TEX+ Announces 2026 Prize Winners
TEX+ has announced the winners of its 2026 prizes, recognising exceptional creativity, technical skill and ambition among this year's graduating textile designers.
The awards were presented at the annual TEX+ Showcase at Chelsea College of Arts, alongside a wider exhibition of graduate work. Built on the fifty-year legacy of Texprint and TexSelect, TEX+ exists to help emerging textile designers move from education into industry, offering work placements, financial awards and mentoring at what can be a precarious stage in a career.
Research commissioned by the charity found that 56% of textile graduates are not currently working full-time in textiles, over a third are balancing multiple jobs, and half have relied on financial support since graduating. The prizes are designed to ease that transition, connecting winners with employers, professional networks and, for the first time this year, a showcase at Première Vision Paris in September.
This year's judging panel numbered 48, drawn from across textiles, fashion, interiors and manufacturing, and included knitwear designer Carlo Volpi, fashion designer Joshua Kane and designer Emma J Shipley.
Here are the TEX+ 2026 Prize Winners. Congratulations to all.
TEX+ 2026 Prize Winners
The Pentland Prize - £1,000 and a work placement
Winner: Maia McLaren
McLaren's Harajuku designs explore floral forms through Japanese pop art, using pattern and colour as both background and focus. Screen-printed on cotton satin, four collections balance organic shapes with bold, graphic structure.
2 Liberty Fabrics Studio Prizes
£500 Prize Winner: Grace Holden
Holden's Stories in Bloom explores home and belonging through Victorian floriography and biophilia. Hand-painted and drawn, the collection layers personal narrative and symbolism across expressive, richly textured surfaces.
£500 Prize Winner: Xavier Theobald
Theobald's The Endless Summer combines print, tufting and mixed media to evoke island memories and optimism. Experimental and sustainable, it pushes flat print into sculptural, tactile surfaces across fashion and interiors.
The Worshipful Company of Weavers Prize - £1,000
Winner: Lisa Rogerson
Rogerson's Harvest Harmony draws on farming heritage, translating field textures and machinery colour into woven cloth. Bedford cord, double cloth and British Blue Faced Leicester wool create biodegradable fabrics for outerwear and interiors.
The Juliet Vogel Colour Prize - £1,000 and The Pattern Cloud Support Award - One year's complimentary access to The Pattern Cloud Plan.
Winner in both categories: Roisin Foster
Foster's The Tale of Two Gardens translates the therapeutic qualities of gardens into surface pattern. Hand-painted blooms and tactile finishes span 'Garden Reverie's' daytime bliss and 'Luna Blossoming's' glistening, moth-filled night garden.
Bay & Brown Support Award - Beginners Complete Surface Textiles Print Online Course, Online Floral Print Course and a portfolio session with Tracey Brown.
Winner: Molly White
White's The Garden of England reimagines Kent's crop waste as bioplastic pigment, cooked and printed onto organza. Allergen-themed motifs blend cyanotype, laser engraving and oak gall ink across sustainable, experimental couture.
Sahara Prize - £500, a one-month placement at Sahara and a design purchase opportunity.
Winner: Harriet Letts
Letts' Pearl of the Indian Ocean draws on Sri Lankan travel, Dambulla cave temples and Buddhist symbolism. Gouache motifs and digital embroidery bring water lilies and elephants to luxury wallpaper, bedding and printed pyjamas.
Kvadrat Price - a trip to their mill at Wooltex in Huddersfield
Winner: Lola Bate
Bate's Codes of Culture explores Lancashire's weaving heritage through wool as technical fibre. Bauhaus structure, Edwin Waugh's poetry and Massimo Osti's outerwear innovation inform jacquard and dobby designs in British, Merino and Shetland wool.
London Embroidery Studio - six months use of studio, equipment and software with mentoring
Winner: Kate Crilly
Crilly's Checked Out repurposes unsellable charity shop garments through shredding, unravelling and nettle-fibre bio-fur. Reclaimed jumpers become composite materials, questioning how value is assigned to textile waste through nostalgia and regeneration.
Inge Cordsen Craftsmanship Prize - £1,000
Winner: Zoe Noble
Pit Stop translates Noble's family's motor workshop into British wool knitwear, using petrol blues, leather browns and steel greys. Lace holes and embroidery mimic repair work, nodding to female racing drivers and mechanics.
TEX+ Industry Prize - Awarded for Technical Excellence - £1,000 and TEX+ International Exhibition Prize - One of Three places to exhibit at Première Vision Paris.
Winner: Lili Mizuno
Mizuno's Threaded Messages honours 1920s-30s airmail pilots through embroidery, using long threads to connect human emotions. Playing on 'present' as both existence and gift, the collection preserves memory as tangible, keepsake objects.
TEX+ Sustainability & Ethical Practice Prize - £1,000
Winner: Ruby Bolt
Bolts Bioskins reimagines exotic hides through renewable, modular materials built for repair and reinvention. Bushland Couture channels regional New South Wales, weaving her grandmother's archival imagery and maternal memory into land-connected couture.
TEX+ International Exhibition Prize - One of three places to exhibit at Première Vision Paris.
Winner: Twig Searle
Searle's A Library in Thread weaves UK folktales into cloth, while The Dyer and The Herbalist traces foraged plant dyes into a subtle, evolving palette, both shaped by heritage, storytelling and place.
Twig Searle is also the winner of the John Miles Legacy Prize - £1,000
Winner: Christie Shannon
Shannon's Iomrall reimagines staircases, windows and railings through playful, process-led knitting. Wool and cotton yarns create reversible, textured fabrics that shift equally between garment, accessory and interior piece.
(See also: Winner: Lili Mizuno (as featured above)).
Helga Goldman Legacy Prize - Awarded for Innovation & Creativity - £1,000
Winner: Belén Fernández
Fernández's Vaciada. Los que Quedan translates the geographic data of depopulated Spanish towns into Jacquard and hand-woven structures. Street layouts become folds, elevation becomes density, with high-twist wool and paper yarn holding origami-like collapsed form.
Congratulations to all of this year's TEX+ prize winners, and to everyone whose work was shown at Chelsea College of Arts this July.
Jeremy Somers, chair of TEX+, thanked the charity's sponsors and supporters, saying their generosity allows TEX+ to celebrate exceptional talent while giving graduates practical opportunities to take the next step in their careers. He added that the standard of work coming through this year reflects the depth of technical and creative training still happening across UK textile courses, despite the pressures graduates face once they leave.
TEX+ alumni already include designers working with Chanel, Nike and Liberty, among other major names across fashion and textiles, a track record that speaks to the strength of the pipeline this charity has built over five decades.
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Further Information:
Find out more about the finalists here.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Lead: 'Harajuku' Printed textile by Maia McLaren.
All further images courtesy of the artists and Tex+.