Academic programmes for 2027/28

Responding to shifting global trends across technology, creative practice and student demands, the RCA is launching brand new postgraduate degrees within its world-renowned portfolio. Additionally, some existing master's programmes have been developed to provide students with one- or two-year study options for its 2027 intake. The new and updated offerings include:

Artificial Intelligence & Digital Art MA/MFA
The Artificial Intelligence & Digital Art (AiDA) MA/MFA programme places artistic agency at the centre of how artificial intelligence is imagined, made and experienced. Conceived specifically for artists, the curriculum combines creative coding and computational practice with critical artistic inquiry, giving students the technical and conceptual agency to construct, alter and interrogate computational and AI systems. At a moment when the direction, pace and governance of AI are increasingly contested, AiDA asserts an urgent role for artistic practice in deciding what forms of intelligence we choose to build, what purposes they serve, and how they shape the ways we understand and live in the world. This programme is available as a one year MA or two year MFA.

Aardman/RCA Animation (Professional Residency) MFA
The Aardman/RCA Animation (Professional Residency) MFA is a 20-month, five-term degree in partnership with world-renowned Aardman Animation and the Aardman Academy. Combining the RCA’s academic rigour with professional studio practice, the programme enables students to spend their first year at the RCA in London developing their authorial voice across any technique or genre, before undertaking an immersive professional studio residency at Aardman’s Bristol studios under the mentorship of industry experts.

Environmental Architecture & Urban Design MA
The Environmental Architecture & Urban Design MA programme recognises that environmental and urban processes are increasingly interconnected and uniquely brings these fields together to explore how design can engage with the ecological, social, and political conditions shaping contemporary life and its spaces. Through design-action, design-led research, studio practice, and fieldwork, students explore spatial design as a means of contributing to more just and environmentally responsive futures.

Graduate Diploma Architecture & Spatial Practice
This intensive one-year conversion route bridges non-architectural disciplines for those seeking to pivot into spatial design. Through experimental studio culture, critical inquiry, and London-based fieldwork, the Graduate Diploma Architecture & Spatial Practice equips students with the skills and portfolio needed to unlock advanced study, including pathways into Architecture MArch and professional architectural practice.

Sound Practice MA
Sound Practice MA is an innovative one-year degree that reframes sound not merely as something to create, but as a transformative lens through which to engage with the world. Open to applicants from non-traditional sonic backgrounds, the programme connects creative practice with London's rich sonic landscape to explore new modes of listening, communication, and engagement with the world through sound. Applications are open to candidates from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, including those without formal training in music, sound or audio who can demonstrate an engagement in sound and listening in their work or research (eg. theatre, design, art, journalism or film).

Two-year MFA and MDes programmes
The RCA’s portfolio has been further developed with selected programmes offering both one-year MA or two-year MFA/MDes study options. While the intensive one-year MA routes focus on developing critical and technical agency through an Independent Research Project, the extended two-year MFA/MDes routes build on this foundation to cultivate sustained creative practice and professional leadership. Artificial Intelligence & Digital Art MA/MFA, Contemporary Art Practice MA/MFA, Design Products MA/MDes, Intelligent Mobility Design MA/MDes and Digital Narrative Arts MA/MFA (formerly Digital Direction) will offer an extended two-year route alongside the one-year MA. 

These are added to the existing portfolio of two-year only options Architecture MArch and Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc (offered jointly with Imperial College London).

Find out more and apply
Applications for the upcoming academic year open on October 12. Prospective students can discover more by reserving a place at upcoming Open Days, online from September 28 to October 2 and on-campus from October 28–November 12.