Jaipur has a rather good argument for being taken seriously as a design city. Its streets were planned, its facades painted, its palaces ornamented and its crafts perfected through generations of people who understood that a city could be built with both its inhabitants and their imaginations in mind. Even its name carries the ambition of its founder, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, who established the city in 1727. Nearly three centuries later, Jaipur is preparing to ask a question worthy of its history: what should the next version of the city look like?

The first edition of the Jaipur Design Festival, taking place from November 16 to 18, 2026, at Jawahar Kala Kendra, will bring that question into conversation. Organised by the Association of Designers of India’s Jaipur chapter, the festival carries the theme Jaipur Re-imagined by Design, bringing together designers, architects, craftspeople, educators, entrepreneurs, students and citizens to discuss the city's creative future. Jaipur turns 299 on November 18, giving the gathering a birthday to celebrate and a rather substantial inheritance to consider.

Design can sound like an industry with its own vocabulary, a fondness for mood boards and a set of rules that take a while to figure out. In practice, it concerns nearly everything we encounter. The chair you drag across a floor, the lettering on a shop sign, the vessel your chai comes in, the way a street accommodates a passing procession and the route a pedestrian takes to reach a market all involve decisions about how people live. Jaipur has spent centuries making such decisions, through architecture, urban planning, textiles, jewellery, miniature painting, blue pottery and a formidable culture of skilled making.

For Jaipur, the conversation also raises questions about who gets to shape its future, and how the city's long history of making can inform the way it grows. How do its crafts find new audiences without losing the knowledge held by the people who practise them? How can education help young designers develop work that speaks to the places they inhabit? What would a city designed around its citizens look like, and who gets a say in drawing it up? These are the sorts of questions that give a design festival its reason to exist beyond a handsome programme and a few very photogenic installations.

At Jaipur Design Festival, six forums spread across three days will address themes ranging from education and circularity to urban life, craft, industry and the future of design. The programme also includes exhibitions spanning art, design, products, brands and installations, alongside twelve workshops, design mentorship sessions, a full-day design hackathon and student-focused design labs. Heritage walks and cultural programming under the banner Pink Noise will extend the experience into the city’s wider cultural life.

The programme brings several strands of this conversation together. Design education, for instance, has consequences far beyond a classroom, influencing the people who will eventually shape our homes, public spaces, products and cities. Circular design raises questions about materials, waste and the afterlife of the objects we produce. Conversations about craft and industry bring traditional skills into contact with contemporary markets, new technologies and the demands of running a viable business. Together, these subjects open up a conversation about the relationship between creativity, livelihoods and the way a city develops.

The festival's speaker line-up brings together people working across these fields, including architect and urbanist Naresh Narsimhan, architect and conservationist Kavita Jain, design educator Jinan KB, entrepreneur Leela Bordia, innovation specialist Chintan Bokshi and architect Gagan Sharma. Their respective practices touch architecture, education, enterprise, conservation and innovation, giving the forums several points of entry into the question of how design operates in the world. The programme also makes room for mentorship and portfolio reviews, which should interest students and emerging practitioners who would like their work examined by people with experience beyond the classroom.

For anyone who has ever wanted to try their hand at making something, the workshops provide another way into the programme. Sessions listed in the festival deck include Five Senses. Fresh Stories. by Mannat Bardia, exploring storytelling through sensory experience; Characters with Character. by Phani Tetali, on character design; and Little Minds. Big Lessons. by Jinan KB, examining creativity in children and adults. A session on intellectual property and copyright, led by Shaibnoor Singh Sidhu, addresses the less glamorous but essential business of protecting creative work. Inspiration can fill a notebook, but knowing what to do with an idea after leaving the room requires its own education.

The festival also proposes a Jaipur Manifesto, drawing together five key takeaways from each forum into a shared set of ideas and priorities for the city's future. This gives the three-day gathering a question to answer beyond the familiar business of exchanging business cards and collecting tote bags. What can a roomful of people from different disciplines agree upon, and what might that agreement make possible once the event concludes? The manifesto is intended as a starting point for collaboration and action, with the work carrying on after the festival closes.

Jawahar Kala Kendra makes an apt setting for the festival. Designed by Charles Correa, the cultural institution draws on traditional planning principles associated with Jaipur itself. The venue provides an apt setting for a festival examining the relationship between design, culture and the public life of a city.

Jaipur has plenty to contribute to a national conversation about design, from the knowledge of its craftspeople to the decisions that shape its streets and the ambitions of its next generation of makers. The first Jaipur Design Festival gives these perspectives a shared platform and asks what they might accomplish together. Three days can generate a considerable number of ideas; the more interesting test will come afterwards, when those ideas have to contend with budgets, businesses, classrooms, workshops, public policy and the ordinary business of living in a city.

Jaipur's future will depend on the people who shape its built environment, sustain its crafts, teach its next generation of designers and decide how the city's creative work finds its place in the world. The festival gives them a place to start talking. The city, with its 299 years of history and another century ahead, gives them plenty to talk about.

If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:

The Jugaad Canopy & The Art of Making Something Out Of Everything We Throw Away

Jajaabor’s Latest Collection Finds A Story Of Love & Revolution In A Bowl Of Curry

The Art Of Offering: Nilaya Anthology Explores Ritual, Memory, & Material Culture