26 for 2026

Zetteler’s annual round-up of creatives and activists who are set to shake up the year ahead has arrived for 2026.

Whether that’s people fighting for community empowerment, a better internet or a profound new relationship with the environment, all are approaching different problems with fresh energy and new ideas – showing how creativity, in its varied guises, can be a force for good. 

So say hello to the 26-strong list brings together architects and artists, campaigners, a cartoonist, curators and a cyclist, numerous designers of many stripes, a former journalist, a photographer, people in and around publishing, researchers, a tech pioneer, writers, and for the first time ever, an actual politician.

Thank you to everyone who so generously agreed to take part. If you’re planning any articles, panel talks or projects, each person here is worth reaching out to – and we’ll happily connect you!

Curator Nate Agbetu has been seriously busy of late – but we think the best is yet to come. They properly came onto the Zetteler team’s radar through Gaia’s Garden and Robin Hood, two projects exploring identity, community and the built environment developed through his social practice platform Free Form. 

Working at the intersection of culture and social innovation, Nate develops projects that range from a community garden to films, lectures and public programmes. Previous collaborations include work with V&A East, Re:Arc Institute, the Design Museum, Nike, Gucci and more. They are one of those rare people who can genuinely straddle both the grassroots and institutions without losing sight of his mission: using art, research and design to imagine near futures.

After hearing Seyi Akiwowo speak about responsible technology and digital citizenship, we felt a little safer in the world. Over the last decade, she has moved fluidly between policy rooms, creative studios, and grassroots movements to co-create frameworks and coalitions for a more dignified digital future.

Seyi is the founder of the award-winning charity Glitch, where she led pioneering work on digital violence and human rights. Now through her new venture, 21/20 Studios, she leads strategy on safety-first leadership and infrastructure design, and is also working on CTRL+Systems+Heal, a leadership programme for founders and organisers building sustainable futures.

The author of How to Stay Safe Online (Penguin, 2022), she’s continuing to explore the future of responsible tech via her must-follow Substack – writing about the overlap of public health, political strategy and culture.

There are countless people and projects who were working to make life better in Palestine long before Israel’s invasion in October 2023. One courageous example is Gaza Sunbirds, a professional para-cycling team in the Gaza Strip that is the way for amputees in Gaza and around the world to excel in sports. 

The person behind this global network of athletes, professionals, and volunteers is Karim Ali, a Palestinian award-winning community organiser. He has guided the Sunbirds from their early days as a grassroots sports initiative to an international movement, training evacuated athletes for the Para-cycling World Championships while amplifying global awareness of disability rights and resilience in Gaza. Since 2023, the Sunbirds’ humanitarian fundraising efforts have raised over $520,000.

The first duo we’ve ever had on the Zetteler list, Bakhtawer Haider and Betty Brunfaut are behind Plan B, a London-based creative studio founded in the belief that branding should do more than look good – it should mean something.

Creatives with deep knowledge about decolonialism and sustainable design approaches, Bakhtawer and Betty help brands, institutions and projects build visual identities that resonate by challenging norms and designing with purpose. Adding to its impressive output, Plan B also runs Sold Out, an independent publishing house that platforms under-represented artists and designers.

Multidisciplinary designer, researcher and producer Eliza Collin knows how to get people thinking differently. Her latest project Olfactive Evolution was an installation that explored how rising global temperatures are altering the scent of flowers, showing how the climate crisis is a multisensory issue bringing us closer to species beyond the human and what this means for design thinking. Her upcoming film Floruit co-directed with Federico Barni will be exploring this topic further.

Her practice is rooted in slow, site-specific research, and she notably collaborates with local communities and scientific partners to shape context-responsive work often in remote or high altitude environments. Alongside an already impressive CV – including Design Museum, Fondazione Studio Rizoma and the Future Observatory’s DRiR programme – she also co-leads the evolving garden project Hybridising Scentscapes with Aterraterra and the anti-erosion programme Where Grass Roots with Thom Bindels of AmperDesign. She has also published with It’s Freezing in LA! and Postvarietal Communities by Aterraterra and Museo Civico Castelbuono.

