This year, DC Design Week explores the references, questions, methods, and experiences that shape how ideas and perspectives develop. Across ten days of talks, workshops, archives, exhibitions, walks, conversations, and gatherings, the 2026 theme Research & Development invites designers, creatives, and curious minds to follow ideas further, deepen context and discover new ways of seeing and making.
DC Design Week at a Glance
Oct 1-2 – Lyle
An exhibition of references that shape creative practice. Books, publications, and other references selected by creative voices across Washington come together across Lyle’s Gallery, Conservatory, and Drawing Room for two days of reading, discovery, and exchange.
Oct 2 – AIA Global Campus for Architecture and Design
Preservation, interpretation, and the work of carrying a cultural archive forward. The Johnson Publishing Company Archive offers a rare look at how design shaped one of the most influential Black media institutions of the twentieth century. Go inside that legacy and the ongoing work to preserve, interpret, and create access to it, with a closer look at what the archive can reveal to designers and creatives today.
Oct 3 – The Malin DC
A creative development workshop and portfolio review. Guided sessions, portfolio feedback, and perspectives from across the creative community explore how we articulate our ideas, develop a point of view, and think more intentionally about the work we want to create.
Oct 4 – Virtual
Digital archiving and a live add-a-thon. Explore how graphic design material is found, researched, documented, and contextualized, then put that process into practice through a live add-a-thon.
Oct 5 – National Gallery of Art Library
An introduction to library research through books, images, catalogues, and rare materials, followed by a closer look inside the Rare Book Room.
Oct 5 – DC History Center at Carnegie Library
Go behind the scenes with historical photography, architecture and design resources, books, and other materials, then draw from the collection through a hands-on collage activity.
Oct 6 – The People’s Archive, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
Explore photographs, oral histories, ephemera, publications, and other primary sources documenting Washington’s people, places, communities, and cultural life.
Oct 7 – National Building Museum
Research, practice, and the ongoing work of shaping cities. Urban planner and designer Toni L. Griffin returns to Washington for the National Building Museum’s Spotlight on Design series, bringing together research, planning, and design in a conversation about the ongoing work of shaping more just cities.
Oct 8 – BSH Experience & Design Center
A celebration of design and impact in Washington, DC. An evening bringing together Washington’s design community through hospitality, food, and creative expression, with a shared toast to the people, partnerships, and next generation shaping design across the region.
Oct 9 – Vera Cocina & بار
An intimate listening experience. An intimate listening experience exploring how music carries reference, memory, influence, and point of view through conversation, records, and focused listening.
Oct 10 – Capitol Hil Arts Workshop
Analog photography as a practice of observation. An introduction to analog photography and guided photo walk exploring observation, intention, constraint, and material process.
Oct 10 – Tigres de la Noche
Fun, connection, exchange, and no phones. Close out DC Design Week with an afternoon of music, conversation, connection, and a little less screen time.
