Arcadia Yachts has won Best Interior Design at the 2026 World Yachts Trophies with Mabelle II, the third A80 and a highly customised 23.98m yacht shown at the Cannes Yachting Festival. The award is particularly relevant to Luxury Yacht Guide because the A80 sits only two centimetres below the 24-metre boundary while offering volumes and accommodation more commonly associated with larger yachts.
Mabelle II was developed through a close co-creation process with its owners, with changes extending beyond fabrics and loose furniture into layout, finishes, fitted furniture and decorative details. The result demonstrates how far a semi-production platform can be personalised without abandoning the engineering and spatial logic of the original A80.
Mabelle II pushes customisation beyond a décor package
Arcadia says the third A80 preserves the strengths of the original platform while interpreting bespoke design in a more sophisticated way. That distinction matters because customisation can range from colour choices to structural re-planning, and Mabelle II is presented as a yacht where owner input shaped the way spaces are arranged and experienced.
The award therefore recognises the relationship between architecture and decoration rather than a single visual theme. Materials, furniture and lighting have to work with sightlines, circulation and glazing if an interior is to remain coherent once the yacht is occupied by guests and crew.
Five guest cabins fit inside a 23.98m hull
Arcadia's current technical data lists ten guest berths in five cabins, with four crew berths in two separate cabins. The owner's suite is on the main deck, an arrangement that preserves privacy while allowing the lower deck to carry the remaining guest accommodation without sacrificing the yacht's widebody character.
The A80 measures 6.95 metres in beam and carries an 80-square-metre upper deck, giving the design team substantial horizontal area to connect interior and exterior zones. Large opening glazed surfaces further reduce the visual boundary between saloon, deck and sea, which is central to Arcadia's design language.
The technical platform supports the interior brief
The A80 uses twin Volvo Penta IPS propulsion and a semi-displacement hull, with Arcadia listing approximately 19 knots maximum speed in the standard configuration and about 20 knots with the optional engine package. Solar panels are rated at roughly 4.3kW, contributing electrical energy without altering the main propulsion architecture.
Those numbers are not the reason for an interior-design award, but they affect the spaces available to designers. Machinery packaging, tankage, crew circulation and structural requirements all compete for volume, so creating five guest cabins and expansive social areas below 24 metres is partly an engineering achievement as well as an aesthetic one.
A second kind of recognition for the A80 concept
Arcadia's official A80 material already records a 2025 World Yachts Trophies Best Layout award for the model, while the 2026 recognition focuses on the interior of Mabelle II. Taken together, the awards suggest that the platform is being judged both for its underlying spatial concept and for the way an individual owner version can be developed from it.
For buyers, the useful question is how much of Mabelle II's customisation can be reproduced on a future build and at what cost, weight and delivery-time impact. The award makes the third hull a useful reference point, but prospective owners should still define their own priorities before assuming that every custom feature belongs in the standard A80 specification.
