After a nine-year hiatus, IKEA has revived its experimental PS line with a 44-piece collection built around a single unifying idea: furniture should be fun. The PS 2026 range, which lands in UK stores this week and online from 22 May, is the tenth entry in a series that has historically given the Swedish giant's designers licence to push beyond the flat-pack formula. This time, the brief was "playful functionality", and the results range from genuinely surprising to quietly clever.
Mikael Axelsson's inflatable easy chair sits at the headline end of the spectrum. It takes the blow-up furniture trend that had its first run in the 1990s and gives it a proper material upgrade: a sturdy metal frame wrapped in a textile cover, delivering the support of a traditional armchair without the weight or permanence. It is a piece that feels less like novelty and more like a legitimate rethink of what lightweight seating can be.
Dutch designer Lex Pott contributes a flexible floor uplighter, a cylindrical metal lamp that the user can physically reconfigure to shift the direction and quality of light. It is product design that invites interaction rather than passive use, a theme that runs through the entire collection. Marta Krupińska's solid pine rocking bench strikes a different note, warm and considered, while Friso Wiersma's storage pieces draw on traditional boatbuilding techniques for their construction.
There is practical ambition here too. Ola Wihlborg's sofa-bed uses pocket springs, a detail usually reserved for premium mattresses, to ensure the collection's highest-priced piece at £550 actually delivers on sleep quality. At the other end, wall decorations start under £2.50, which keeps the democratic design ethos intact even while the aesthetic ambition has clearly been dialled up.
The collection was developed by 12 designers across multiple studios, and the breadth of typologies, from foldable tables to rolling trolleys and cable-hiding bedside units, speaks to an understanding of how people actually live now: in smaller spaces, with less patience for furniture that does not earn its footprint. More than that, it suggests IKEA has remembered that design can be serious without being solemn. The PS 2026 collection is available in UK IKEA stores now and launches online 22 May.
