet.