The winners of the 2026 Women’s Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary accolades, have been announced. Virginia Evans and Lyse Doucet, both debut authors, won in the fiction and non-fiction categories respectively.
Their paths to publication were vastly different. Evans spent years writing books that never found a publisher until her debut, The Correspondent, became a breakthrough success. The epistolary novel is told through the correspondence of protagonist Sybil van Antwerp, and it will make you want to start writing letters of your own, if you can manage to put the book down.
Doucet drew on decades of reporting from Afghanistan for the BBC to create The Finest Hotel in Kabul. It’s an intimate history of the capital in the eyes of the famous mainstay: the Intercontinental Hotel. The BBC’s chief international correspondent, Doucet writes in detail about the staff of the Intercontinental and how they’ve prevailed throughout Afghanistan’s turbulent history, from former US president Joe Biden’s withdrawal of assistance to the Taliban’s regaining of control.
Speaking to both winners, Georgina Godwin discusses their works, winning the prize and the reception of their books by a new audience.
These conversations have been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full interviews on Monocle Radio’s Meet the Writers.
Georgina Godwin (GG): Behind every literary success there is often a string of rejections. This is also true of the fantastic The Correspondent, isn’t it?
Virginia Evans (VE): Yes, [there was] a lot of rejection, a lot of failure and that’s okay with me. I’m comfortable with that being a part of the story, and it all feels like it’s building towards the next thing. Part of what brought me here was trying and failing, and trying and failing, and then finally trying and getting one off the ground.
GG: There were seven rejected books – that’s enough to make most people give up! What happened to those manuscripts? Are you planning to revisit them, or do you see them as building blocks that should be discarded?
VE: Some of them should absolutely be discarded, the early ones. I love them but nobody needs to read them. There are two that I would consider going back to but, for me, I would finish writing a novel and then in the back of my mind already have the next one starting to take shape, so I’m pretty much ready to start. That’s always how I’ve worked, and so the thought of going backwards and reopening something that feels old to me doesn’t appeal. I don’t have a need for those books to be published. I sort of feel comfortable that they weren’t. They still exist, and to me they are complete.
GG: The Correspondent began as a writing exercise. How did it develop into your first published – and now award-winning – book?
VE: I wasn’t thinking that I would sell this book. I had a book out on submission with editors that was complete, and then I was thinking about starting something new. I wrote about 20,000 words of something else but didn’t want to stay with it. [I did this writing exercise] to clear my head. I wasn’t going to give it to anyone but when my agent asked me what I was doing, she wanted to read it. At first I said no but then she pressed me on it. Eventually she thought that this one could sell. I didn’t have any confidence because I had never had success before, and especially because I had written it in a mind of not showing it to anyone. But that turns out to be the ticket.
GG: The book is structured with letters, and is full of readers and writers. Does what you’re reading at the time influence your writing?
VE: I have to be so careful with what I’m reading when I’m writing a book, and I find I cannot read almost anything modern that even comes close to what I’m writing. I find myself reading either classics or reading outside the genre that I write. I’ll read thrillers or things like that. If I start a book and catch the scent that it’s coming close to the world that I’m writing, I have to put it away. Perhaps I’m afraid that I’m too much of a sponge, I don’t want to take something that’s not mine. I feel very protective of my brain when I’m writing.
GG: Lyse, what about the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul made you think that this was the story that you wanted to tell?
Lyse Doucet (LD): As a journalist, I’ve always believed that a smaller story can carry much greater truths, people are drawn to that. The iconic Intercontinental Hotel has been part of Afghan history for so long, and so many Afghans have a story about how it went from being this rarefied place of bikinis by the pool, cocktails on the roof and exorbitant prices only for the elite, to being almost the headquarters for building democracy after 2001. The hotel became part of the front lines. I stayed there for a year. All of Afghanistan was there; people from different social classes, from the royal families to very poor families, educated, non-educated, and different ethnic groups in this modern box of glass and steel. The 200 balconies were like eyes looking over the city, the watchtower bearing witness. The war which swirled around it over the decades came inside, ravaging the rooms.
