Programming Preview for Edge Esmeralda 2026
What the month looks like, and how to get involved
Tickets are on sale now, and prices increase regularly. We recommend getting your ticket early (you can switch weeks if you’re unsure when you’d like to come).
Interested in running programming? Fill out our Programming Interest form.
Key takeaways:
Edge Esmeralda returns to Healdsburg, California from May 30 – June 27, 2026. Each week is organized around a theme:
June 1–7 | Protocols for Flourishing: Health & Longevity, Consciousness, Wellbeing, Bio & Neuro
June 8–14 | Intelligence and Autonomy: AI, Governance & Coordination, Hard Tech, Privacy
June 15–21 | Emergent Futures & World Building: Art & Culture, Decentralized Tech, Creative AI & Technologies, Spatial Computing
June 22–27 | Environments of Tomorrow: New Urbanism, Education, Energy & Climate, Food Systems
These themes are directional. All four topics will be reflected throughout the month, and you don’t need to come only for “your” week. We highly recommend staying for as long as you can. If you can come for the full month, you’ll get the most out of the overlaps between communities.
If you’re interested in hosting a session or running a program, which can range from a one-day unconference to a month-long residency, fill out our Programming Interest form.
Weekly Themes
Each week at Edge Esmeralda is organized around a theme. Programming for that theme kicks off on Monday, and we encourage you to arrive over the weekend before so you can settle in, meet your cohort, and hit the ground running. Sundays are a great time to arrive because you’ll get to see the orientation and weekly demo day.
Saturday, May 30, is arrival day, and Sunday, May 31, will be orientation, the Opening Ceremony, and an evening activity to help you find your people early. From there, the month unfolds:
Week 1: Protocols for Flourishing · June 1 – 7
Health & Longevity, Consciousness, Wellbeing, Bio & Neuro
We open with the track that benefits most from starting early: health, human performance, and consciousness. Expect programming on metabolic health, biotech, longevity research, biohacking, neurotech, and contemplative practice. Multi-week trials and experiments will launch here and run through the rest of the month, so participants and researchers in this space should plan to arrive at the start.
Week 2: Intelligence and Autonomy · June 8 – 14
AI, Governance & Coordination, Hard Tech, Privacy, d/acc
The second week turns to the systems gaining the power to act on our behalf, and the questions that follow. AI agents, autonomous infrastructure, zero-knowledge cryptography, privacy-preserving systems, governance design, and d/acc. This is the week for people building capable systems and for people interested in who controls them, how they're verified, and what happens when they scale.
Week 3: Emergent Futures & World Building · June 15 – 21
Art & Culture, Decentralized Tech, Creative AI & Technologies, Spatial Computing
Week three is about imagining and building new worlds. Decentralized technologies, immersive media, creative AI, and spatial computing. Think world-building in the broadest sense: from onchain coordination to virtual experiences, from speculative fiction to new models of collective infrastructure.
Week 4: Environments of Tomorrow · June 22 – 27
New Urbanism, Education, Energy & Climate, Food Systems
We close with the systems that shape how we live together. New Urbanism, education, food and agriculture, energy, and the future of communities. This is the week to bring ideas about how the physical and civic world should work, and to showcase what the village has built over the month.
Important note: Topic assignments across weeks are directional, not fixed. Themes overlap, programs can span multiple weeks, and the specific subtopics will evolve as collaborators come on board.
Programming at Edge Esmeralda is co-created. Subtracks will keep expanding, and you don’t need to wait for an invitation: if any of these weeks spark an idea for something you’d like to run, let us know.
Three Types of Programming (and how you can get involved)
We’ve organized this year’s programming into three formats, each serving a different purpose. We’ll share more on each in the coming weeks, but here’s the framework.
Tracks
Tracks are about showcasing ideas. A track is a day or week of thematic programming - talks, workshops, salons, unconferences - led by a person or small team with knowledge and a strong network in their domain. Tracks are the most visible part of Edge Esmeralda. They attract experts, create entry points for the whole village, and most sessions are open to all.
