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iF DESIGN AWARD 2027: Where Design Excellence and Impact Meet

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iF DESIGN AWARD 2027: Where Design Excellence and Impact Meet

by Metropolis Staff

The iF DESIGN AWARD is the largest independent design award in the world and among its most prestigious. Held since 1954 and owned by the German nonprofit iF Design Foundation, it draws close to 11,000 entries from more than 70 countries each year, across nine disciplines and 93 categories — architecture, interior architecture, product, packaging, service, and communication design among them. For more than seventy years, the iF DESIGN AWARD winner’s logo has been shorthand, recognized on sight across the global design community for work that meets the highest standard. Today, that standard extends beyond how a design looks and performs to consider the impact it leaves behind.

Across much of the design world and its competitions, sustainability is still treated as a separate consideration—something evaluated alongside good design rather than as part of what defines it. The iF DESIGN AWARD takes a different approach. Rather than treating sustainability as a category of its own, it builds it into the evaluation of every entry, giving it equal weight alongside Idea, Form, Function, and Differentiation. Since 2024, Sustainability—which encompasses both environmental and social impact—has accounted for one-fifth of every iF DESIGN AWARD entry’s total score, the same 20 percent allotted to each of the other four criteria. An interdisciplinary Sustainability Working Group was established to help define the sustainability considerations and questions built into the award’s evaluation framework and remains actively involved in the jury process, advising jurors on the environmental and social impact of projects throughout the evaluation process.

Courtesy of iF Design.

Sustainability as the Standard
Scoring Sustainability equally across all entries means that every designer, team, studio, and brand must answer for their project’s impact. The furniture, the app, the retail interior, the building—each is measured by what it leaves behind, alongside the strength of its form and function. That makes sustainability part of the standard for exceptional design, not an exception to it. “We no longer live in a world where we can relegate sustainable design to its own category, and evaluate it separately,” says Lisa Gralnek, U.S. Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainability and Impact at iF Design. “I believe in the power of design to push our world forward, and if we, as one of the world’s largest and most prestigious design awards, won’t take this step, who will?”

Courtesy of iF Design.

Recognition That Lasts
Such high standards are part of what make an iF DESIGN AWARD one of the world’s most recognized and respected design distinctions. That recognition is amplified on the world’s largest theater stage before an audience of 2,400 international design leaders, press, and industry peers at the annual iF DESIGN AWARD NIGHT in Berlin, and is carried forward through ongoing winner promotion across iF channels, marketing campaigns, and media partnerships. Winning projects also become part of iF’s permanent digital collection, documenting more than 70 years of design history. Each win also contributes to the iF Design Ranking, a global platform that allows brands, studios, and designers to benchmark their performance against the world’s most successful names and see where they stand in the global design landscape. With unlimited use of the iF DESIGN AWARD winner’s logo across their work and professional practice—including marketing, communications, presentations, digital channels, exhibitions, and more—winners can continue to leverage that recognition in perpetuity.

Courtesy of iF Design.

“Being recognized by the iF DESIGN AWARD—especially in such a highly competitive global arena—is a powerful endorsement of Kohler’s bold design vision,” says Michael Seum, Vice President of Global Design at Kohler Co. “The [validation] affirms not only the aesthetic and functional excellence of our work, but also the strategic value of design as a differentiator.”

Courtesy of iF Design.

For those ready to see where their projects stand among the world’s best, the moment is here.

The iF DESIGN AWARD 2027’s Regular Deadline is September 18th—your last chance to save €100 per entry while retaining the flexibility to refine and complete your submission through the November 4th Final Deadline. Register today to secure the Regular Deadline rate now, then use the remaining time to develop and present your entry at its strongest. Enter now at ifdesign.com.