GG: You’ve been reporting on stories from Afghanistan since the 1980s. Were there stories that you had carried within you that weren’t suitable for a news report that you were longing to tell, and did this book manage to give them a home?
LD: During the coronavirus pandemic, I went through everything that I’d kept from Afghanistan. I had kept all the cartoons that another worker, Amanullah, who was a teenager then, drew for me when I stayed at the Intercontinental. He was working as the room service cashier. He went to the Soviet-run university down the hill during the day, speaking Russian, and came to the hotel at night to do the room service. He, like all Afghans, is a great observer of humanity. He would see the journalists staying there [and draw them on] the ledger, which was the perfect size to do a grid of the rooms in the hotel. Then he would slip them under the room service trays. His version of service with a smile. Of course, these drawings never got into the book but these sorts of things were part of the journal of how we survived those times.
GG: Now you have won this extraordinary prize, how does it change how you think about the future?
LD: We say in journalism that you’re only as good as your next story. I still walk down the street and think, did I finish that book? It’s like a miracle. I don’t know how I did it because there was so little time and so many major world events – and [at the BBC] while I can sometimes miss small stories, I can’t miss the big ones. There have been earth-shaking stories ever since I signed this book contract. But, of course, every new book is a new challenge – first to find a story to tell for which I have the authority, interest and ability to write. The most important thing right now is how can I tell a story which will draw people in rather than turning them away? As Margaret Atwood says, will they keep reading beyond five pages? They have to keep turning the pages to get to the end of the book. So I do think about the next one. In my [Women’s Prize-winning] speech I said that in order for there to be writers there have to be readers. The book will only really come to life and be loved if there are both.
Listen to the full interview on Monocle Radio’s ‘Meet the Writers’.
If Dante’s journey through the underworld had been conducted on the London Underground, he would have reserved a special circle in hell for people who wear backpacks on a crowded Tube. And yet if such a depth of depravity did exist, I’m sure I would still somehow end up wedged behind one of these overladen individuals in much the same fashion as I was this week on the Victoria Line: someone’s boxy rucksack pinning me against a glass partition. And yet, gallingly, such obliviousness seems to go unchecked, drawing little more than tuts from miffed Londoners. These urban pack animals – easily identified by a combined lack of style and spatial awareness – are rivalled only by the much-detested door blockers (if it ain’t their stop, they ain’t moving) in the amount of hatred they inspire in the commuters around them.
One of the worst bits about being held hostage by a backpack on a crowded carriage is that you rarely find out what cargo was so important that it had to be carried at all times. What, to channel Brad Pitt’s character in Seven, is in the bag? Is it a backup gym outfit? A second, smaller bag? Perhaps it’s a miniature railway complete with regular industrial action? Whatever the reason, it takes rare if unwanted talent to move through the world in a way that is both frustratingly passive and unfailingly intrusive.
This felt like one of those weeks when the inconsiderate came out in force. A young man in Prada glasses sat next to me on the Piccadilly Line and proceeded to eat a serving of warm chicken, rice and eggs. And yet even this strange, apparently starved individual is more considerate than the gormless porters infernally annexing standing space in crammed carriages.
Two solutions spring to mind. The first, since these people are evidently packed for a long journey already, is to tell them where they can get off. The second, and perhaps more practicable, is for these typically compact people who commute with the turning circle of a Cunard cruise ship to simply stow their bag at their feet. It’s a small gesture of civic goodwill but it would assure the rest of us that manners are not yet extinct – they are just, like much of the Underground these days, experiencing severe delays.
There has been a Monocle tour of South and Central America over the past 12 days that has seen two colleagues and I journey from Montevideo in Uruguay to Guatemala City, where we are this morning on our final stop. But let’s rewind to a few days ago in São Paulo because there are 10 things that I want to tell you about this city.
1.
When you ask a Paulista how far away something is, they will say, “About 15 minutes.” Do not believe them. It’s 30 minutes in good traffic, 60 minutes if you hit rush hour and the swarms of delivery scooters that fly around this city. It’s best to accept this, not fight it. You are in a city of some 12 million busy people.
2.