The circular economy isn’t a distant vision of the economy in a sci-fi universe – it’s being built from the ground up by people such as Joel De Mowbray and his material-led design and build collective Yes Make.

What started as a side hustle for the urban designer, who spent most of his career delivering infrastructure for local authorities, is now predicting in 2026 it will divert over 1000 tons of construction waste back into reuse by designing and building beautiful and affordable buildings, public spaces, exhibitions and background sets. And every project is not only environmentally sound, but community driven too – directly involving local people to design and build. Beyond their own builds, they will also be remanufacturing materials for supply back into the industry to create a truly circular supply chain for London and the south east, with national aspirations over the years to come.

Parenting is defined by countless anxieties and contemporary life has added a new one: when is too young for a child to have a smartphone? Enter Daisy Greenwell and Smartphone Free Childhood.

The movement began spontaneously in February last year after her Instagram post about not wanting to get her 8-year-old a phone went viral. At the time, Daisy was editing Positive News, and has since grown Smartphone Free Childhood into a genuine nationwide movement – with a UK network of more than 350,000 parents, and 40 international spin-offs. Adding to that, her work includes developing the Parent Pact, which helps families in the same school communities delay smartphones and social media together.

The Zetteler team, especially those with kids, are grateful that future generations won’t face this alone – people like Daisy are laying the groundwork for a better, more considered future.

Introduced to us via previous Zetteler-lister Joseph Henry, Lauren Harewood is the creative force behind numerous beautiful, punchy and political projects – including Joseph’s own SUPA System. Through her studio SOAKE, she’s exploring a fresh approach to graphic design that is always rooted in authenticity, innovation and the lived experiences of Black Britain.

How can the justice system become truly rehabilitative? Paula Harriott is an expert with lived-experience fighting to make that happen. She draws on her own journey through the criminal justice system as the CEO of Unlock, a national charity challenging the stigma, discrimination and structural barriers faced by people with criminal records.

Adding to that organisation work, she is also a visiting researcher at the University of Chester, co-hosts the multi-award-nominated podcast The Secret Life of Prisons, and has published numerous academic articles. A sought-after speaker, movement-builder and strategist, Paula understands how centering compassion and dignity in the heart of the justice system makes us all safer.

Award-winning author, journalist and curator Sophie Haydock is doing tremendously good work in the UK’s literature scene. Her two brilliantly feminist novels, The Flames and Madame Matisse, reframe narratives of ‘great’ 20th-century artists through the often overlooked perspectives of the women they overshadowed. And beyond the page, she curates the Folkestone Book Festival, which saw its biggest and most wide-ranging iteration in 2025, and leads the social initiative Folkestone is a Library, a three-year project to transform the town into a living space for readers, writers and storytellers.

A fierce advocate for books and readers, her journalism appears in The Sunday Times, Financial Times and Guardian, and she regularly speaks at national institutions and literary festivals. A third novel is in the works; we want it now.

The London-based Finnish-Gambian photographer Kadi Jatta creates portraits that are dripping in character and rich with context. Originally bonding with Sabine over their shared Finnish roots, the Zetteler has since been blown away by the artistry of the portraits she’s taken of our clients. 

Some of her subjects include fellow Zetteler-lister Christian Cassiel, an example of the wider question she’s asking: how different would the idea of Europe be to all of us with more light cast on the stories told by its Black population? Through photography and creative writing, she’s exploring identity and community to inspire a progressive collective consciousness of Afro-Europeanism.

When Sem Lee first moved to the UK, they experienced poor quality social housing and the impacts it can have on health. Driven by a desire to understand that early formative experience, Sem has devoted their career to improving health outcomes through housing, becoming an urban strategist, systems thinker, and designer.

Founding OURI Labs, a health innovation research lab dedicated to shaping healthy, equitable cities that benefit communities and the planet, Sem leads a practice that specialises in participatory research, evaluation, and design – bridging the world of public health and urban planning.

Powered by a small team of determined experts, the research lab takes a cross-sectoral approach. Working within existing systems, OURI Labs helps decision makers integrate health into planning while championing grassroots approaches. The ambition? Genuine systems change. And it's Sem Lee’s positive attitude and perseverance that makes it possible.

