2026 Global
Taste & Smell Summit
Designing The Feel
September 14 is World Taste & Smell Day, but the entire month of September is World Taste & Smell Month.
A Note from Mindy
Over the last few years, one thing has become increasingly clear to me.
The people who care most deeply about taste, smell, flavor, fragrance, food, health, perception, and human experience are scattered across the world. They work in laboratories, hospitals, kitchens, farms, startups, universities, studios, corporations, nonprofits, and communities. Many have never met one another, yet they are often wrestling with the same questions.
How do we create healthier relationships with food?
How do we support people living with sensory disorders?
How do we design products and experiences that feel more human?
How do we preserve culture, memory, and meaning in a rapidly changing world?
And increasingly, how do we ensure that emerging technologies enhance rather than diminish our sensory lives?
This year, we are bringing the Global Taste & Smell Summit online because we want more of those voices in the room.
Travel costs have risen. Calendars are full. Research budgets are stretched. Many people simply cannot justify another flight, hotel stay, conference fee, or week away from their work and families.
An online format allows us to welcome a broader community of participants, presenters, students, researchers, clinicians, creators, advocates, and curious minds from around the globe. It allows us to keep registration affordable and focus our resources on ideas, conversations, and collaboration.
The theme for this year’s Summit is Designing the Feel.
Every day, people are shaping the future through technology, medicine, food, design, hospitality, media, science, and art. Beneath all of that work sits a fundamental question: what kind of human experience are we creating?
Taste and smell have always lived at the intersection of science and story, biology and culture, memory and imagination. They connect us to one another in ways that are both deeply personal and profoundly universal. That is the conversation we hope to have this September.
Whether you are joining us from New York, Nairobi, São Paulo, Singapore, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Melbourne, or a small town few people have heard of, your perspective matters.
The senses belong to all of us, and I hope you’ll join the conversation.
Yours in service,
Mindy
Co-Founder & CEO
World Taste & Smell Association
CALL FOR SPEAKERS
We are entering an era where technology can generate images, compose music, design products, and even simulate conversation. Yet one frontier remains profoundly human: How things feel.
The Global Taste & Smell Summit invites thinkers, creators, scientists, designers, artists, technologists, clinicians, chefs, futurists, and innovators to explore the sensory dimensions shaping the future of human experience.
This year’s theme, Designing the Feel, asks a deceptively simple question: As we redesign our world, who is designing what it feels like to live in it?
From flavor and fragrance to healthcare, hospitality, AI, architecture, food systems, consumer products, public spaces, virtual environments, and space exploration, every experience is mediated through the senses.
We are seeking bold, idea-driven talks that challenge assumptions, reveal emerging research, share unexpected insights, and inspire new ways of thinking.
Potential topics include:
• The future of taste, smell, and multisensory design
• AI, perception, and synthetic experiences
• Designing emotion, memory, and belonging
• Neurodiversity and sensory inclusion
• Food, culture, and the future of eating
• Smellscapes, soundscapes, and immersive environments
• Health, wellness, and sensory medicine
• The science of pleasure, comfort, and desire
• Human performance and sensory optimization
• Designing life beyond Earth
• New frontiers in flavor, fragrance, and consumer experience
• The invisible systems shaping behavior and decision-making
We are less interested in product pitches and more interested in ideas that can change how people see the world.
Talks should be accessible, thought-provoking, and grounded in expertise. Whether you are presenting breakthrough research, a provocative question, a design experiment, or a vision for the future, we want to hear from you.
—-
Speaker Contributions
As part of our fundraising efforts, selected presenters are asked to make a modest contribution to support Summit production and WTSA’s nonprofit mission. This approach allows us to keep registration accessible while providing speakers with a global platform to share their work, research, ideas, and innovations.
Sponsorship and partnership opportunities are now available.
We invite organizations that believe in human-centered innovation to join us as sponsors and partners. Whether your work touches food, fragrance, flavor, health, hospitality, AI, consumer products, sustainability, or the future of human experience, this is an opportunity to engage with a uniquely interdisciplinary community shaping what comes next.
Join us in shaping the future of sensory wellness, especially all things taste and smell.