You need to find a place to people-watch. One night we end up at Spot, a kind of diner-cum-bistro that’s just off Avenida Paulista. It’s a joint that has been around for years with cool waiters and a similarly fun crowd. Throughout our meal, I keep scanning the room: gay lovers, end-of-day business cocktailers and friends just gossiping and laughing. I want to know who makes this city so vibrant and ambitious.
3.
Sunday night is pizza night in São Paulo and we book a table at a branch of Pizzaria Camelo to join in the tradition. But a long wait for our bags at the airport – and that traffic – means that it’s 23.30 by the time we get there. Yet while we might be sneaking in at almost closing time, the staff are welcoming, rolling with the day. A slice and a caipirinha later, we are ready for this metropolis.
4.
São Paulo is a city that’s proud of its scale. A leading entrepreneur tells us that he had returned to São Paulo from living in Paris after he struggled to make it through a grey French February. “Look, Paris is fine if you want to live somewhere provincial and eat cheese but São Paulo is a real city,” he says. Plus, in winter, you can savour 23C temperatures and big blue skies.
5.
We hear a similar story when we meet two developers with plans to transform a large tract of land near Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima, the city’s Wall Street. They went around Europe to look at other projects but found that these lacked the ambition needed to deliver in São Paulo. The one place they found inspiring? Asia. Tokyo and Bangkok have more in common with this city than London or Milan.
6.
Faced with the particular challenges of the city – it’s not built for cycling, most people drive, it can be very hot and wet, and there are still issues of security – São Paulo has invented its own unique urban model.
7.
Part of that model is the shopping mall. In a city where public space can be unevenly maintained and security remains an issue, malls have evolved into important and much-loved pieces of civic infrastructure. Centres run by companies such as Iguatemi go beyond being places to shop. In these safe, clean spaces, you can go to the theatre or cinema, see art, dine.
8.
Lissa Carmona’s family business, Etel, produces furniture by many of the country’s most celebrated design talents. And she is also behind a series of museum-houses that are preserving (and finding fresh uses for) the homes of key talents when they die. A highlight of our trip is when she takes us around Casa Zalszupin, where the celebrated designer Jorge Zalszupin lived until he died aged 98 in 2020. Thanks in large part to Carmona, it’s now protected, gently maintained and helping the city hold on to its unique identity.
9.
In São Paulo you need to roll with events. Never plan anything for February, for example, when Carnival takes hold of the nation. And don’t attempt any tricky deal over the next few weeks. The World Cup is all that matters. Indeed, it feels as though this entire continent is about to go into a football lockdown.
10.
Carmona, like many people we meet, is also clear that design and architecture are not nice-to-haves in Brazil. They are Brazil. Design is culture here. We stay at the Pulso Hotel and have breakfast with the owner of this beautiful new establishment. Otávio Suriani is a sharp business leader but beauty matters to him, as it does to São Paulo. “I could not have made a hotel that didn’t excite me,” he tells us looking around the dining room with its dark, wood furniture and the big-leafed tropical plants beyond the windows. He’s part of a place that’s confident in its urban skin, embraces being a megacity and continues to define its own rules, tastes and needs.
To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here.Further reading? Here’s why São Paulo should stay an ad-free metropolis.
If the 2026 World Cup is half as dramatic as the build-up to it, there’s every chance that we’ll watch first-time qualifier Curaçao lift the trophy at the final in July. Wilder things could happen this year, though it’s unlikely that they will be on the football pitch. World Cups have a habit of reflecting their geopolitical moment and this tri-nation tournament, spread across Canada, Mexico and the US, comes at a time when the very notion of international co-operation is being tested.
The competition has barely begun but tension is already hovering over the global arena, as two ideologies tussle over the world order: multilateralism and unilateralism. The former is the vision of the middle powers, including Canada and Mexico – one of integration, with nations coming together to freely trade and express themselves. The latter is the art of the deal evinced by the transactionalism of the US president, Donald Trump: tariffs, hard power and a tough guy who just wants a big ballroom.
