The Houses of Davos
For one week each January, the storefronts of the Davos Promenade transform. Coffee shops become corporate Houses. Closed boutiques become country pavilions. Restaurants become invitation-only dinner venues. The Houses are the working architecture of the WEF side programme, and they are where many of the week's most consequential conversations actually happen.
What a House is
A House at Davos is a branded venue, typically on or adjacent to the Promenade, operated for the duration of WEF week by a corporate, country, sector, or organisational sponsor. Each House runs its own programming across the days of the meeting, layering panels, speakers, breakfasts, dinners, and lounge time.
The term is not formal. The Forum does not designate or accredit Houses. They are a private-sector and public-sector phenomenon that has grown around the Annual Meeting over the past two decades. The earliest Houses date to the late 2000s. The number has grown each year as more organisations have understood the value of a working venue inside the Davos footprint.
Houses share several common characteristics. They are physically located in central Davos, typically along the Promenade or a few minutes' walk from it. They run programming across most or all days of the meeting. They host a mix of open sessions, RSVP-based events, and credentialed dinners. They are the most concentrated venues for sector-specific conversation during the week.
A typical House might host twenty to forty distinct sessions across the five days of the meeting. Some Houses run all-day programming. Some operate only across evening and dinner hours. The cadence depends on the host's strategy.
Categories of Houses
The House ecosystem breaks into three rough categories, though boundaries blur.
Country Houses
National pavilions sponsored by governments, public-private partnerships, or country-specific consortia. The roster rotates substantially year to year, but recent meetings have hosted versions of USA House, India House, Ukraine House, Saudi House, Brazil House, Japan House, France House, and many others.
Country Houses typically frame their programming around the national strategic interest of the host country. Investment, trade, diplomacy, technology, and bilateral conversations dominate. A country House is the natural venue for principals interested in deepening exposure to a specific national market or government relationship.
Country House programming often draws senior government officials from the host country, alongside business and civil society delegations. The most consequential country House dinners frequently feature cabinet-level officials or heads of state from the host country.
Sector and theme Houses
Houses sponsored by industry consortia or single corporate sponsors organised around a sector or theme. AI House has been a recurring feature of recent Davos editions, operated by consortia of artificial intelligence and technology sponsors. Web3 House appeared in the 2022 and 2023 editions before recalibrating. Climate, energy, and biotech-themed Houses appear in various forms each year.
Sector Houses concentrate programming around their sector's specific debates. They tend to attract the senior practitioners of the sector, the major investors, and the relevant policymakers. For a principal whose thesis sits inside a specific sector, the relevant sector House is often the highest-leverage venue of the week.
Corporate Houses
Houses operated by a single corporate sponsor. The format varies. Some operate as branded venues showcasing the sponsor's products and services. Others operate as quasi-neutral convening spaces hosting cross-sector conversations under the sponsor's roof. The major consulting firms, technology platforms, and financial services firms regularly operate corporate Houses or House-equivalent venues.
Corporate Houses serve the sponsor's strategic narrative for the year. The programming inside them reflects the sponsor's broader public-facing positioning. They are the most curated of the three categories and often produce the most polished session content.
How access works
Access to a House depends on the House. Generalising across the ecosystem.
Most Houses operate by invitation from the host organisation. Each host maintains its own guest list, drawn from its existing network of partners, clients, alumni, and relationships. Cold requests for House access are typically routed through one of these channels rather than directly to the House operator.
Some Houses operate a hybrid model. Open sessions are publicly RSVPable. Closed sessions and dinners require invitation. The hybrid model is common for country Houses, which use open sessions to broadcast a national message and closed sessions to convene bilateral conversations.
Some Houses are gated behind credentialed access. The Hotel Badge is sometimes required at venue entry. Specific House wristbands or invitation cards are used for the closed sessions inside. Layered credentialing is increasingly common as the Houses mature.
The Houses look like venues. They function as networks made visible.
The most consequential sessions inside Houses, the closed dinners and the bilateral roundtables, are universally credentialed and almost never on any public agenda. They surface through the relationships that connect the host organisation to the curated set of attendees they want in the room.
How the Houses fit into a week
For a typical principal with a serious week, House attendance accounts for roughly half of the working calendar. The Houses are not the centre of WEF; the centre is the Kongresszentrum and the Forum's own programming. But for the substantial majority of attendees who do not hold Forum accreditation, the Houses are where 70 to 80 percent of the week's value lives.
A typical attendee with a Hotel Badge and a curated wristband programme might attend four to seven distinct Houses across the week, two to four sessions each. The pattern is depth in two or three Houses where the principal's thesis is most concentrated, alongside breadth visits to other Houses for specific sessions or dinners.
