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Kensington transformation

Last updated 7 January 2026

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Throughout our 187-year history, the Royal College of Art has continually evolved its campuses to meet the needs of the most talented artists and designers, creators and innovators. In the coming years, we will be making two significant changes to our campuses.

The RCA is currently delivering world-leading programmes and research activity across our three campuses located in Kensington, Battersea and White City. From March 2027, we will be vacating our White City campus, returning to a two-campus university based in Kensington and Battersea.

Additionally, from August 2025, the College has embarked upon a series of refurbishment works at our Kensington campus. These involve making essential repairs to some areas of our much-loved heritage buildings and improving our facilities for future generations of RCA students and staff.

The vision is to unify our community into two dynamic campuses that foster creativity, innovation and meaningful cross-college interdisciplinary collaboration among staff and students. We will create flexible spaces for making, teaching, research and community engagement, whilst honouring our commitment to student and staff experience and the historical significance of the campuses throughout and beyond the refurbishment process.

If you have any queries or require further information, please contact the College at [email protected].

Future programme locations

From June 2027, we expect to end our lease of our White City campus and become a two campus university based in Kensington and Battersea.

For our programmes based at White City, this will mean that we will relocate to one of our other campuses during the Easter break at the end of April 2027.

Currently, and for the duration of Academic Year 2025/26, the RCA will be delivering our programmes and research activity across our three campuses located in Kensington, Battersea and White City.

The College reviews our campus configuration in advance of each academic year to ensure that we are making the most of our available space as well as provide our students with the best possible facilities and environment in which to learn and practice.

As a result, this can mean that we change our programme locations between our campuses in advance of the upcoming academic year. These may differ from the ‘current location’ information on our website which refers to the previous and ongoing academic year. We will also be relocating some programmes in Academic Year 2026/27 as we vacate our White City campus.

  • School of Architecture programmes will be delivered at the Kensington campus.
  • School of Arts & Humanities programmes will be delivered at the Battersea campus except our History of Design programme which will be delivered at the Kensington campus.
  • In the School of Design, our Fashion, Textiles, Design Futures, MRes Healthcare & Design and MPhil/PhD Design programmes will be delivered at the Kensington campus. The Innovation Design Engineering and Design Products programmes will be delivered at the Battersea campus. Our Service Design programme will be delivered at the Battersea campus for Terms 1 and 2 before relocating to the Kensington campus for Term 3.
  • School of Communication Master's programmes will be delivered at the White City campus for Terms 1 and 2 before relocating in advance of Term 3 during the Easter break in April 2027. From Term 3 onwards, Animation, Visual Communication and MFA Communication will be located at the Kensington campus and our Digital Direction and Information Experience Design programmes will be located at the Battersea campus. MPhil/PhD Communication continues to be delivered at the Kensington campus.
  • Graduate Diploma will move from White City to Kensington in Term 3.

Please be reassured that we will be closely planning any relocations of our programmes to ensure that our student and staff community are fully supported and that we minimise disruption as far as possible.

Kensington works

We are embarking upon a series of refurbishment works at our Kensington campus.

These involve making essential repairs to some areas of our much-loved heritage buildings and improving our facilities for future generations of RCA students and staff.

During our programme, we can expect some noise disruption and alternative access routes within our Kensington campus.

We will strive to minimise disruption to our students where possible and all building and refurbishment activities undertaken are discussed and planned in advance with programme teams and RCASU.

We will fully communicate with our students as we progress through our programme and will endeavour to do any noisy work outside of normal working hours.

Throughout the year we’ll be keeping our community fully up to date with any changes and listening to your feedback.

We will have periods of noise disruption during the works but will strive to schedule these outside of teaching and working hours wherever possible.

None of these works will alter the delivery of our programmes, as set out in students’ programme specifications.