The Department of Science and Technology–Philippine Textile Research Institute (DOST-PTRI) opened the 2026 Philippine Textile Congress, alongside the first Global Textile Congress, on Monday at the UP Bahay ng Alumni in Diliman, Quezon City.

The gathering aims to converge and integrate national and international textile research, development, and innovation for the textile and allied industries.

“We are poised to build a truly Filipino textile innovation ecosystem, one that expands the value chain and reaches every community and sector across the nation,” DOST Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. said in his keynote message.

The opening of the national and global textile congress featured several plenary lectures, including discussions on digital product passports for textiles, embracing sustainability in Filipino fashion, and crafting responsive textile policy for the Philippines.

Global Textile Congress

Launched alongside the Philippine Textile Congress 2026, the first Global Textile Congress brought together textile experts and researchers from the Philippines and abroad.

DOST-PTRI Director Julius Leano Jr. said the Global Textile Congress is geared toward the research and development side of the industry and is intended to promote academic exchange.

“Being global means we want to have more engagement with global partners, universities and institutions,” Leano said during a media interview.

“And what we want is to benchmark what we need to beat from our current state to the state that we want to go to,” he added.

According to Leano, the Philippines has partnered with Austria, which has developed a circularity model involving the collection of post-consumer and post-industrial waste, as well as labeling.

“They test their materials and what they can actually do with it,” the PTRI chief said.

He also noted that the Austrian circularity model incorporates changes in consumer behavior, shifting away from fast fashion toward slower and more sustainable consumption practices.

“So, all of these are models that we want to see from the Austrian model that hopefully we can pursue, and we have talked to the government and the private sector about how we can actually get more Austrian engagement here in the Philippines,” Leano said.

Digital product passport for textiles

By 2030, digital product passports for textiles are being pushed for implementation worldwide, allowing textile products from each country to be assessed and traced based on quality and other factors before reaching global markets.

“It just means that before the product comes out from the Philippines, it already has a passport. It has already arrived in Europe. They already know what will come to them,” Leano said.

The PTRI director stressed that digital textile product passports would allow traceability and help ensure the quality and sustainability of textile products entering the global market.

“For us, it needs a full disclosure of all of the materials, where it was made, how much water [was] spent, how much carbon footprint, etcetera,” Leano said.