Harvard x Design
UNConference 2026

HarvardxDesign is an annual student-led conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) that brings together designers, academics, and community builders to challenge conventional design thinking. For 2026, the conference takes a fundamentally different form: an unconference.

Rather than selling tickets to a pre-planned program of expert lectures and panels, the UNConference runs on an open call model. Participants apply by proposing a topic they want to host, a conversation, a question, a problem they care about. The agenda is not set in advance. Instead, it emerges live on the day through collective brainstorming, shaped by the ~50 selected attendees in the room.

This year's theme is a An Unconference for designers that community-build and community builders that design, an exploration of how we design spaces of togetherness, move away from top-down expertise toward lived experience, and practice nonhierarchical modes of organizing.

Please visit conference official website for more information: https://www.harvarduxd.com/