Spectrum Tokyo Festival 2026
Overview
A two-day "music-festival-like" design festival hosted by the design community Spectrum Tokyo. Every talk is paired with an AMA dialogue, and simultaneous Japanese-English interpretation connects practitioners from Japan and abroad. The 2026 edition moved from its usual December slot to February, drawing 40+ speakers and 400+ attendees to the DMM.com offices in Roppongi.
Foundation
- Founded
- 2022
- Founder
- Started in December 2022 as the annual festival of Spectrum Tokyo, the design media and community founded by UX MILK creator Ryo Sampei at Flying Penguins Inc.
Born to give Japan's design community — which had drifted toward methodology-heavy discussions — a flat, festival-style venue centered on design diversity and cross-border dialogue.
Transition
- 2022 The web publication Spectrum Tokyo launches and holds the first Design Fest 2022 in December
- 2023 Settles into an annual December slot as Spectrum Tokyo Festival
- 2025 The organizing community incorporates as an independent entity on its third anniversary
- 2026 Moves to February and is held at DMM.com in Roppongi, with 40+ speakers and 30+ sessions across three tracks
Voices
The session on criteria for staying simple as features grow was a standout learning.
Some companies attend once and come back as sponsors — a testament to the festival vibe and depth of dialogue.
Enjoyed the talks and sponsor booths and came away with new designer friendships (from Pon's report, in Japanese)
Sessions offered lessons on AI in design practice and organizational approaches to better experiences (from Koji Hanyu's report, in Japanese)
Stimulated by a workshop questioning generative AI's stereotyped depictions of disability and a talk on how trade-platform transparency turned logistics vendors into improvement partners, he resolved to build his own interview training program (from Goro Otsubo's Day 1 report, in Japanese)
At a shrine-themed booth, 192 visiting designers voted on what they value most, revealing far more designers committed to solving social issues than expected (from SMS Design's booth retrospective, in Japanese)
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