Probably best known for his razor-sharp illustrations in the New Yorker, cartoonist Navied Mahdavian’s portfolio is packed full of brilliantly funny and hard-hitting projects. Whether that’s his graphic memoir This Country, which recounts the story of his move to rural, republican Idaho in the age of Trump 1.0, or his work earlier this year campaigning against children in detention (based on real-life testimonials read by actor Morena Baccarin), he’s a creative with a lot to say, and is always worth paying attention to.

His first UK exhibition in November 2025 made a compelling case for the unique role cartooning can play as both a means of relief, a vehicle for confession and connection, and an act of protest. We couldn’t agree more.

The internet needs to be green. And leading a heroic digital revolution to make that happen is the one and only Nick Mailer. 

A passionate advocate for the free and open source software community, the former student of English and philosophy has built his career since the 1990s shepherding nascent technologies into becoming everyday realities. That’s seen him take on fascinating roles, including helping build digital systems for major UK political parties and even entering the Guinness Book of World Records for work with Ricky Gervais. His crowning achievement, if you ask us, is having built a radically green data centre in Cambridgeshire 17 years ago.

An architect and placemaking expert dedicated to creating people-centric cities and public spaces, Petra Marko co-founded and led a London-based placemaking practice active across public spaces design, town centres regeneration and masterplanning in the UK and Central Europe. 

Now the CEO of the Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava (MIB), Petra has returned home to make a real difference to her native city, spearheading strategic planning, public spaces and participatory placemaking initiatives.

Among her numerous other accolades – she led the research and campaign for unlocking London’s small sites, sat on the UK's National Infrastructure Commission and taught at The London School of Architecture – she remains an essential voice, having co-authored VeloCity, a strategic vision for the future of the countryside; and Meanwhile City, a book and how-to guide for temporary interventions.

Researcher and architect Kshitija Mruthyunjaya is the rare example of a person who is not only putting forth genuinely critical and cutting edge ideas, but bringing them into the world by sharing with experts and the public alike. 

Through writing, exhibitions, and collaborative pedagogy, Kshitija’s work reveals the pervasive influence of toxic waste infrastructures. Currently a doctoral scholar in architecture at The University of Manchester, among their many achievements include being an affiliated researcher on the NorWhite project, presenting research at The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo Art Week, Norwegian Institute in Athens, exhibited at Oxford University (Biology Department), Gallery ROM, and self-published two books.

Studious readers of this annual Zetteler list will notice how regularly we’re impressed by the talented alumni of the New Architecture Writers programme. And that’s true once again with the British-Tibetan designer and artist Nyima Murry. 

Taking inspiration from oral knowledge and material culture, Nyima often works with diverse communities to foster critical engagement with the landscapes around them. A co-founder of BIPOC writing group PATCH Collective, she is currently pursuing a PhD in Architectural Design as a Bartlett Promise Scholar. 

If that wasn’t enough, 2026 is set to be an even more promising year: she is behind a central artwork for a major National Trust exhibition opening in February. Working with the Tibetan Community in Britain and the Tibetan artefacts within Kedleston Hall's Museum collection, her documentary ‘Encounters’ traces these connected journeys of displacement that engage with Britain’s Imperial history in India and historic intervention in Tibet.

The UK’s answer to Zohran Mamdani, Zack Polanski is a bold voice for progressive politics. We typically don’t include politicians on this list, despite politics being woven through every nominee here. But Zack’s energy for the environment and against inequality is the exact alternative needed to combat the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform.

There’s an urgent demand for new stories about life in the UK and around the world. A better future is possible, it just requires action. Our neighbours – whether citizens, refugees or people from a different background – should be seen as part of that positive change, not a barrier to it. The real threat to society arrives through private planes, not small boats.

A writer with an inspiring record of social entrepreneurship, Damayanthi Ponnuthurai’s latest community-focused endeavour is Larder, a bike-towable kitchen pavilion that behaves more like a tiny public building than a food cart. 

