2026 EDITION

Invitation

The Summer Forum is an ideas festival on a very small scale. It’s a weekend retreat in Italy. It’s an excuse to bring friends together from across the world.

Usually these types of gatherings happen for a birthday or a wedding, where the focus is on one person or a couple and the activity is centered on eating and drinking.

I want the Summer Forum to give more energy than it takes. Eating, drinking and celebrating are not ruled out, but the main focus will be on different types of content: films, discussions, lectures and workshops we will organize together. We will pick a theme together this spring that lightly connects everything we do. On the last night we can make a small party.

For anyone who comes, I want it to feel like we are making something new together: You would all be founding members. I also want it to be completely humble and open, without doctrine or dogma, aside from making it an adults-only event and minimizing the importance of screens.

A FEW KEY UPDATES FOR 2026

We wanted to share some additional information about our plans for the first weekend of June — June 5–8 2026, Friday PM to Monday AM.

OUR THEME
“Beyond Category”

We are borrowing it from Jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington who liked to describe his music this way. He easily blended all kinds of references and moods in a collaborative and modern way to create something new and beyond simple categories. Maybe it has something to do with the Summer Forum.

We thought the idea of Beyond Category could give us both enough open space and focus to work with. We are living in a time where there are a lot of boxes around everything — classification, databases — but it can leave us missing something more beautiful and difficult to define.

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Read more in an interview with “Darryl” author Jackie Ess “On making work that doesn't fit neatly into categories” or the New York Times review of the exhibition “Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington”

Register & What to expect