Modernism Week's October Edition Moves to the Dinner Table

"I am very excited about our new curated events that will allow our guests to participate in dining, social, and exclusive wine tasting experiences," Modernism Week CEO Lisa Vossler Smith told Palm Springs Life ahead of this week's festival. The newest additions this year are dinners and drinks at Palm Springs restaurants and bars.

Modernism Week – October runs Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 15–18, 2026, with more than 50 public activities. It's the four-day version of the 11-day February festival. Home and bus tours still fill much of the schedule, but this year most of what's new takes place in local dining rooms, including one at the Ace Hotel and a tasting lounge inside the Thompson Palm Springs.

Four restaurants, two nights, one format

The inaugural Modernism Week Fall Dining Series puts dinners in four restaurants on two evenings. Each one is a hosted, family-style meal, and the ticket price covers drinks, tax and gratuity.

Prices run from $120 to $230, and here is what each ticket includes. At King's Highway, $120 gets you a choice of salmon, vegetarian pesto or half chicken, plus dessert. At Eight4Nine, $130 covers four courses, with mains including carne asada, chicken Milanese, steelhead or cauliflower steak, and the price includes wine and cocktails. Bar Issi charges $230 for tomato salad, squash blossoms, a choice of salmon or skirt steak, broccolini and tiramisu. Mr. Lyons also charges $230, for shared appetizers, a salad, and filet mignon, prime rib or market fish, with premium cocktails and wine. The ModTix listing for Mr. Lyons didn't show a start time when we checked, so look at your ticket before you set out.

The dinners make up most of the new social program, but not all of it.

The rest of the new social calendar

The series sits inside a larger set of food and drink events. Wined-Up, also new this year, is a two-hour tasting at HALL Palm Springs inside the Thompson Palm Springs. It starts at 5:00 p.m. on Oct. 15 and costs $150. The pours are WALT Chardonnay, WALT Pinot Noir and HALL Cabernet Sauvignon, served with light charcuterie. Because it ends around 7:00 p.m., you could go straight from the tasting to the Bar Issi dinner, which starts at 7:00 p.m. the same night.

PS Underground is hosting two events. Nod to Mod runs Oct. 16 and 17, with arrival at 7:00 p.m. It's a 2.5-hour supper-club show with a surprise four-course menu, live music in 1940s through '60s styles, and free-flowing cocktails, for $225. Sunny Side Up, on Sunday, Oct. 18, at 11:00 a.m., is a $130 brunch with a secret three-course menu and Broadway and Great American Songbook entertainment. Unlike the restaurant series, both PS Underground tickets leave gratuity off, so tip on top of the ticket price.

Sunset at The Lautner Compound in Desert Hot Springs pairs a twilight tour of the site with cocktails on Oct. 16 and 17.

All told, the new social events cover every evening from Thursday through Saturday and add a Sunday brunch. For a four-day festival, that's a lot of new programming built around food and drink.

The tours are still the hard tickets

Seats on the architecture tours are limited. Tickets went on sale Aug. 1 at noon PDT, and Visit Palm Springs warned at the time that popular home and bus tours sell out quickly. The signature Premier Double Decker Architectural Bus Tour costs $130 for 2.5 hours. The Sunny Cycle, a pedal-powered group ride through Palm Springs neighborhoods, costs $90.

This year's Featured Home is The Marquee at Twin Palms, a 1957 post-and-beam house reworked by H3K Home + Design. Tours are 30 minutes long and cost $40, with eight start times each day between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Other one-day tours, all on Oct. 17, include the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation's visit to the Liever Residence in Indian Canyons, and Blue Skies Village in Rancho Mirage, where you'll see seven homes and a clubhouse designed by William F. Cody. The Liever Residence is a 1968 Stan Sackley design with grand entertaining rooms and only one bedroom

There's also a free option that doesn't need a ticket. According to The Palm Springs Post, the new Modernism Week Digital Guide includes three digital tours. One is a 20-property audio city tour narrated by Vossler Smith, and the others are based on books by photographers Dan Chavkin and James Schnepf. The guide also has a video archive called The Library. Vossler Smith told the Post that people can use it "whether they are in Palm Springs or anywhere else in the world." So if the bus is full, you can still take the audio tour through the city.

The low-cost tier, day by day

Under the dinners and the timed tours, there are cheaper ways into the festival. Here's how they fall across the four days:

1. Thursday, Oct. 15. Mod With a Twist begins at the Ocotillo Lodge, the 1957 William Krisel design, and runs through Oct. 17. It's a series of new 10-minute talks with titles like "Losing Time: The Disastrous Consequences When Palm Springs Became Its Own Time Zone" and "Rebels & Rye: A Scandalous History of the Cocktail Ring." Frey House II tours, hosted by the Palm Springs Art Museum, cost $75 and include free admission to the museum and the Architecture & Design Center from Oct. 15 to 18, except on days the museum is closed.
2. Friday, Oct. 16. The 12th annual Palm Springs Modernism Fall Show opens at the Palm Springs Convention Center with 40 national exhibitors of decorative and fine arts. The opening party and early buying preview runs 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. and costs $95 in advance or $110 at the door. The ticket also gets you back in over the weekend.
3. Saturday, Oct. 17. The Fall Show opens to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. for $30. The Casual Concours car show, "Swinging 60s on Route 66," runs from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Admission is $30, or $25 for members, and parking is free. Charles Phoenix brings his new Kodachrome slide show, "Los Angelesland," the same day.
4. Sunday, Oct. 18. The Fall Show's last day runs 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A $30 public ticket lets you back in on both days, so if you go Saturday you can come back Sunday for a second look at a piece you liked.

October also opens the February calendar

The weeks after this festival matter too. Modernism Week 2027 runs Feb. 11–21. Organizers will post a schedule preview on Oct. 25, and tickets go on sale Nov. 1, the Post reports. October tickets went on sale on Aug. 1, and the popular tours were expected to sell out quickly. If there's a February tour you want, put Nov. 1 on your calendar.

Many of the homes on these tours went through careful restoration before anyone sold a ticket, and we follow that work closely. If this week's tours have you thinking about what a restoration like The Marquee at Twin Palms takes, or what a design-led renovation could do for your own home, John & Ryan Real Estate Group is happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation with us.