Digital Architecture Design Day 2026: Stop Guessing. Architect for Value!

Digital Architecture Design Day is the annual congress of DANW, the professional association for digital architecture in the Netherlands. The 2026 edition takes place on 7 October at the NBC Congrescentrum in Nieuwegein.

Event Overview

The theme of this edition is value-driven architecture: "Stop Guessing. Architect for Value!" On 7 October, DADD brings the architecture community together to explore how architecture and the choices it makes deliver concrete value for organisations and their environment.

Where earlier editions offered a loose collection of sessions, the 2026 programme is organised into tracks. Each track runs as a coherent series across the day, so sessions build on one another rather than standing alone. The result is a congress that is stronger in content, more cohesive, and more interactive, with room for practical application rather than theory alone.

Tracks

Digital Sovereignty (Digitale Soevereiniteit)
How do you keep control over digital dependencies, data, and continuity when vendors and regulations change underneath you? The track opens with theory and context from TNO researchers, moves into a workshop on a risk-appetite-based method from the DANW working group, and closes by combining interpretation, method, and practical application.

Architecture for Flow
How architects can decentralise architectural decision-making by facilitating rather than gatekeeping. Using Domain-Driven Design and Team Topologies, the track looks at moving from decision-maker to enabler, and at what that does for both the quality and the speed of decisions.

Value-Driven Architecture (Waardegedreven Architectuur)
Organised by the KNVI ethics interest group, this track covers responsible technology through Value Sensitive Design: translating moral values into architectural decisions, and dividing responsibilities between people and technology in AI-heavy contexts.

AI: How to survive the hype cycle
AI viewed through the Gartner Hype Cycle, covering the possibilities, the challenges, and the architect's role in a hybrid organisation. Knowledge sharing is paired with practical application, with each session building on the results of the previous one to produce concrete deliverables.

Reference Architectures: What BIAN Teaches Us (Referentiearchitecturen: wat BIAN ons leert)
The future of reference architectures, with BIAN from the banking sector as the worked example. Covers structuring complex landscapes, raising interoperability, and how AI can help map existing IT landscapes onto a standard architecture.

Keynotes

The Architecture Literate Board: Governing the Digital Organisation Requires a New Kind of Fluency
Artie Debidien

Digital transformation stalls when boards and architects do not speak the same language. Drawing on more than 25 years as a CIO, COO, interim CEO, and board member, Artie Debidien covers the five strategic questions executives struggle with and how each one connects back to architecture, what board-level architecture literacy actually looks like, and how to build that fluency across an organisation without flattening the subject into something meaningless. The architect, in this telling, is the translator between the technical and the executive view.

Venue

The NBC Congrescentrum sits at Blokhoeve 1 in Nieuwegein, a short distance from the A2 and reachable by sneltram from Utrecht Centraal.