This contest has been brewing ever since Trump returned to office and decided to tear down the system of alliances that his predecessors took such pains to construct. As Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, pointed out in his Davos address in January, middle powers can either submit to US hegemony or hedge their bets through multilateral relations with other nations. The ideological clash of these visions will be played out for the world to see – the ultimate stress test for a fragile and shifting world order.
The timing of all of this could hardly be more charged. This is the first World Cup at which two participating nations are at war. US Central Command has spent the past few days shelling southern Iran, which is quite inhospitable behaviour from a host on the eve of a global sporting event (and from a Fifa Peace Prize winner, no less). Trump’s envoy also attempted to persuade Fifa to eject Iran from the tournament and replace them with Italy. The federation, however, opted not to pursue the idea of World Cup qualification by executive order.
Nevertheless, Fifa blocked Iran’s request to move its games to Mexico, where they had already moved their training camp amid uncertainty over whether they would be allowed to enter the US for their first match on 15 June. In a late decision, the US has said that the team can enter – but only on the day of their match and only if they leave immediately afterwards. It will be the first time a team has played a World Cup match during a layover.
If the US and Iran finish second in their groups, the warring parties will go head to head in Dallas on 3 July. The pair previously met at the 1998 World Cup in France, with Iran winning 2-1. The Iranian players brought white flowers onto the pitch and the match ended with a group photo; looking back, US defender Jeff Agoos said, “We did more in 90 minutes than the politicians did in 20 years.” Given the way that the US has treated the Iranian team so far, we shouldn’t expect any bouquets this year.
The logistics for fans haven’t been easy either, especially for those whose teams are slated to play on US soil but who are from countries that are subject to US travel bans. Meanwhile, those who are able to make the trip face ticket prices so high that even Trump has said that he wouldn’t pay them. A ticket for the final could set you back $32,970. Prices for the final in Qatar four years ago rose to $1,600. The same gouging isn’t happening in Mexico or Canada, where fans have enjoyed cheaper tickets, thanks to regulatory systems that prevent exorbitant increases by secondary ticket sellers.
These barriers risk undercutting the very openness that the World Cup purports to celebrate. The free movement of people and goods depends on fair prices and good faith, neither of which is cultivated by fleecing fans. It comes as little surprise, then, that the US team’s first match has failed to sell out. Some 180,000 tickets are still available for group-stage matches on the official resale platform. Many were hoping that this would be the World Cup when the sport of football would finally break America but it might just be America that breaks the World Cup instead.
The tournament has now kicked off but the 2026 edition’s most compelling contest is off the pitch and already well under way. Over the next six weeks, global audiences will have a front-row seat to a competition between world views – and amid the politicking and financial absurdities, apparently some football matches are also scheduled. Who knows what we will see in the reflection of this World Cup when the trophy is lifted on 19 July: the awful power of the US president or the utter ineffectiveness of his ideology?
Earlier this week the Japan-ROC Diet Members’ Consultative Council, a cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers, approved a motion to adopt a new name that includes the word “Taiwan”. Currently led by Keiji Furuya, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the group was founded in 1973, a year after Japan – along with the UK, Australia and many others – severed diplomatic relations with the island in what amounted to an acceptance of Beijing’s “One China” principle.
Though Furuya framed the name change in terms of his country’s “unshakable bond” with Taiwan, it was, of course, a provocation aimed squarely at China. He and his group were trolling. Relations between East Asia’s biggest economies have been at a low point since Japan’s blundering prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, declared last November that a Chinese attack on the self-governing island could constitute “an existential crisis” for her nation, potentially justifying military action. Beijing naturally took this as an affront to its sovereignty and responded with a series of retaliatory measures, from travel bans to seafood import restrictions.
The new combativeness between Japan and China is a symptom of the increasing fragility of US influence in East Asia and serves the long-term strategic interests of neither Tokyo nor Beijing. Despite still unresolved grievances over atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War and a mutual distrust born of rivalry, the two countries have long flourished as economic partners. Between 1972, when relations between Tokyo and Beijing were normalised, and as recently as the mid-2010s, they operated in concert almost as a single industrial force. Japan focused its foreign aid on Chinese infrastructure throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and later supplied a significant proportion of the hi-tech components and materials that China needed for its own manufacturing sector. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement that helped Beijing to establish itself as an industrial titan and kept Tokyo’s balance of trade in surplus.
