Modernism Week Palm Springs: The Complete Guide

Modernism Week is the reason Palm Springs is booked solid in February. It is an eleven-day architecture and design festival that puts you inside houses that are otherwise private property, on buses driven past addresses you'd get moved along from, and in front of the people who designed and restored them. The most recent February edition drew more than 111,000 attendees across 450-plus separate events, and in twenty-one years the festival has hosted over 1.5 million guests.

It is also, logistically, a ticket-buying sport. Here's how to play it.

When Is Modernism Week in Palm Springs

There are two of them, and people confuse them constantly.

The main event is in February. Modernism Week 2027 runs February 11–21, 2027 — eleven days, Thursday through Sunday of the following weekend. Tickets go on sale November 1, 2026 at noon PT, and the schedule preview lands October 25, 2026.

The fall edition is four days in October. Modernism Week – October is October 15–18, 2026, with tickets already on sale as of August 1, 2026. The 2027 fall edition is October 14–17, 2027, on sale August 1, 2027.

October is the smaller, calmer, cheaper version: bus tours, home tours, walking tours, films, talks, and social events, compressed into a long weekend. If the February crush sounds exhausting, October is the answer. The weather is better than you'd think, the hotel rates are lower, and you can actually get a dinner reservation.

Tickets & Passes

There is no all-access pass. Modernism Week sells events individually, which means your budget is entirely a function of how greedy you get.

Prices from the most recent February festival, as a planning reference:

• Featured Home Tours — $40 and $65, with a sunset reception version at $125
• Signature Home Tours — $150 in Palm Springs, $100 in Palm Desert, $200 for the first-ever La Quinta Country Club tour
• Neighborhood tours — $60 to $150, with fifteen on offer including five new ones
• Premier Double Decker Architectural Bus Tour — $130
• Other bus tours (Charles Phoenix, Illuminated Twilight, Rat Pack homes, celebrity homes) — $100 to $160
• Kaufmann Residence garden tours — $85
• Modernism Show & Sale — day entry typically in the $5 to $15 range

Prices move year to year, so treat these as a shape rather than a quote and check the current schedule.

How to Actually Get the Tickets You Want

This is the practical core of the whole guide.

1. Read the schedule preview the day it drops — October 25 for the February festival, July 25 for the October one. It is published a full week before the on-sale specifically so you can plan.
2. Build a ranked shortlist, not a wish list. Decide what you're buying first, second, third, before the portal opens.
3. Be in the portal at or before noon PT on sale day, logged in, payment details saved.
4. Buy the capacity-constrained things first. Architecture tours and residential home tours are genuinely limited by seats and by how many people fit through a front door. Talks, films, receptions, and the Show & Sale have far more room and can wait.
5. Don't stack tours back to back. They run long, parking is a whole thing, and a tour that starts twenty minutes late will eat the next one.

Best Home Tours & Events

The Featured Home Tours are the flagship: usually two houses per February festival, each restored or reimagined by a named designer, open across most of the run so you have multiple dates to choose from. Recent examples give the flavor — a neglected 1963 house fully reimagined by Trina Turk, and a 1957 residence in Twin Palms redone by an interiors firm. These are the most accessible tickets on the schedule and the best value at $40 to $65.

Neighborhood tours are the underrated pick. Fifteen of them, spread across Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, and Indian Wells, each opening multiple houses in a single walkable pocket. You see more architecture per dollar here than anywhere else on the schedule.

Signature Home Tours are the splurge, and the ones that come with a reception attached are the ones people talk about afterward.

The bus tours are the right call if you are new to the festival or the desert. The Premier Double Decker gives you the whole architectural geography in one sitting, which makes everything else you see that week make more sense.

And then there's CAMP, the festival's Community and Meeting Place, which functions as the hub: a lounge, a bar, a bookstore, a talk schedule, and a Newcomers Reception that is free to attend. If you buy nothing else, go there.

Where to Stay During Modernism Week

Book at the same time you buy tickets, which is to say early November for February. Palm Springs hotel inventory during the eleven days behaves like a festival market: rates jump, minimum-night requirements appear, and the design-forward properties everyone wants go first.

Staying in Palm Springs proper is worth the premium here in a way it isn't for Coachella, because the events are clustered downtown and in the surrounding neighborhoods, and parking near tour starts is the single most annoying part of the week. Walking distance to CAMP is a real quality-of-life upgrade.

If February is sold out or over budget, look at the mid-valley — Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert — where rates soften and you're still 15 to 25 minutes from most events. Or take the October edition instead and spend the difference on tours.

Modernism Week 2027 Dates

To restate it plainly, because this is the thing people come here for:

• Modernism Week 2027 (main festival): February 11–21, 2027. Tickets on sale November 1, 2026, noon PT. Schedule preview October 25, 2026.
• Modernism Week – October 2026: October 15–18, 2026. Tickets on sale since August 1, 2026.
• Modernism Week – October 2027: October 14–17, 2027. Tickets on sale August 1, 2027.

Put the November 1 on-sale in your calendar now. That's the whole trick.