Lavazza’s Pod-Free Tablì Takes Third in a Seoul Design Award Category

Lavazza’s Tablì, the machine that brews from pressed tabs of coffee instead of capsules, has taken third place in the designboom Special Prize at the Seoul Design Award 2026, design site Freeyork reports.

Freeyork is upfront that its facts come from Lavazza’s own award submission, the award’s winner write-up and a Lavazza North America press release, so read the details as the company’s pitch. Per that material, each tab is just dosed, ground and tamped coffee, with no plastic, aluminum or coating, so a spent tab is food waste. The machine body uses post-consumer recycled plastic and is meant to be repairable. The judges reportedly liked how the slider controls, the height-adjustable cup rest and the see-through water tank work together as one system.

The waste argument leans on figures from German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe, cited in Lavazza’s submission: roughly 20 billion capsules thrown away each year worldwide, about 3.4 billion of them in Germany. Those are the group’s estimates, not a new study.

It’s the latest pat on the back for Tablì, which also made Time’s Best Inventions of 2026 list. The Freeyork piece lists five blends (Super Crema, Espresso, Double Espresso, Lungo and Decaf) and three finishes. One thing to ignore: it repeats a press-release line about an August 2026 US launch, which is old news by now. Men’s Journal put the machine at about $130 this week.

Our take: a design prize says the thing is pleasant to use, not that the coffee is good or the tabs are cheap. If you’re weighing it against your pod machine, start with our rundown of sustainable alternatives to Keurig pods, and do the per-cup math before you switch.