China remains Japan’s most important trading partner and among the largest investment destinations for the nation’s companies. Yet Tokyo is bound by its commitments to Washington, which views Japan’s permanent vassalisation as key to its China-containment strategy (and has more than 50,000 soldiers stationed in the country, perhaps to ensure that things stay that way). Takaichi and the supine LDP have been happy to comply, poking China in the eyeball every chance that they get – from signing up to the US-led “Pax Silica” coalition, designed to reduce Chinese dominance in rare-earth processing, to announcing negotiations with the Philippines to delimit the maritime boundary of their exclusive economic zones (at the expense of China’s claimed rights).
For now, though, business pragmatism still prevails. Last Thursday, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China released a white paper showing that, despite trade restrictions and heightened political tensions, Japan’s integrated circuit exports to China had soared by almost 48 per cent in 2025. It was a small sign that the old partnership isn’t quite dead – and a reminder of the mutual benefits of the Sino-Japanese relationship.
Everyone loved David Hockney. Directors of institutions loved him for his genius and ticket-selling popularity. Curators who had devoted their lives to the study of Renaissance mark-making saw something of Leonardo in his confident hand. Countless art lovers from across the globe would buy a postcard of “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” (1970-71) from the Tate Britain giftshop, having stood before the real thing a few minutes earlier. And fellow artists? Well, Hockney must have been doing something right if Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud were made haughtier still by his success.
People love his portraiture, landscapes, use of colour, exuberance, accessibility and mastery of styles. They love his modernity, public persona, wardrobe, ordinariness, extraordinariness and naughtiness. Hockney was always doing two things: smoking and painting. He loved a gasper and it’s satisfying for libertarians everywhere that he lived to just a month shy of his 89th birthday after lighting up many a day. But it’s his practice of sketching and painting, of making lines and shade, that was his job, his greatness and his glory.
Things could have turned out differently for Hockney. He grew up in a working-class, non-artistic household in the north of England; a job in a factory or a shop was far more likely than an art career. Hockney once described how, as an eight-year-old in his hometown of Bradford, he used to help his father renovate old bikes. He recalled how he had loved “a thick brush full of paint coating something”. At the time, the young Hockney assumed that artworks were “done in the evenings when the artists had finished painting the signs or the Christmas cards”. Perhaps the way that he saw painting as a job, rather than a purely aesthetic endeavour, shaped his approach to his own work.
At the Royal College of Art in London, Hockney experimented with abstract expressionism. In “The Third Love Painting” (1960), he explored queer desire, reproducing graffiti found in the Earl’s Court Tube station toilets. He offered glimpses of confession in “We Two Boys Together Clinging” and “Doll Boy” (both 1961). Hockney’s coming out as gay was made easier by his move to Southern California in 1964, where he painted abstracted landscapes and figurative pool-scapes – the bright milieu of people, parties and private views to which he now half-belonged. “Beverly Hills Housewife” (1966) and “A Bigger Splash” (1967) are masterclasses in sun-drenched psychological detachment. In Los Angeles, Hockney bleached his hair a shocking blonde, embraced colourful suits, stripes and glasses, and became a spectacle himself: the apotheosis of the contemporary artist in the popular imagination (and rich too). Then he spoke and was northern English, charming, funny and fey.
For Hockney, the 1970s and 1980s were full of painting and photography, and a fascination with art history and perspective. Perhaps most enjoyably for the artist, he immersed himself in designs for the theatre and opera. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at Glyndebourne and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot for the LA Opera were creative landmarks. Not intimidated by working at a large scale, Hockney began making huge canvases, landscapes made from panels that could absorb gargantuan subjects. “A Closer Grand Canyon” (1998) tallied with his vast photographic collages of the 1980s.
These set the scene for his return in the early 2000s to Yorkshire, where he embraced the landscape and seasons in canvases great enough to cover walls of the Royal Academy of Arts and small enough to almost be the postcard that millions would take home. While a personal tragedy unsettled the artist, his tireless spirit returned. He later painted in Normandy, freshly excited by the landscape, art, history, colour and doing something useful every day. Hockney contained multitudes but could see clearly and paint beautifully because of his seven decades of study and practice.
