Madrid to host Tech&Crafts 2026, an international conference on engineering in fashion design and production

Madrid will host the third edition of the Tech&Crafts International Conference from March 18 to 20, presented in 2026 under the title Fashion Engineering. The event will present fashion as a technical, productive and cultural system, focusing on the role of engineering applied to design and industrial management.

The 2026 edition proposes engineering as an operational framework to address the sector's main challenges, such as process planning; material innovation; production optimisation; and distribution organisation. This approach is aimed at connecting academic knowledge with industry, offering an applied and cross-disciplinary perspective on the future of fashion.

Over three days, the conference will bring together researchers, professionals and institutions from 14 countries in various academic and cultural venues in the capital. These include the Museo del Traje-CIPE, the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM-UPM) and the Higher Centre for Fashion Design of Madrid (CSDMM) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

The mornings of March 18 and 19 will be dedicated to keynotes by guest experts at the Museo del Traje. The afternoons will host presentations at ETSAM-UPM, selected through an international call for papers. Guest speakers include Holly McQuillan (TU Delft), Rickard Lindqvist (University of Borås), Cécile Feilchenfeldt (KNITWEARSTUDIO, Paris), Hakan Karaosman (Politecnico di Milano), Mouhannad Al-Sayegh (London College of Fashion) and Analía Segal (Pratt Institute). These profiles are linked to academic research, sustainability and textile experimentation.

Additionally, a call for papers invites researchers and professionals to submit proposals of up to 400 words, in either Spanish or English, including a title, authorship, institutional affiliation and an abstract. Proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee and may be selected for a 15-minute oral presentation and, where applicable, for publication subject to peer review.

Thematic areas cover engineering processes and systems applied to fashion; the organisation and management of production and distribution; materials and technologies; sustainability and circularity; the history of technology and design culture; and knowledge transfer models.

This new edition of Tech&Crafts coincides with the 40th anniversary of the CSDMM within the UPM. With it, the institution reinforces its position as a space for dialogue between academia and industry. The fashion sector represents nearly 3 percent of Spain's GDP and around 2 percent of global GDP, with more than 300 million jobs linked to its value chain.

Founded in 1986, the centre integrated fashion design training into a technical university, consolidating a model that combines design culture with an academic engineering infrastructure.