Jackson Hole 2026: Dates, Schedule, and Warsh's First Speech as Fed Chair (August 27-29)
The Jackson Hole symposium (aka conference) runs August 27-29, 2026, with Kevin Warsh's first keynote as Fed chair on Friday morning, August 28. The dates, the schedule, and what could move markets.
The 2026 Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium runs Thursday, August 27 through Saturday, August 29, hosted as always by the Kansas City Fed at Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming.
Kevin Warsh delivers the keynote on Friday morning, August 28, his first Jackson Hole address as Fed chair.
This year's theme is "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy", with roughly 120 central bankers, economists and officials from more than 70 countries attending.
It lands 19 days before the September 16 FOMC decision. Soft prints through mid-August cut September hike odds from near 60% to somewhere between a third and 40%, and the August jobs report and the August CPI still land in between.
Friday stacks three events on 10:00am ET: the keynote, the annual payrolls benchmark revision and final August consumer sentiment. The hour-by-hour timetable is here.
The crowded part of the calendar: Nvidia reports earnings the evening of August 26, so the market's biggest earnings event and its biggest Fed event land 36 hours apart. July PCE landed that same morning, and the hour-by-hour board has the sequencing.
Thursday, August 27 to Saturday, August 29, 2026, at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park. The Kansas City Fed has hosted the symposium there since 1982; attendance is invitation-only, about 120 people, and the papers and speech texts publish on the KC Fed's site as they are delivered.
When Does Warsh Speak?
Friday, August 28, at 10:00am ET. That is the working time on two independent reports rather than the Fed's own document: the Kansas City Fed typically releases the full agenda the evening before the symposium opens, which means the evening of Wednesday, August 26. The 10:00am slot also matches where the chair's keynote has historically landed on the Friday.
That speech is the market event. The rest of the programme is academic papers on the payments theme, and it moves markets roughly never. The chair's twenty minutes do: Jackson Hole keynotes have been used to signal policy turns for decades, which is why every desk treats an August Friday morning in Wyoming as a risk event.
The Board
A conference on paper. A Federal Reserve signal in practice.
Why a Payments Topic Matters in a Hike Year
On its face, "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy" does not sound like a market-relevant theme. But the theme constrains the papers, not the keynote, and chairs often use the slot to talk about whatever the moment requires. Powell's 2020 framework speech arrived under a review-themed programme; his 2022 "pain" speech took eight minutes and ignored most of the agenda.
This moment requires an answer to one question: does the Fed still intend to hike this year? The target sits at 3.50-3.75%, this has been a hike-watch year rather than a cut-watch one, and the data has split the mandate down the middle: July payrolls fell 23,000 while inflation is running in the mid-3s. Nothing since the jobs report has argued for a hike. July CPI came in at 3.4%, matching forecasts on every line, July PPI was flat on the month, and retail sales fell 0.6% against a positive consensus with preliminary August consumer sentiment at 51.0. July PCE, out the morning of August 26, ran a tenth hot on the headline and dead on the core, which moves nobody off their prior. September hike odds, near 58% just after the July meeting, now sit somewhere between a third and 40% depending on the read. The chair's speech will either confirm that repricing, or push back.
This is also Warsh's first Jackson Hole as chair, seven weeks after a July FOMC that was his first real test. First keynotes get parsed harder than routine ones, because the market is still building its dictionary of what this chair's phrases mean.
What Happens Between Now and Then
The speech will not arrive in a vacuum. The data is already in:
August 14:Retail sales fell 0.6% against a consensus of +0.1% to +0.3%, and preliminary August consumer sentiment printed 51.0.
August 18-20:Home Depot, Target, Lowe's, Walmart and Deere reported earnings, the corporate verdict on the consumer. The earnings reinforced a K-shaped consumer economy, with higher-income households still spending while lower-income shoppers came under increasing pressure.
August 19:The July FOMC minutes at 2:00pm ET, the record of the meeting where three officials voted to hike. The minutes revealed broader support for rate hikes than the 9–3 vote suggested, with many officials saying rates may need to rise if inflation stays high.
August 19-21: Treasury doubled its buyback ceiling to $4 billion per operation, the 30-year fell for two days, and by Friday's close it was back at 5.27%.
August 26:July PCE at 8:30am ET: headline 0.2% on the month and 3.7% on the year against a 3.6% consensus, core 0.2% and 3.3%, both in line.
The prints conflicted: inflation is sitting in the mid-3s against a 2% target while the consumer cracked and the long end refuses to come down, so Warsh does not get to be boring. His twenty minutes are the tiebreaker for September, and a market at record highs will trade on them.
The One-Line Read
Jackson Hole 2026 runs August 27-29 with Kevin Warsh's first keynote as chair on Friday morning, August 28: the official theme is payments, but with the September 16 decision 19 days out, a labour market shedding jobs and inflation still in the mid-3s, the only sentence anyone will trade is the one that says whether the hiking cycle is paused or finished.
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