The discipline of choosing which Houses to attend is its own work. The temptation is to try to do them all. The discipline is to identify the three or four where the principal's specific year actually compounds, and to spend serious time inside those.
The 2027 House landscape
Country and sector Houses rotate yearly. The official roster of Houses operating at WEF 2027 will confirm in November and December 2026. A few patterns from prior years are likely to continue.
USA House has appeared in some form across most recent Davos editions, typically operated by a hosting organisation that rotates among non-governmental and public-private partners. The composition of the 2027 host has not been publicly confirmed at the time of writing.
AI House has been a fixture of recent editions and is widely expected to return for 2027 given the continued prominence of artificial intelligence in the Forum's thematic framing.
India House, Ukraine House, and Saudi House have each appeared across multiple recent editions and reflect ongoing national strategic investments in WEF presence.
New corporate Houses appear each year. The technology sector consistently adds new entrants. The financial services sector tends to maintain a stable presence. Consumer-sector Houses appear opportunistically depending on the year's broader thematic frame.
The most reliable signal on the 2027 House landscape comes from the second half of November and early December 2026, when most operators publicly announce their hosting commitments.
Hosting a House: the brand perspective
For brands considering hosting a House or House-equivalent venue at Davos, a few practical points worth knowing before the commitment.
A House at Davos is a serious investment. Total cost typically runs into the low to mid seven figures across venue, programming, staffing, and supporting media. The cheapest plausible serious House configuration starts around USD 1.5 million. The most ambitious configurations run well above USD 5 million. The variation reflects venue choice, programming density, and the scale of the supporting communications effort.
Venue selection is the first decision. Promenade venues on the central spine of the town are the highest-leverage and the most contested. Venues a few minutes' walk from the Promenade carry lower cost and reduced foot traffic but still serve the credentialed dinner market well. Venues further out tend to underperform unless the host has its own draw.
Programming is the second decision. The strongest Houses run mixed programming: a small number of high-profile panel sessions for broadcast and earned media, a working schedule of closed-door roundtables for the curated audience, and a steady cadence of dinners and lounge time. The mix matters more than the volume.
Staffing is the third decision. A House requires meaningful on-the-ground staffing across event production, hospitality, security, technical, and concierge. Local Davos talent is constrained during WEF week. Most serious Houses staff with a combination of brought-in event teams and local hospitality partners.
The fourth decision is the supporting communications layer. A House without a coordinated pre and post-event narrative campaign typically underperforms relative to the investment. Houses that are tied to a broader twelve-month communications programme convert their week into a year of earned coverage and continued conversation.
The Davos Cabinet works with brand teams at The Delegation tier to architect House activations end to end, from venue selection through programming, staffing, and the broader narrative campaign. Read for brands for the working framework.
How The Davos Cabinet handles House access
We secure House invitations for the principals we work with through our established network across hosting organisations. The network has been built across multiple consecutive years of credentialed presence at Davos. We do not name our specific House contacts publicly. Access is delivered under white-label arrangement.
The work involves three layers. First, identifying the Houses that are actually relevant to the principal's objectives, which is rarely the same as the Houses that are most-discussed in business media. Second, securing the invitations through the right relationships, which is typically not the front-of-house contact form on the House's public website. Third, sequencing the invitations into a week that builds rather than fragments.
House access is included at The Operator tier and above. Tier IV, The Observer, focuses on the Hotel Badge and curated invitations to ten of the week's most consequential events, which typically includes a small number of House visits. The Operator, The Principal, and The Delegation each expand House access in scale and depth.
For Tier I, The Delegation, we additionally facilitate principal-hosted programming inside Houses where appropriate. The principal becomes a host within a House rather than a guest of the House. Read our tiers for the full structure.
Common questions
The questions we receive most often about the Davos Houses. Full responses sit in the accordion below.
Begin your conversation
The 2027 House roster confirms across November and December 2026. The dinners worth attending settle quietly across the same window. By Christmas, most of the week is essentially set.
The conversation begins by application. The earlier we begin, the more time we have to architect the House layer of your week around the specific objectives you bring to it.
Read more at how to get invited to Davos, the four tiers of Davos access, and the Davos Hotel Badge, explained.
Frequently asked questions
USA House is invitation-based, with each year's hosting organisation issuing invitations through its own network and partners. The specific hosting organisation typically rotates and is confirmed closer to the meeting.
AI House has run in several recent editions of WEF week and is typically operated by a consortium of artificial intelligence and technology sponsors. The specific composition varies year to year.
Some Houses have open sessions or RSVP-based programming for parts of their schedule. The most consequential sessions, including dinners and roundtables, are typically credentialed and invitation-only.
Typically thirty to fifty Houses and side venues operate during WEF week, with the precise count varying year to year.