Post by Lukas Treibenreif

The iF Design Award Gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast is, for many designers, one of the most special nights of the year. In 2026, together with OBJ.Studio, I have now been part of this show for five years. One night, 74 Gold Award winners, each with their own moment on stage. Each moment with its own content, its own images, its own story. Multiply that across a 2-hour show and you start to understand what it actually takes to hold it all together. It takes a whole team. This year, ours reached a milestone we had been working toward: for the first time, every digital pixel on that stage was produced in-house. The intro film, every slide, every animation, every line of text on screen. A level of creative ownership I am genuinely happy about. Working at that level of detail also keeps me close to what is being celebrated. Each year I have gone through every single winner entry, not only as an experience designer, but also as someone with a background in Industrial Design who is genuinely fascinated by how a jury of 131 international experts arrives at their decisions. What gets awarded, and why, tells you a lot about where design is going. I am grateful to be able to meet the people behind that work and to be part of those conversations. Let's shape where we are heading. A huge thank you to the whole team at iF Design, especially Uwe Cremering, Birgit Kölsch and Carmen Chapev, to the entire team at AMBION GmbH, and to Linda Maas, Robin Schneider, Jo Rychlik and Benjamin Smith-Leverock-Esser.