The collectable design fair that turned a decommissioned terminal into one of the world's most talked-about cultural spaces has been formally recognised — Nomad Abu Dhabi has been named Best Industry Event at the Monocle Design Awards 2026.

The recognition is well-earned. As we mentioned above, for its Middle Eastern debut, Nomad took over the decommissioned Terminal 1 of Zayed International Airport — a space that, in lesser hands, might have felt like a gimmick. Instead, the fair transformed the terminal's raw, airport-scaled geometry into something genuinely arresting: vast concrete volumes softened by carefully positioned objects, natural light doing the heavy lifting, the whole thing humming with a kind of productive tension between the monumental and the intimate.

There is a reason Nomad keeps drawing serious collectors, gallerists, and designers from across the world: it does not just show work, it argues for a particular understanding of what design can be. At its best, Nomad makes the case that a chair, a vessel, or a woven textile is not furniture but culture — and that the space around it matters as much as the object itself. Abu Dhabi, with its intersection of ancient trade routes and radical contemporary ambition, turned out to be a near-perfect foil for that argument.

So it comes as no surprise: Nomad returns to Abu Dhabi from 19–22 November 2026.

When Nomad announced Abu Dhabi as its next destination back in November 2025, it felt significant — and it was. The fair, which had spent nearly a decade moving between St. Moritz, Monaco, Venice, and Cannes, was making its first foray into the Middle East. The choice of venue alone set the tone: Paul Andreu's retro-futuristic Terminal 1, all sweeping curves and layered patterns, was tailor-made for a fair built around the idea of objects in transit.

Around twenty-five galleries and cultural institutions filled the terminal, mixing strong local voices — The Third Line, Leila Heller Gallery, Nika Project Space — with participants arriving from Cairo, Athens, Istanbul, Milan, Paris, and beyond. The range was wide, but the curatorial thread held: this was design understood as culture, not commodity.

Beyond the gallery booths, a programme of Special Projects gave the fair its atmosphere. Site-specific commissions responded directly to the terminal's architecture — from A.A. Murakami and Trame's layered installation to the quietly poetic nomadic library assembled by Dongola Limited Editions. Regional makers brought their own thread into the mix: the House of Artisans, Irthi, Parsa — each adding craft and material intelligence to a conversation that was already happening at a high register.

For a few days, Terminal 1 became something it was never designed to be: a place where ideas arrived, circled each other, and left changed. Which, on reflection, sounds exactly like what an airport is for.