Pecha Kucha: The 20×20 Format and How to Run It at a Conference

TL;DR

• Pecha kucha is a presentation format of 20 images shown for 20 seconds each, advancing automatically. Every talk lasts exactly 6 minutes 40 seconds.
• Two Tokyo architects, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, started it in February 2003 to stop presentations dragging on.
• Studies find audiences rate pecha kucha talks more highly and speakers prepare harder, but people do not remember more than from a normal talk.
• At a conference, a block of six talks fills 40 minutes. Batch the questions at the end and let the slides do the timekeeping.
• Lightning talks are the looser cousin: about five minutes, with no fixed slide count.

Pecha kucha is the format that stops a speaker overrunning, because the slides move on whether the speaker is ready or not. Twenty images, twenty seconds each, and the talk is over. This guide covers how the 20×20 format works, what the evidence says, and how to programme and host a pecha kucha session at a conference without the changeovers eating the time you saved.

What is pecha kucha?

Pecha kucha is a presentation format where a speaker shows 20 images for 20 seconds each, with the slides advancing automatically, so every talk runs 6 minutes 40 seconds. The name is Japanese for “chit-chat”.

The format came from Klein Dytham Architecture in Tokyo. Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham held the first event in February 2003 at SuperDeluxe, their event space in Roppongi, with the aim to “talk less, show more”. A 2009 profile in Interview Magazine says they wanted to avoid death by PowerPoint and give young designers somewhere to meet and show their work.

It spread fast. By April 2019, PechaKucha Nights had been held in more than 1,142 cities, with over 3 million people attending.

The organisation behind it writes the name as one word, PechaKucha. Its brand guidelines also say the logotype should not be used to promote specific events, so keep their logo off your posters and agenda.

How does the pecha kucha format work?

Exactly 20 slides, exactly 20 seconds each, no clicker. The presenter does not control the pace. That one rule changes how people prepare.

Building a pecha kucha presentation

If you are briefing speakers, give them this:

• Write one sentence per slide first. Twenty sentences is the whole script. If a sentence needs two slides, give it two.
• Pick images, not bullet points. The audience cannot read a list in 20 seconds and listen at the same time.
• Rehearse against the clock. Set the deck to auto-advance and run it at least three times. The rehearsal shows which slides carry too much and which carry too little.
• Don’t fight the slide. If it moves on mid-sentence, finish the thought in a few words and move on with it.

Speakers can set it up themselves. In PowerPoint, the Transitions tab has an Advance Slide option: tick After, enter the time, then click Apply to All. Microsoft notes that ticking On Mouse Click as well lets someone click ahead, so untick it for a strict 20×20.

Does the 20×20 format actually make talks better?

It makes talks better prepared and better liked, but there is no good evidence that audiences learn more from them. For a conference, that is a good trade.

Across two experiments, Beyer and colleagues found students rated a pecha kucha more positively than a PowerPoint talk, while recall of the main points did not differ. A 2020 microbiology study found the same split. Audiences said pecha kucha talks felt better practised and better prepared, learning showed no significant difference, and the format took about half the total presentation time.

A medical school pilot in Spain ran 30 student presentations and asked the audience to score them. Classmates gave them an average of 8.5 out of 10, and the school then adopted the format as a regular teaching aid.

So treat pecha kucha as an editing discipline. It forces speakers to cut, rehearse and get to the point. It will not rescue a talk that has nothing to say.

What is a pecha kucha night?

A pecha kucha night is an evening event where a run of speakers, usually 8 to 14, each give a 20×20 talk back to back. It is how the format began: a night in Tokyo where young designers could show their work.

It can carry real weight. In 2008 Montréal held a pecha kucha night where the city’s mayor and 13 mayors of its boroughs and cities each presented their vision for their area, to an audience of more than 400 designers, architects and planners.

That is a useful model for corporate events. An internal pecha kucha night can close a kickoff day or open an evening reception: department heads, project teams or new joiners each get 6 minutes 40 seconds, and nobody overruns.

