Experience Design Summit, often referred to as EDS, is an invitation-only gathering created for people who believe that the way something feels can be just as important as what it is. Rather than functioning like a conventional conference where attendees simply listen to presentations and exchange business cards, the Experience Design Summit brings together creative thinkers, designers, founders, architects, hospitality leaders, storytellers, cultural curators, and experience makers to explore one central question: how do we design experiences that genuinely move people?
The 2026 edition of the Experience Design Summit will take place from 23rd to 28th October 2026 at Mundota Palace & Fort in Jaipur, India. With attendance intentionally limited to around 150 participants, EDS is designed around meaningful interaction, immersive experiences, intellectual exchange, and the power of place.
What Is the Experience Design Summit?
The Experience Design Summit is a curated gathering focused on the art and science of creating meaningful human experiences. It explores how people interact emotionally, physically, socially, and intellectually with spaces, brands, destinations, stories, events, hospitality, culture, and technology.
The summit brings together professionals from different creative and business disciplines because experience design does not belong to one industry. An architect may think about how a building makes people feel. A hospitality leader considers the journey of a guest. A filmmaker creates emotional connections through storytelling. A brand strategist shapes how people perceive a company. An immersive artist transforms an audience from spectators into participants.
These may appear to be different activities, but they share a common foundation: designing what people experience.
That is the space in which EDS operates.
Is Experience Design Summit a Conference?
Not exactly.
Although the summit includes speakers, sessions, performances, conversations, and presentations, describing EDS simply as a conference misses the central idea behind it.
A traditional conference often focuses on information transfer. Speakers present ideas, audiences listen, and participants network during scheduled breaks. The Experience Design Summit takes a different approach by making the environment, relationships, conversations, and experiences part of the programme itself.
The intention is not simply for participants to leave with more information. It is for them to leave with different perspectives.
The distinction is important because experience design is itself about understanding what happens beyond the obvious function of an environment or event. EDS attempts to apply the same principle to the summit itself.
The venue matters. The people matter. The conversations matter. The moments between scheduled sessions matter.
Together, they become part of the experience.
Why Is Experience Design Important?
People rarely remember every detail of a product, event, hotel, restaurant, exhibition, destination, or brand interaction. What often remains is how that experience made them feel.
Think about a memorable hotel stay. You may forget the exact room number, the design specifications of the furniture, or the details of the check-in process. But you remember how the place made you feel when you arrived.
The same principle applies to cities, restaurants, retail stores, cultural spaces, entertainment, tourism, and brands.
Experience design considers these emotional and sensory responses intentionally. It asks what people see, hear, touch, notice, anticipate, discover, remember, and ultimately carry away with them.
This makes experience design increasingly important across industries where differentiation cannot depend only on products or services.
What Does Experience Design Actually Mean?
Experience design is the process of intentionally shaping the complete interaction a person has with a place, product, service, event, story, brand, or environment.
It goes beyond aesthetics.
A beautifully designed room can still provide a poor experience if it is confusing to navigate. An impressive event can still feel forgettable if the audience has no emotional connection with it. A luxury hotel can have extraordinary architecture but fail to create a meaningful guest journey.
Experience design connects all of these elements.
It considers the relationship between space, people, emotion, storytelling, atmosphere, interaction, timing, and memory.
This is why the discipline attracts professionals from such different backgrounds. Each brings a different understanding of what makes an experience meaningful.
Why Is Jaipur the Location for EDS 2026?
The location of the Experience Design Summit 2026 is not simply a backdrop.
Jaipur is one of India’s most recognisable cultural and architectural destinations, with a history deeply connected to craftsmanship, design, architecture, colour, storytelling, hospitality, and royal heritage.
The summit will take place at Mundota Palace & Fort, a historic property with centuries of history overlooking the landscape around Jaipur.
For an event dedicated to experience design, this creates an interesting relationship between the subject being discussed and the environment in which it is being discussed.
Participants will not simply talk about how architecture, atmosphere, heritage, and place influence human emotions. They will spend several days experiencing those qualities themselves.
The stone walls, courtyards, changing light, landscape, heritage architecture, and quiet spaces become part of the summit’s own experience.
In that sense, Jaipur is not merely the destination for EDS 2026. Jaipur becomes part of the curriculum.
Who Attends the Experience Design Summit?
EDS is designed for people whose work influences how other people experience the world.
Its community can include founders, architects, designers, cultural curators, hospitality professionals, destination developers, luxury leaders, event creators, immersive storytellers, brand strategists, artists, filmmakers, and creative entrepreneurs.
The diversity is intentional.
A designer working on a luxury hotel may have something to learn from an immersive theatre creator. A destination developer may gain a new perspective from a performing artist. A brand strategist may approach storytelling differently after speaking with a cultural curator.
These unexpected connections are one of the reasons the summit keeps its attendance limited.
The objective is not to create the largest possible audience. It is to create the right environment for meaningful conversations.
Why Is EDS Limited to 150 Participants?
The limited attendance is one of the defining characteristics of the Experience Design Summit.
When thousands of people attend an event, meaningful personal interaction can become difficult. Conversations become brief, networking becomes transactional, and participants can easily remain inside familiar professional circles.
A smaller gathering creates a different dynamic.
With approximately 150 participants, people have more opportunities to recognise one another, continue conversations, share meals, exchange ideas, and develop relationships beyond formal sessions.
