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, with VCA Cultural Agency on board as its strategic organising partner. 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.