Pecha kucha vs lightning talks: what’s the difference?

Pecha kucha has fixed rules: 20 slides at 20 seconds. A lightning talk is any very short talk, usually capped at five minutes, and the slide rules vary from one event to the next.

Lightning talks were first seen at the Python Conference in 1997, and Mark Jason Dominus coined the term in June 2000. Conferences use them to fit many speakers into one session. PyCon’s 2018 programme allowed 5 to 10 minutes and had people sign up on poster boards by registration.

Ignite talks sit in between: 20 slides at 15 seconds, five minutes flat. Ignite began as a single Seattle event in 2006 and lists 350 cities on its About page.

Choosing is simple. Pecha kucha suits visual, story-led talks. Lightning talks suit technical audiences who want to show a demo or a few lines of code.

Programming a pecha kucha session into your agenda

The arithmetic is kind. Six speakers at 6 minutes 40 seconds is exactly 40 minutes of talks. Eight speakers is just over 53 minutes. Allow about 30 seconds per changeover and a five-minute close, and six speakers fit a 50-minute slot.

Where you put it matters as much as how long it is. The energy in a room is a curve, and I have watched it across 800+ events: the cold open at 9am, the slump after lunch, the awkward gap before networking. A fast-moving block with a new face every seven minutes is a natural fit for the slump.

The research backs the timing. The post-lunch dip can show up in the midafternoon even when people have not eaten, and a high-carbohydrate lunch makes it worse. For more on pacing the whole day, see the guide to hold audience attention.

A few rules for the agenda:

• Six to eight speakers per block. Fewer feels thin. More than ten is a long sit for any format.
• Mix the speakers. Alternate departments, seniority or topics so no two similar talks sit side by side.
• Questions at the end, not between talks. Stopping for questions after every talk breaks the rhythm the whole format depends on.
• Put it in the run of show with each speaker’s name and start time, so AV and the host work from the same order.

How does the host keep pecha kucha changeovers tight?

By making sure the only thing that changes between talks is the person at the lectern. The slides keep time during each talk. The changeovers are where a session quietly loses its time.

What works:

1. One laptop, all decks loaded in running order. No speaker plugs in their own machine. Check every deck is set to 20 seconds with On Mouse Click turned off.
2. Speakers sit in the front row in order. The next speaker is already standing by the time the current talk ends.
3. A 15-second introduction. Name, role, one line on why the talk matters. The speaker introduction guide covers what to leave out.
4. A holding slide between decks. It shows the next speaker’s name, so AV never has the desktop on the big screen.
5. Questions collected during the talks. I use RoomReader, my own live Q&A software, so delegates send questions from their phones with nothing to download. The host then picks the best two or three per speaker for one Q&A at the end.

That last point makes the format interactive without breaking its rhythm. There are more ideas like it in interactive presentation formats.

Pecha kucha examples for a corporate conference

The format is borrowed from design, but the topics do not need to be. Pecha kucha examples that suit a business audience:

• The year in 20 pictures. Each team lead shows their year, one image per milestone.
• Project post-mortem. What happened, what went wrong, what we would do again.
• Meet the new joiners. Each one introduces themselves and their previous job in 20 images. Far better than a slide of headshots.
• Customer journey. Twenty images following one customer from first contact to renewal.
• Site tour. Each regional office shows the room, the people and the local quirks.
• One idea. Anyone in the business pitches one change they would make, with 6 minutes 40 seconds to sell it.

Each one is visual by nature, which is the test. If a topic needs a spreadsheet, it belongs in a different session.

Running it on the day

Pecha kucha does the hard part of timekeeping for you. What it cannot do is introduce speakers, keep the changeovers clean, gather the questions and bring the room back together at the end. That is a hosting job.

If you are planning a conference and want a pecha kucha block, a panel or a whole day run by a conference MC who keeps the whole room with you, send the agenda or check availability at hello@conferencehost.uk.