The smaller scale also supports the philosophy of proximity that sits at the heart of EDS.
The goal is not simply to put impressive people in the same building. It is to create enough space for them to actually engage with one another.
Who Are the Speakers and Faculty at EDS 2026?
The Experience Design Summit brings together people who approach experience from very different disciplines.
The 2026 faculty includes names such as Ferdinando Buscema, James Wallman, Paul Bulencea, Claus Raasted, Monica Dogra, Seema Anand, Barnet Bain, Colin Nightingale, Koert Vermeulen, Omung Kumar, Roshan Abbas, and Brenton Sizwe Zola.
Their backgrounds span magic and future thinking, cultural forecasting, immersive experiences, performance, classical literature, cinema, theatre, light design, production design, live media, and installation art.
This diversity reflects the summit’s central philosophy.
There is no single formula for designing an experience that moves someone. Sometimes it is created through architecture. Sometimes through music, light, performance, storytelling, ritual, technology, hospitality, or simply through the way people are brought together.
EDS creates a space where these different perspectives can meet.
What Happens During Experience Design Summit 2026?
The five-day programme is designed to move beyond traditional presentations.
Alongside conversations and sessions, EDS 2026 includes immersive and social experiences that allow participants to experience the principles being discussed rather than simply hearing about them.
One of the highlighted experiences is Nākaloka, created by Monica Dogra and Victorien. It transforms the palace courtyard into an immersive gathering built around sound, ritual, collective presence, and participation.
The Sundowner at the War Fort provides another type of experience, combining music, the Jaipur skyline, the Aravalli landscape, and social interaction.
The Polo Lunch and Exhibition Match introduces participants to another dimension of Rajasthan through sport, heritage, open spaces, and shared hospitality.
These experiences demonstrate an important principle of experience design: not everything needs to be explained.
Sometimes the strongest experience is created by giving people the right environment and allowing them to discover it for themselves.
What Is the Philosophy Behind Experience Design Summit?
One of the ideas associated with EDS is “Experience is the economy.”
The phrase reflects a broader shift in how people make decisions.
Consumers increasingly evaluate more than the functional value of a product or service. They consider how a brand makes them feel, how easy an interaction is, what memories it creates, and whether the experience feels meaningful.
This is particularly visible in hospitality, travel, luxury, entertainment, retail, culture, and events.
A destination is no longer simply somewhere to travel. A hotel is no longer simply a place to sleep. A restaurant is no longer simply a place to eat.
The emotional journey surrounding those transactions can become the reason people choose one option over another.
Experience design therefore becomes a strategic discipline rather than merely a creative exercise.
Why Does Experience Design Summit Matter to Businesses?
For businesses, experience design can influence how customers perceive value.
Two companies can offer similar products but create completely different customer experiences. The company that understands its audience better can create stronger emotional connections, greater loyalty, and more memorable interactions.
This is particularly important as markets become increasingly competitive.
Technology can be copied. Features can be replicated. Visual trends can spread quickly.
But a carefully constructed experience involving people, place, story, emotion, and culture can be much harder to reproduce.
This is why experience design has relevance far beyond the creative industries. It can influence hospitality, tourism, real estate, retail, entertainment, education, corporate environments, events, and brand development.
What Makes EDS Different From Other Design Events?
The biggest difference is the way the summit treats experience itself as part of the event design.
The venue is carefully chosen. Attendance is limited. The programme combines intellectual discussions with immersive experiences and unstructured social time. Participants are encouraged to interact rather than simply consume content.
That creates an environment in which the format supports the subject.
Instead of spending five days talking about experience design inside a generic conference hall, participants spend five days exploring the subject within a historic palace and fort in Rajasthan.
That contrast captures the essence of EDS.
The summit is not only asking people to think about experience.
It is asking them to experience the thinking.
Who Should Attend Experience Design Summit 2026?
EDS 2026 can be particularly relevant for professionals who create, manage, design, or influence experiences.
Architects may find new perspectives on how spaces affect emotion. Hospitality professionals can explore new approaches to guest journeys. Brand leaders can examine how storytelling shapes perception. Event creators can discover ways to turn audiences into participants. Cultural practitioners can explore how heritage and contemporary experiences can interact.
Founders and business leaders may also find value in the summit because experience increasingly influences how organisations differentiate themselves.
Ultimately, the most relevant attendees are not defined only by their job titles.
They are people who are genuinely curious about why some experiences stay with us while others disappear almost immediately.
How to Attend Experience Design Summit 2026
The Experience Design Summit 2026 is scheduled for 23rd to 28th October 2026 at Mundota Palace & Fort, Jaipur, India.
Attendance is limited to approximately 150 curated participants, and the summit follows an invitation-based approach.
Those interested in attending can explore the official EDS website and contact the summit team regarding the application process.
Experience Design Summit – Official Website
Final Thoughts
So, what is the Experience Design Summit?
It is more than a design conference and more than a networking event.
It is a curated gathering built around a simple but increasingly important question: how can we create experiences that people genuinely feel, remember, and carry with them?
In October 2026, that question will be explored through conversations, performances, immersive experiences, architecture, hospitality, storytelling, culture, and human connection at Mundota Palace & Fort in Jaipur.
Perhaps that is the most interesting thing about EDS.
A summit about experience design has chosen not merely to talk about experiences.
It has designed one.
Experience Design Summit 2026
23rd–28th October 2026
Mundota Palace & Fort, Jaipur, India
