Eastpak is a Finalist for Best Luggage Brand at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and its presence widens the category's definition in a way frequent flyers will recognise instantly: for a generation of travellers, the luggage that matters most never sees a hold. In the hand-baggage age — where
savvy packers plan whole trips around cabin allowances — Eastpak's street-hardened soft luggage is precisely the right toolkit.
The brand's credentials were earned on shoulders, not carousels. Born from American workwear pragmatism half a century ago and adopted by every urban subculture since, Eastpak built its name on packs that survive decades of daily, indifferent abuse — a durability promise formalised in warranties stretching to thirty years, which remains among the longest and least-hedged commitments anywhere in the industry. Translated to travel, that DNA produces cabin bags, wheeled softsides and crossovers that treat a Ryanair sizer, a train rack and a client's reception floor with equal indifference.
Function drives the range with a single-mindedness the fashion end of the market never quite manages. Padded laptop compartments that actually fit modern laptops, wide openings designed around security trays, compression that turns a full weekend's kit into an underseat bag, and fabrics that shrug off weather and coffee alike — the practical grammar of the modern short-haul business trip, executed entirely without preciousness or fuss. The design language keeps its youth-culture fluency intact, which suits the growing cohort of professionals whose work uniform never included a suit, while collaborations keep the brand in the cultural conversation no traditional luggage house can enter.
Value completes the argument emphatically: Eastpak delivers its proven durability at prices that let a company equip an entire graduate intake in one order, and the warranty mathematics quietly embarrasses rivals costing several multiples more. It is luggage for how an increasing share of business travel actually happens — fast, light and overhead-locker-shaped, exactly as the packing advice at
Travelling for Business keeps describing.
A place among the 2026 Finalists recognises that the category belongs to backpacks too. Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and Eastpak's many supporters will carry their allegiance, as ever, on both shoulders.