Examples from EE25:
Vital Futures: Daily labs, blood testing, and evening salons exploring metabolic health and biotech innovation.
Consciousness Week: Bridged neuroscience, AI, and contemplative traditions, from vasocomputation theory to cross-tradition mappings of enlightenment.
Cities of Tomorrow: Explored urban design, community infrastructure, and civic technology. Featured a fireside with Audrey Tang on digital democracy.
Crypto Academic Camp: Leading crypto researchers in deep, off-record conversation on mechanism design, policy, and foundational problems in DeFi.
Residencies
Residencies are about building and creating. A residency brings together a cohort of 10–20 builders: founders, researchers, developers, creators - around a shared thesis. They can last a couple of weeks or the whole month.
The focus is on shipping: projects launched, papers written, teams formed. Many residencies also run a track during their time, spending most of the month heads-down and then hosting a week of programming to share their work with the village.
Past examples:
Long Journey Residency (EE 2025): 14 builders working across synthetic biology, neurotech, AI infrastructure, and more. Residents used the village as a testbed for frontier projects.
d/acc Residency (Edge City Patagonia 2025): Residents worked on pathogen detection, DAO governance, onchain collective intelligence, privacy-preserving financial proofs, and more.
World Builder Residency (EE 2025): Developers and designers building apps using World ID, World Chain, and MiniKit. Three projects received bounties for outstanding work.
Agartha House (Edge City Patagonia 2025): A creativity incubator exploring benevolent AI agents, new startups, and solarpunk community models.
Experiments
Experiments are about testing. When you have hundreds of curious, high-trust people in one place willing to try new tools, share data, and participate in novel protocols, you get a rare chance to run applied research in the real world.
Experiments range from piloting new products with a live user base to prototyping social protocols and collecting data that would be hard to gather elsewhere.
Past examples:
Constellation (EE 2025): Piloted a daily neural data collection protocol — participants wore neural caps for an hour a day to help train a foundation model of brain state.
Fulcra Dynamics (EE 2025): Aggregated wearable data into a village-wide wellness dashboard showing how people were moving, sleeping, and connecting.
RadicalxChange Community Currency (EE 2024 & Edge City Lanna): Piloted a community currency experiment, unlocking new ideas for decentralized economic models.
Off-Grid Solar Datacenter (EE 2025): A solar-powered, battery-backed system running on-site to support GPU-intensive projects — testing new approaches to sustainable, decentralized compute.
Dynamic Health (Edge Patagonia 2025): A multimodal health data experiment, combining biometric tracking with resilience protocols (retro here).
These categories overlap, and that’s by design. A residency might run a track. A track might spawn an experiment. An experiment might be run by a residency.
The d/acc Residency in Patagonia ran weekly demos and contributed programming throughout the month. Vital Futures kicked off live blood testing and biometric tracking that became ongoing experiments. The boundaries between formats are porous, and the best programs tend to cross them.
How to Get Involved
We’re accepting expressions of interest for Edge Esmeralda 2026 programming across all three formats. Whether you want to lead a track, curate a residency, run an experiment, or simply host a single workshop or session - we want to hear from you.
→ Edge Esmeralda 2026: Programming Expression of Interest
Tell us what you’d like to do, what support you’d need, and who you’d bring. We’ll follow up with details on logistics, housing, and funding as we confirm programming over the coming months. And we’ll publish deeper posts on each programming format, along with announcements of confirmed programs, in the weeks ahead.
It takes a village to build a popup village. If any of this resonates, get involved. The best programming at Edge Esmeralda has always come from participants who showed up with an idea and made it happen.
If you already know you want to attend, apply and get your ticket here.
Questions? Reach out to info@edgeesmeralda.com.
Edge Esmeralda team ☀️
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I'm so excited!!
Solid!