October’s Modernism Week has wrapped up. Four days, October 15–18, 2026, and around fifty ways into the architecture. The next festival is the full eleven-day edition, February 11–21, 2027: our Modernism Week 2027 guide has the dates, when tickets go on sale and where to stay. The October edition returns October 14–17, 2027. Here is the guide as it ran before the festival.

For four days in October, a handful of private houses in the Coachella Valley open their front doors. Modernism Week runs from Thursday, October 15 to Sunday, October 18, 2026, and for most of these buildings it is a rare chance to walk through rooms 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 best of them are small by design, and small tours sell out. Check live availability before you plan a day around one.

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 — about 800 square feet as first built, a boulder that comes right inside to divide the living and sleeping areas, and a view down the whole valley. It is owned by the Palm Springs Art Museum and visited only on scheduled tours. The Modernism Week tour runs daily, October 15–18, by shuttle from the museum’s Aluminaire parking lot; it is for ages 13 and up, has steps and is not wheelchair accessible, and the ticket includes museum admission on any day of the festival the museum is open.

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 program. 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 Peaks Restaurant at the top. Thursday, October 15 or Friday, October 16; the official experience page has session times, prices and availability.

Blue Skies Village

Bing Crosby's trailer park, which is a sentence that undersells it. Seven mobile-home interiors, a hidden garden and the clubhouse William F. Cody designed, behind the gates in Rancho Mirage. Saturday, October 17, for ages 13 and up; tickets and visitor requirements are on the official tour page.

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 neighborhood 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 Palm Springs Modernism Fall 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. Check each event’s live availability and meeting point before you build the rest of the schedule; the small house tours are the ones that go, 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 tour schedule. 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. Our Palm Springs weather guide has what October usually does.
  • These are people's houses. Photography rules vary, floors are original, and the neighbors 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.

Looking ahead to February 2027

February is the signature festival: eleven days, February 11–21, 2027, with the Palm Springs Modernism Show and the Intersect art and design fair on the opening weekend. The schedule preview goes live October 25 and tickets go on sale November 1. Our Modernism Week 2027 guide has everything announced so far, and where to stay.

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, October 15 to Sunday, October 18, 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 often do. Book those first, and check live availability on each event page rather than assuming.

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.

Updated October 20, 2026, after the festival. Dates and events in this guide were checked on October 2, 2026 against the official Modernism Week October 2026 program; prices are on each event’s own page. Programs 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.