Hockney was a sexy, sun-kissed buccaneer, a glamorous success, an éminence gris and a Yorkshireman in a cloth cap in the rain of the Dales. For many years, he was the world’s greatest living painter and his works, his unmistakable style, live forever behind the eyes.
The field of play has gotten feisty. In the run-up to this year’s World Cup, I’ve heard plenty of derisive digs from international commentators about the US, which is taking on the lion’s share of hosting duties. Many are predicting that during a politically unpalatable presidential administration, the 23rd edition of the quadrennial tournament is about to flop like Neymar after a light touch.
But as an eager fan cheering the Stars and Stripes from a barstool, I feel it’s high time that someone mount a defence to rival some of the tournament favourites. Here it is: the US is the best World Cup host in 20 years.
I won’t sugarcoat the negatives. Outrageous ticket prices are squarely Fifa’s fault. I forked over $180 (€156) to watch Bosnia and Herzegovina take on Qatar – a real barnburner – and consider myself fortunate. Diplomatic foot-dragging delayed visas for Haitian and South African players. Iran relocated its training camp from Arizona to Tijuana, and many staff, including the president of the Iranian football federation, will be stuck watching the game from Mexico when Team Melli plays in the US. A Somali referee who was lauded last year as Africa’s top official was denied entry at Miami Airport. Ivorian, Senegalese and Haitian fans living abroad face enormous hurdles from capricious consular officials.
As it happens, hollowing out the state department, fortifying an already hostile visa system and embarking on an ill-advised Middle Eastern war have not contributed to a festive atmosphere for footy. And yet, I still believe that this year’s World Cup is going to surprise even the naysayers because the US has a secret weapon: the world’s largest foreign-born population.
Even a year of aggressive immigration enforcement doesn’t change the essential fact that the US is, and always has been, a nation of immigrants. More than 50 million US residents hail from outside the country and they will be turning up en masse. The visa trouble befalling foreign nationals is a travesty but there will still be enormous crowds cheering for Brazil in Miami, Iran in Los Angeles and Haiti in Boston. Here in Seattle, tens of thousands of Egyptians will fly in from across the country to see if the Pharaohs can break a World Cup curse on Monday and notch their first-ever tournament win.
All of this on-field action, meanwhile, takes place in existing stadiums. Unlike the expensive construction frenzy that fueled allegations of human rights abuses and white elephant corruption in South Africa (2010), Brazil (2014), Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022), the US is a turnkey operation. The biggest infrastructure investment was swapping artificial turf for grass.
The stateside excitement is also genuine. While Canadian tourism operators in Toronto and Vancouver are readying for an influx of fans, Montréal withdrew its bid and only one other Canadian city (Edmonton) applied to host. By contrast, six US cities submitted losing bids in the face of stiff competition from the 11 winners – a sign of enthusiasm from sea to shining sea.
I see it in my local library, where a dedicated shelf displays books about the visiting countries playing matches here. And I see it on the streets, where flags are flying left and right, from eye-catching larger-than-life murals to tiny bunting flapping in the breeze from a pub’s awning.
The World Cup will be welcomed, warts and all, and it will be wonderful.
Today marks the end of Copenhagen’s annual citywide design fair, 3 Days of Design. This year, participants gathered under the theme “Make This Moment Matter”, reflecting the need to create products with purpose, putting the emphasis on “better” over “more”. It’s a sentiment that only a cold-hearted capitalist could argue against. But it’s also a telling sign that 3 Days of Design is reckoning with its own success. Each year seems to garner more interest, more objects and more parties. This latest edition is estimated to have brought 120,000 people to the Danish capital in search of new ideas and opportunities to network, and to conduct a general temperature check of the industry.
The informality that made up much of 3 Days of Design’s salad-days appeal when it launched in 2013 is dissipating, as a growing number of brands participate and compete for attention from press and buyers. Organisers have long feared losing the intimacy that smaller fairs offer and a sense of resigned acceptance has taken hold. It seems that the growing pains are over, the Rubicon crossed.
