The international Design Futures Conference — bringing together the global design research community at IIT Bombay, Mumbai, December 4–6, 2026.
Design has always been a discipline oriented toward the future — imagining what does not yet exist, questioning what does, and building bridges between the present and the possible. Yet in 2026, this forward-orientation carries new weight and urgency.
From the climate emergency to the proliferation of artificial intelligence, from deepening global inequalities to the rapid erosion of biodiversity — the challenges of our era demand not merely incremental adjustment, but fundamental reimagination. Design Futures is a call to that work.
Converge 2026 asks: What does it mean to design responsibly and radically for the futures we actually need? Whose futures are being designed, and who gets to participate in designing them? How can design research lead not just react?
We invite scholarship, practice-based research, and speculative propositions that take seriously the idea that design can and must be a transformative force — across cultures, across scales, and across disciplines.
Three interconnected questions structure the conference:
The IDC School of Design is the direct host department at IIT Bombay, providing the venue, infrastructure, and local organisation expertise to bring Converge 2026 to life in Mumbai.