HIGHER 2026 Returns to Philadelphia With a Focus on Legacy, Leadership, and Women’s Impact
HIGHER 2026 returns to Philadelphia on July 24–25, 2026, bringing together women from more than 25 states in a national convergence of founders, advocates, educators, operators, creatives, and ecosystem builders shaping the cannabis industry in real time.
This year marks HIGHER’s Legacy Year , not as a theme, but as a recognition of the infrastructure, labor, and leadership women of color have long carried within cannabis, wellness, policy, and culture, often without proportional visibility or support.
What began as a convening has evolved into a year-round ecosystem designed to connect access, opportunity, and community across industries that continue to expand unevenly in equity and representation.
Across two days, HIGHER 2026 centers advocacy and policy reform, capital access and finance, workforce development, wellness, and cultural leadership, grounding each conversation in the lived realities of building, scaling, and sustaining within emerging markets.
A central feature of this year’s experience is a curated Product Village that highlights women-led brands from across the country, creating space for founders and operators who are actively shaping product, culture, and commerce.
HIGHER 2026 also includes onsite expungement and access programming in partnership with legal advocates, Trulieve, M4MM, and Center 1968, a women-led organization focused on empowering women of color in politics, policy, organizing, and electoral campaigns. Together, these partnerships reflect a shared commitment to expanding access and building pathways for leadership across both industry and civic systems.
Wellness Day: A Dedicated Space for Whole-Person Care
Wellness Day anchors HIGHER 2026 with a focus on restoration, regulation, and embodied wellbeing.
The programming is designed to support participants navigating the realities of burnout, leadership, and care work while offering tools for sustainable personal and professional balance.
Sessions and activations explore peri-menopause, neurodivergence, anxiety, caregiving, mental health, and emotional resilience, alongside experiential offerings in movement, nervous system support, and reflective practices.
Wellness Day will also center conversations around health disparities and systemic barriers to physical and mental wellness that are unique to women of color, grounding the experience in both lived experience and structural reality.
Participants will also engage with practical, applied tools, including time management systems, financial wellness strategies, nutrition support, and guided reflective modalities such as tarot and self-inquiry practices, each designed to support clarity, structure, and self-awareness beyond the conference space.
Wellness Day functions as a full-circle extension of HIGHER’s ecosystem approach: not just information, but integration.
HIGHER 2026 continues to expand as a national ecosystem of women building across industries and geographies, shaping not only what cannabis becomes, but how access, leadership, and sustainability are defined within it.
Rather than a single gathering, HIGHER operates as a connected infrastructure, one that continues beyond the conference itself.