As a result, the fun is now organised. During the day, cafés in courtyards serve up flat whites and bolle med ost (an unbeatable combination of bread and cheese, abbreviated to BMO by Danes). Cocktail parties take place between the hours of 16.00 and 18:00, followed promptly by dinners in tasteful Copenhagen restaurants. A Lutheran restraint pervades, from minimalist interiors to acceptable Scandinavian dinner times.
Today, Copenhagen’s brands and designers are beginning to show signs of maturation in their output. The upbeat pastels that dominated the fair just a few years ago are gone, replaced by a monochromatic palette and cold, aluminium finishes. Tadaima’s exhibition, Soft Monuments, captures the current appetite for fine silver tableware and low-slung chairs with a space-age bent. Design exhibition platform Other Circle, now in its second edition, is presenting work by independent designers alongside more established companies such as Muuto and USM. More generally, a fixation on Danish mid-century masters seems to have faded. The notable exception to this is Verner Panton, who is in the spotlight this year as Designmuseum Danmark celebrates the centenary of his birth – not to mention &Tradition’s reproduction of his classic Flowerpot lamp.
The international pull of 3 Days of Design is growing as countries gather their best and brightest to present exhibitions with a patriotic inflection. Sydney-based interiors stylist Claire Delmar makes a convincing case for Australian design with Latitude: 55°N Meets 12°S, a group showcase that includes pieces by Studio Henry Wilson and Jessie French. Elsewhere, the French Embassy opened the doors to its 17th-century palace to present Résurgences, an exhibition in partnership with the Mobilier National and Le French Design.
In the long term, it remains to be seen whether 3 Days of Design can compete in scale with industry behemoth Milan Design Week, though the event’s attendance and participation are increasing. What is clear is that Copenhagen has showcased steely resolve as it cements its rising status as a leading design destination – and for now at least, the Danes have managed to make the moment matter.
Grace Charlton is Monocle’s associate editor of design and fashion. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Crunch! Like a heavy gold fist, it’s finally time for the Fifa World Cup to punch us all in the face again. Not without criticism, the tournament has ballooned from being a mere global behemoth to a time-devouring leviathan: 48 teams will play across three host nations and 16 stadiums; the stage for 104 matches across 39 days. It’s not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a mission: Apollo 13 without enough oxygen or handy hints from Houston (though that is one of the host cities). Of course we’ll probably love it but there’ll be times when we’ll all need some moral support – and this is where World Cup songs come in. The sillier the better – but where are they now?
The football song is a slippery thing. There are the official anthems that tend toward the platitudinous, then there are football-loving pop groups arching an eyebrow to make a buck and, finally, there are the strange and often beguiling attempts of outsider fan-ish artists polishing up a chant. Guess which are the best.
Google “best World Cup songs 2026” and you might happen across Fifa Sound, the global governing body’s portal to an album of eye-wateringly saccharine globo-pop fit to give you Type-2 diabetes by the second listen. Despite nations competing in the World Cup, it seems that Fifa lately disdains national songs, so will instead commission a leftovers-jambalaya of salsa-meets-pop-meets-reggaeton-meets-rap-meets-balladry.
With leaden-footed banality, the tagline accompanying the collection reads, “combining the universal languages of football and music – a collection of different styles, paces and souls working in harmony”. It’s hardly a secret that Fifa has been extracting more than just the “mony” out of “harmony” for years. Let’s just hope that the copywriter was mauled by at least three lions for their efforts.
And, neatly, mention of those apex predators brings us to the second category of football songs – pop groups having a bit of a laugh. The English Football Association commissioned The Lightning Seeds’ melody ace Ian Broudie to write the nation’s tune for Euro 1996. Broudie invited comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner to write the lyrics to what became “Three Lions” – Broudie also asked the duo to sing the song alongside him. The song’s mixture of an incredibly catchy tune matched to salt-of-the-terrace mythologising and that addictive chorus made for a funny, silly, oddly moving and genuinely excellent piece of pop culture. Is it a song? Is it a hymn? It’s a soul-searching yet patriotic masterpiece of English existentialism. William Blake’s “Jerusalem” for tearful pub-land. We were all Jerusa-lads.