With its central ‘tower’ and wrap-around counters, it helps people gather, cook and eat together rather than simply queue to be served. Designed as a flexible platform rather than a single-use vending unit, it can move between branded pop-ups, neighbourhood feasts and resilience or aid contexts – offering a dignified, low-carbon piece of kitchen infrastructure for cities, communities and NGOs alike.

She’s developing it further with UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, working with Ivan Chan to create an engineered version of the community Larder with Imperial College, and has been commissioned by Dishoom for a series of outdoor pop-ups, bringing it to more Londoners than ever before. Expect a new, improved prototype mid-2026. We can’t wait.

As a 4-day week employer, Zetteler is indebted to the work James Reeves is doing through 4 Day Week Foundation, a group promoting the economic and social benefits of redesigning our working lives – and fighting for a four-day week for all by 2030.  

But we truly got to see him in action as part of the first-ever Working Time Council in October this year, a meeting of 250 business leaders, experts and politicians in the House of Commons. He’s exactly the kind of collaborative and passionate leader this movement needs. And if that wasn’t enough, can we add that it’s tremendously cool that he’s also a poet and spoken word artist whose work has featured at Edinburgh Arts Festival?

Why does it seem like the fashion industry is so hostile to the way bodies actually look and function? Madeleine Rothery is a Paris-based fashion and arts writer whose practice is informed by her experience with endometriosis, leading her to advocate for women whose realities are often sidelined and ignored.

An influential voice in fashion, Madeleine’s writing seeks to expand the understanding of craft beyond the Eurocentric bind of the industry, treating fashion as a language of care. She has been published in AnOther, Dazed, The Face, and Wallpaper*, and she also writes a fashion Substack called Moral Threads.

We first stumbled upon João Prates Vital Ruivo through a talk at the Royal Academy. João was speaking about his fascinating, ambitious and brave project Soil Politics, a research platform exploring the intersections between environment and colonialism through a hyper focus on the dirt beneath our feet.

On the stage, he spoke honestly about how personally challenging it was to give a talk on the history of anti-colonial struggles while there was an ongoing genocide in Gaza. But everything he had been writing and thinking about was tragically more relevant than ever.

Elsewhere, the architect and PhD graduate from Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University of London also brings his research through teaching and leading research collectives. In 2021, he founded the Alentejo Research Unit, a research studio in Environmental Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London.

Image-maker and qualified architect Kaye Song is a partner of Turner Prize-winning collective Assemble and co-founding director of Flimsy Works, a studio that uses reclaimed or readily-available materials to build crudely but with character. 

Having spent years designing affordable studios and low-carbon residential spaces, as well as curating research projects, her Flimsy Works projects aim to connect communities to the natural environment, building low-intervention structures that tell stories about shifting landscapes.

She studied architecture at University of Cambridge, the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Architectural Association, and was nominated for the RIBA Bronze Medal and awarded the RIBA Eastern Region Prize. In 2025, Kaye was awarded the Arts Foundation Futures Award in Design as one of the most promising creatives in the UK.

More than human design is a radical proposition with a big promise. A broad movement, it argues that if we want to live sustainably on the planet, we need to fundamentally reimagine the relationship between humanity and nature. The artist and designer Christie Swallow is among the most exciting voices in that conversation.

Rather than understand nature as a resource to be exploited, Christie explores the kinship between species, fostering solidarity through co-creation and collaborative making. That’s seen them exhibit internationally and deliver learning programmes for organisations including Kew Gardens, the Royal Geographic Society and the BBC. We first came across them as a Design Researcher in Residence at the Design Museum in the cohort 2024/25. They’re currently working as a designer with Policy Lab UK.

Designer, writer, and researcher Rosa Whiteley understands the climate crisis is not a future threat: it’s already impacting our daily lives. Originally working at artistic research studio Cooking Sections – including as the director of material research for its project CLIMAVORE – her practice explores the intersection of architecture, food systems, critical ecology, and atmospheric politics.

The writer, editor and publisher Lillian Wilkie is telling a very different story about art and artists. Throughout her many outputs, whether that’s as the director of the independent imprint Chateau International or co-director of Bound Art Book Fair at the Whitworth Art Gallery, she understands that publishing is a powerful tool to foster community, and therefore can be one of the most radically political acts one can do.