Edge City Newsletter — January 2026

Hiring for Edge Esmeralda 2026, housing guide, apply as a residency lead, and more!

Timour Kosters

February 5, 2026

Hello friends! Hope you’re having a great day ☀️

We’re gearing up for Edge Esmeralda 2026 (May 30 – June 27) and are assembling the production team for our flagship popup village. Job descriptions here →

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TL;DR

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Build with us at Edge Esmeralda 2026 →

Remind me, what is Edge City?

Edge City is a society incubator that gathers people working at the frontiers of science, technology, and culture in month-long popup villages around the world.

We build living labs to experiment with new ideas, technologies, cultures, and organizations. All with the goal of advancing human flourishing.

We’re building towards a global network of temporary and permanent innovation hubs. Explore our roadmap to see how we plan to grow.

Collaboration is essential to achieve our vision. That’s why we aim to partner with folks who are interested in hosting residencies for builders, scientists, and artists at our popup villages. If you’re interested, please reach out here.

The story and impact of Edge City in 5 minutes - Timour at the Network State Conference 2025. Watch the talk →

Edge Esmeralda 2026 (May 30 - June 27)

‍Edge Esmeralda 2026 marks the third iteration of our month-long gathering in Northern California. Read the recaps of what was build during previous editions here: 2024, 2025.

Co-organized in collaboration with the Esmeralda Institute, a team working toward a permanent new town in the region, this popup village functions as a living lab. The new tech, collaborative spaces, and social systems we test here feeds directly into the long-term town design.

Healdsburg offers a grounded setting to co-live & build together with technologists, creatives, thinkers, and researchers working on AI, web3, consciousness science, culture, governance, civic tech, and other frontier fields.

Collaborate with frontier minds →

We recommend joining for 2–4 weeks to allow deeper collaborations to form and new ideas and habits to settle in.

Organize a residency at Edge Esmeralda 2026

If you’d like to convene builders and researchers in Healdsburg around a frontier theme, apply to be a residency lead here.

Residencies can have a technical focus like AI, web3, robotics, biotech, d/acc, and AR/VR or a more cultural/societal-oriented exploration, such as consciousness, meditation, solarpunk, music, new urbanism, and governance systems.

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Read the recaps of previous residencies:

✨ d/acc Residency - building decentralized and democratic tech

✨ Human Tech Residency - prototyping humanistic technologies

✨ Lisk Emerging Markets Founders Residency - leveling up frontier founders

✨ Long Journey Residency - helping magically weird founders leap from -1 to 0

✨ Regen Haus - exploring regenerative systems

✨ Agartha House - coliving with creative technologists and benevolent AI

✨ Edge City Fellowship - supporting talented builders under 25

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Apply to host a residency →

We’re Hiring: Edge Esmeralda’s Production Team

Our popup villages are co-created with an experienced production crew, local businesses and community, as well as a group of volunteers.

If you’d like to help us build Edge Esmeralda 2026, we’re looking to fill a number of positions in the production team. Learn more the open roles here.  

Join the production team →

Housing and Ticketing Guide

We’ve launched a dedicated Substack for Edge Esmeralda 2026. Subscribe here to receive updates and practical information as we publish them.

New blogs:

✨ Housing Guide - recommended accommodation + special rates

✨ Ticket Guide - explaining our pricing principles and event expenses

Exploring the Frontier of Tech, Science & Culture

We’re excited to return to Healdsburg this summer and will share updates as things take shape. Follow us on X and Instagram to stay in the loop.

Reminder: Ticket prices for Edge Esmeralda 2026 increase every fortnight, so apply early and grab your ticket at a discounted rate.

Apply now to join us →

Quick News

Constellation Raised ~$10M

Constellation launched during the Long Journey Residency at Edge Esmeralda 2025. Over the course of the month, founder Avery Krieger collected neural data on-site, secured a lead investor, and formed a founding team.

With funding in place, Avery and his team are now moving ahead to build foundation models of the human brain. Congratulations! 👏

Edge City 2025 Community Letter

Edge City is shifting from welcoming serendipity to catalyzing startups, applied research, and nests of new movements - all rooted in our popup villages.

In our latest community letter, we share seven core lessons from a year of building and what’s next. Read it here →

Norman Ohler: Blitzed, Tripped, and How Drugs Shaped History

In this fireside chat at Edge City Patagonia with Timour Kosters, author Norman Ohler traces how psychoactive substances shaped world history.

From Nazi Germany’s use of methamphetamine to the CIA’s LSD experiments and humanity’s deep evolutionary relationship with psychedelics. A wide-ranging conversation on power, consciousness, and the future of society.

Listen on Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform.

‍Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend (Feb 6-8)

Our friends at The Foresight Institute are hosting the second edition of Vision Weekend in Puerto Rico (February 6–8).

The event brings together researchers, builders, and accelerationists thinkers for collaborative sessions and deep dialogue on frontier tech & science like AI, neurotech, fusion, and longevity biotech.

Learn more and get tickets →

What We’re Reading

Serious thinking has gone offline - Sam Vuong

A thoughtful take on the limits of online discourse and the return of deep thinking to the physical world. Sam’s article explores how real-world gatherings create the conditions for clarity, trust, and intellectual momentum. Read more →

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Still in Edge City Patagonia - Mäki Ńkàtà

This visual reflection shows what it’s like to live and experiment together for a month. From cold plunges in the lake to deep conversations and creative play with builders from around the world. Read more →

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The Poetics of Edge City - Emma Murf

Through anecdotes and poetry, Emma reflects on Edge City Patagonia, showing how our gathering became a terrain where identity, curiosity, and meaning are reimagined. Read more →

Quotes & Reflections

“Edge City can be understood as ‘Burning Man for geeks (of all kinds).’ Some call it a tech conference meets hackathon. For me, it felt closer to an artist-in-residence program, except instead of a dozen fellows, there were hundreds of us.” - Mäki Ńkàtà

“Edge was a great opportunity to get deep, focused work done, but it was also a chance to try new things, meet interesting people, and more deeply understand myself.“ - Brian Kelleher

“Root was born in @JoinEdgeCity Patagonia in November 2025. The main idea appear in a sauna session while we where talking with Colton about the people we met during the pop-up city“ - Root

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As always, thank you so much for reading. We’re looking forward to reading all the applications and projects for Edge Esmeralda! ☀️

Timour & the Edge City team