FT Business of Luxury 2026

Published 27 May 2026

Author

8 min read

The FT Business of Luxury Summit 2026 (Puglia, Italy, May 17-19) saw luxury leaders convene to discuss the state of the luxury industry and its trajectory. Key topics included supply chain storytelling, the luxurification of sport, new gateways and channels, engineering culturally fluent expansion, and the changing face of luxury hospitality.

Supply Chain Storytelling

The Luxurification of Sport

Recovering the Aspirational Consumer via New Gateways & Channels

Luxury’s New Asian Ambitions

Luxury Hospitality: VIC Concierging & Social Wellness

After 2025’s ‘Made in Italy’ luxury manufacturing scandal, supply chains were a key conference focus, with speakers decoding how to craft engaging narratives around manufacturing and hero materials.

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Brands and sports clubs majored on the growing coalescence of luxury fashion and sports - in this instance, showjumping, American football, tennis and soccer. Topics included capitalising on the heightened emotions elicited by sport and maintaining accessibility to live spectatorship while premiumising key experiential elements.

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Amidst the shrinking of aspirational spend – across brands, new customer acquisition declined by 5% between 2024 and 2025 (Bain, 2025) – speakers zeroed in on regaining alienated aspiring customers via growth channels including TikTok Shop and outlets.

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Other speakers focused on their ambitions in Asia (India and China, respectively), from creating founder programmes that enable luxury businesses to gain competitive home-grown advantage to launching expansion campaigns heralded by culturally fluent concept stores.

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With luxury hospitality continuing to take a major share of consumers’ wallets from luxury goods brands, hotel brands dissected meeting guests’ evolving desires, from novel approaches to social wellness to centring next-gen concierging in campaigns.

FT Business of Luxury 2026

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Topics

Sports & Leisure

Social Media

Retail

Advertising & Branding

Brand Experience

Hotels

Hospitality & Service

Health & Wellness

Digital

Brand Spaces

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