Honourable mentions in this category go to New Order’s “World in Motion” (1990) for it being genuinely good and the band – themselves known for tricky intra-group dynamics – welcoming England winger John Barnes to rap on the song. Barnes is quite adept, the song’s solid – it’s English yet successfully unironic. The 1994 German team that featured the decidedly non-camp Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann and Rudi Völler (well, Rudi was pretty camp) chose the Village People to write and lead their anthemic effort for the previous time that the World Cup was in the US. The non-jingoistic Germans manfully sang about “a land so wild and free” and having “rainbows in their eyes”. The video is a gem of awkward bonhomie.
While Shakira performed “Waka-Waka” (if I was Fozzie Bear from the Muppets, I’d sue) for the 2010 South Africa World Cup, it was Somali-Canadian singer K’naan who wrote the best song. His “Wavin’ Flag” originally begged for peace amid the Somalian civil war and was then re-tooled by Coca-Cola – but the emotional edges weren’t worn off. It was successfully patriotic, if in a sadder key.
This year, in support of Scotland, bookishly brilliant Glaswegian band Belle & Sebastian released “It Only Takes One Lion”, a well-turned and reflective tribute to inner courage and Scottish strength. But I’m afraid that I will have to take you back to England for the definitive mix of idiot-savant greatness, non-sequitur poetry and lunatic patriotism: “Vindaloo” by Fat Les. Britpop legend Alex James, art superstar Damien Hirst and eccentric actor Keith Allen combined forces for the song. I wonder what they were on? But I’ve rarely been happier than blasting this super-tosh at full volume from a windows-down Jag as my pal and I drove through Carcassonne before watching England narrowly beat Wales in the 93rd minute of Euro 2016. We’d get knocked out by Iceland soon after. The excellent stupidity, the ironic patriotism – or is it? – is what might just be missing from the next five and a half weeks of our lives.
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
There is a ritual that I have repeated every four years since 1998: collecting Panini Fifa World Cup stickers. It’s a curious hobby; though I’m not a football fanatic, I am an enthusiast for printed products and so there is something appealing to me about the Italian company’s iconic and enduring sticker collection. The album is not just a book, it’s a shared social experience.
Released to commemorate every Fifa World Cup since 1970, the Panini collection includes stickers for every player and team participating in the global competition as well as designs featuring other aspects relating to the tournament, such as team badges and venues. The 2026 World Cup’s album is bigger than ever, with 48 teams and 980 stickers to complete the booklet. Stickers are sold in blind packs, so you never know what’s inside until you open one. Panini’s head of marketing for sport, Katie Gritt, says that the company prints billions of stickers to meet global demand and distributes them to more than 150 countries.
Some stickers are easier to find than others, a scarcity that has fueled rumours that Panini limits production for selected players. But Gritt insists that all stickers in the collection are “printed in equal quantities”. “For example, [during the 1990 Fifa World Cup], Paul Gascoigne was the player that everyone wanted. So naturally it was felt that his circulation was lower than others,” she says. The most-wanted collectables sell for high sums at auction, such as when a 1979 Maradona sticker went for €470,000 in 2021.
Founded in 1961 by brothers Benito and Giuseppe Panini in Moderna, Italy, the Panini Group has many products under its umbrella. But it’s safe to assume that the World Cup stickers are its most prized creations. The company does not disclose sales figures for the albums but the football tournament is no doubt a very profitable time for the collectables group. For the 2026 World Cup, the brand has partnered with various major labels, including Coca-Cola and Lynx, and has even set up a pop-up shop in London’s Selfridges. This is all in addition to the release of the stickers and albums themselves, which are already available for sale.
Today, if you visit the Panini website, you will find a hardcover album and all sorts of extra gadgets. But, for me, nothing beats the original soft-cover version. I have begun collecting the stickers and though it might be challenging, I hope to find all 980. At the time of writing, I’m struggling to find a sticker for Brazil’s goalie, Alisson Becker. Anyone fancy a swap?
