For four days in October, a handful of private houses in the Coachella Valley open their front doors. Modernism Week runs from Thursday October 15th to Sunday October 18th 2026, and it is one of the two times a year you can walk through buildings that are photographed from the curb the rest of the time.

This is the autumn edition, and it is the smaller one. February's festival runs eleven days and several hundred events; October is four days and around fifty, which makes it the version you can actually see most of. Tickets are on sale, and they go event by event rather than as a single pass — you build the weekend you want rather than working through somebody else's.

The trade-off is that the good ones sell out, and the best of them are small by design. A house tour that takes twenty people at a time is not going to be available the week before.

50+Tours, talks and parties across four days

What to book first

If you only get two things, make them buildings you cannot otherwise get into.

Frey House II

Albert Frey built it into the rock above the city in 1964 — 1,200 square feet, a boulder through the middle of the living room, and a view down the whole valley. It is owned by the Palm Springs Art Museum and it is almost never open. The October ticket includes museum day passes.

Sunnylands

The Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage, by A. Quincy Jones, where eight American presidents were entertained. The historic house tour is the inside of it, not the gardens.

The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

Not a house at all, and one of the best things on the programme. Frey designed the Valley Station and E. Stewart Williams the Mountain Station; you go up between the two in the rotating tramcar and have lunch at the top. Thursday 15 October, $170.

Blue Skies Village

Bing Crosby's trailer park, which is a sentence that undersells it. Six interiors, two outdoor spaces and the clubhouse William F. Cody designed, behind the gates in Rancho Mirage. Saturday 17 October, $85.

Midcentury Palm Springs living room with a sunken conversation pit, terrazzo floor and full-height glass onto a pool and mountains
The reason to go inside: how the roofline frames the mountain, and what the light does at five o'clock.

The rest of the program

Beyond the marquee tickets, the week sorts itself into four kinds of thing, and a good weekend has one of each.

  • Home tours. The Marquee at Twin Palms is this year's featured house — a 1950s post-and-beam reimagined, in the neighbourhood Alexander Construction built.
  • Bus tours. The Premier Double Decker Architectural Tour is the overview, and the right first move if you have never been. The Homes That Define Palm Springs covers the canon.
  • Walking tours. Twin Palms Estates for butterfly roofs, Golden Era of Hollywood Homes for who lived where, and a downtown walk on the people who built the place.
  • Films and talks. Hugh Kaptur's work, William Charles Tanner on early Palm Springs, and a film on Googie — the coffee-shop architecture nobody took seriously until it was nearly gone.

There is also the Modernism Show, a classic car show, a design book sale, a curated vintage event, and the evening program — After Dark, the Fall Dining Series, Nod to Mod. The parties are not a footnote; a lot of what makes this festival what it is happens at them.

A small tour group on a Palm Springs street looking at a butterfly-roofed house with a breeze-block screen and a vintage car in the drive
On foot is where the details are — shadow through breeze block, original house numbers, the angle of a roof.

Tickets

Everything is sold individually through the official site, which is the right way round: there is no pass to get value out of and nothing you are paying for twice.

Book the private houses first, then fill in around them. The bus tours, the show and the talks have room; the small house tours do not, and they are the thing you came for.

One practical warning. "Greater Palm Springs" covers about twenty miles — Sunnylands and Blue Skies Village are in Rancho Mirage, not Palm Springs — so check the meeting point and leave real time between events. Two tours an hour apart at opposite ends of the valley is how people miss the second one. Prices and availability are on the official October program.

Where to stay

The obvious answer is a midcentury hotel, and it is a good answer. But there is a better one for this particular festival, and it is slightly odd that nobody says it: spend four days admiring how these houses work, then go back to one.

A post-and-beam house with a pool and a mountain view is not a souvenir of the tour — it is the same thing, without the twenty other people and the no-photography rule. You get the five o'clock light in the living room, the indoor-outdoor thing the tours keep explaining, and a kitchen for the morning after Nod to Mod.

  • Stay central if it is your first time. Most tours leave from Palm Springs and downtown puts the restaurants and the vintage shops in walking distance.
  • Take a car. Events run the length of the valley and rideshare between Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs on a festival Saturday is a gamble.
  • October is still warm. Hot in the afternoon, cool after dark, and several tours are entirely outdoors on pavement. Bring a hat and shoes you can stand up in for three hours.
  • These are people's houses. Photography rules vary, floors are original, and the neighbours live there every other week of the year.
  • Leave one slot empty. The Art Museum, a hotel lobby, or a drive through Las Palmas at dusk will be better than whatever you would have booked in it.

Stay in the architecture

Our Architectural Homes collection is the houses in our portfolio where the Palm Springs School is still visible — low rooflines, walls of glass, and the garden coming indoors.

See the collection

Questions people ask

When is Modernism Week October 2026?

Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October 2026, across Greater Palm Springs.

How is it different from February?

February is the signature festival — eleven days and several hundred events. October is four days and around fifty. Same subject, a fraction of the scale, and easier to see properly.

Do I need a ticket for each event?

Yes. Everything is booked individually, so the schedule is entirely yours to build.

Do things sell out?

The private home tours and small-capacity experiences, routinely. Book those first and treat the rest as flexible.

Are the events all in Palm Springs?

No — Sunnylands and Blue Skies Village are in Rancho Mirage, and other events are spread across the valley. Check each meeting point.

Dates, events and prices in this guide were checked against the official Modernism Week October 2026 programme. Programmes change and events sell out — confirm anything you are making plans around at modernismweek.com. This is an independent guide and is not affiliated with Modernism Week.