'Hearts and Minds'

WAF 2026 Programme theme: ‘Water’

'Water’ will be the theme for the 2026 edition of World Architecture Festival. It will be held, appropriately, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – which has 165 miles of inland waterways, and is know as the ‘Venice of North America’. Speakers will address how water plays a key part in the creation and management of our built environment: from energy generation to food production; the different forms water can take (steam, ice); the challenges of glut (flood) and dearth (desert); health and hygiene; and the way that architecture and infrastructure both influence and respond to the world of water, of which we ourselves are an integral and inevitable part.

Our full programme and speaker line-up will be revealed in the coming weeks.