La Fábrica, winner of the 2026 National Design Award in the Design and Business category
2026/07/15
The cultural management company La Fábrica has been awarded the 2026 National Design Prize in the Design and Business category. The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, recognizes individuals and organizations that have made innovation an essential element in the development of their professional strategy and business growth. The award, which has been given since 1987, comes at a special time for La Fábrica, as it approaches its thirtieth anniversary and tenth edition of the Madrid Design Festival.
La Fábrica was founded in 1996 by Alberto Anaut with the magazine Matador and has since been building a unique cultural ecosystem. In 1998, it founded PHotoESPAÑA and launched PHotoBolsillo, the origin of its publishing house, and in 2001 created NotodoFilmFest, Spain's largest short film festival. These were followed by La Casa Encendida, La Noche de los Libros (Night of the Books), the Eñe Festival, Matadero Madrid, La Cárcel de Segovia, La Térmica in Málaga, and Club Matador. In 2018, it launched Madrid Design Festival, now a leading European design event; in 2023, the Fronteras Festival; in 2024, the Festival de las Ideas (Festival of Ideas); and in 2025, the Alianza por la Lana (Alliance for Wool). This year, 2026, FORMA Design Fair, the first international trade fair for collectible design in Spain, will be launched.
The jury highlighted that La Fábrica has demonstrated for thirty years that design can be the structural element that generates, articulates, and transforms Spain's most relevant cultural projects, emphasizing that it is not a company that simply commissions design, but rather one that builds upon it. Among the merits recognized were its ability to create its own cultural formats with identity and sustained impact, its decisive role in some of the country's most important cultural centers, the nearly sixteen million visitors accumulated at PHotoESPAÑA, and the more than 1,100 titles from its publishing house distributed in 49 countries.
In the words of Alberto Fesser, founding partner along with Alberto Anaut and current president of La Fábrica, design has been a key strategy that has allowed them to bring culture to broad audiences over three decades, and it continues to be an essential tool and a future asset. In the other categories, the award winners were Martín Azúa (Lifetime Achievement in Design) and Inés Llasera (Young Design Professionals).