The Skills AI Can't Replace: Autumn Camps in Zurich, Zug & Lucerne That Build Them
Why "Will AI Take My Job" Just Became a Parenting Question Too
My daughter told me last week she wants to be a dermatologist. My son wants to build video games. I listened while thinking that by the time they're job-hunting, both of those careers might look nothing like they
AI is projected to displace 92 million jobs worldwide by 2030. It's also projected to create 170 million new ones. Nobody, including the people writing these reports, knows yet which side of that math any of our kids will land on. The good news: the skills that decide it are things a week of camp can actually build.
What I didn't expect, once I actually read past the headline, is that the answer isn't "learn to code" or "get off screens." It's more specific than that, and it comes down to a short list of skills you can start building this week, not in ten years.
What the 2026 Data Actually Says
PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer looked at over a billion job postings worldwide and found something worth sitting with: as companies adopt AI faster, they're paying more, not less, for judgement, creativity, and leadership. The tasks AI is best at, the repetitive, predictable ones, are exactly the ones companies are automating first. What's left, and what's getting more valuable, is everything AI still can't do well.
The World Economic Forum's research points the same direction. It projects tens of millions of jobs will be displaced by AI in the coming years, and a larger number of new ones created, but the skills that decide who thrives in either direction keep showing up on the same short list: creative thinking, emotional intelligence, adaptability, ethical judgement, and the ability to connect ideas across different fields.
None of that is a coding class. None of it is a worksheet. It's built the way it's always been built: by doing things, with other kids, in the real world, without a screen managing the outcome for them.
So What Does This Actually Mean for an 8-Year-Old?
It means the "extracurricular" question just got a more interesting answer. This October, instead of thinking about after-school camps as a way to fill the Herbstferien, it's worth thinking about them as where these specific skills actually get built. Here's how three camps in the Zurich/Zug/Lucerne region map onto exactly what the research says matters most, plus one option further afield if you want to go all in.
Futurekids: Building With AI, Not Losing to It
The distinction that matters most in every one of these reports isn't screen time versus no screen time. It's creating versus consuming. A kid scrolling short videos and a kid building their own robot or coding their own game are doing completely different things with the same amount of "screen time." Futurekids camps put kids on the building side of that line: robotics, programming, video game creation, and 3D design, for ages 5 to 14 (with a teen track up to 17). That's digital literacy in the sense employers are now asking for, not the sense parents usually worry about.
Topics & dates:
Robotics, coding, video game and 3D design camps in Zug | October 5–9 and Zurich 5-9, 2026 | Half-day and full-day options | starting at CHF 335 | ages 5-14
Futurekids autumn camps Zug | Zürich
Storycraft: Original Thinking, Built With Their Hands
AI can generate an image or a story in seconds. What it can't generate is a specific 9-year-old's specific imagination, the weird detail only they would think to add. Creative originality shows up again and again in the research as one of the most durable human skills there is. Storycraft's Halloween camp, Creatures of the Night, has kids sculpting, painting, and building with papier-mâché, Mod Roc, and mixed media, designing their own vampires, monster plants, and mad-lab creatures, with Halloween storytelling woven through the days. That's not a craft hobby. It's hands-on, original creative work, the exact skill every future-of-work report keeps circling back to.
Topics & dates:
Halloween Creatures of the Night | October 5–9 and 12–16 | CHF 550 | Ages 5–10
Vampires & Creatures of the Night | October 5–7 and 12–14 | CHF 350 | Ages 5–10
Mad Lab | October 8–9 and 15–16 | CHF 250 | Ages 5–10
Going Further Afield: friLingue's Alpine Language Camps
If you want to combine this with a real change of scenery, friLingue runs residential language immersion camps in the Swiss Alps over the same Herbstferien window. It's not in the Zurich/Zug/Lucerne region, so it's a different kind of trip, but the skill argument holds just as well: navigating a new language and a new group of kids in real time is exactly the adaptability and cross-cultural communication that keeps showing up on every "AI can't replace this" list.
Topics & dates:
French, German, or English immersion courses | Creative Camp ages 8–13 | friLeadership Camp ages 12–17 among others.
September 20 & 27 and October 4 & 11, 2026, at Liddes/St. Bernard (Valais) and Braunwald (Glarus).
From CHF 750–1,500 depending on the program.
Schoeb Events: Teamwork for a World That Keeps Changing
Adaptability is the skill that shows up in almost every list of what's becoming more valuable, not less. Not because it's trendy, but because the pace of change means the specific tools kids learn today may look different in ten years, while the ability to adjust, collaborate, and solve problems on the fly won't. Schoeb Events' autumn holiday program is built around exactly this: a full day of varied activities, crafts, outdoor challenges, and even a circus week, with kids working together and adapting to something new every day, rather than following a fixed script.
Topics & dates:
Full-day (8am–6pm) | ages 5–13 | meeting points across Zurich, Lucerne & Zug regions | October 5–9 & 12–16, 2026 | Circus Week at Circus Filacro October 5–9 | CHF 145–153 per child per day.
Schoeb Events autumn camps – Zurich region | Lucerne & Zug region
The Bigger Point
None of this means panic about AI, and it definitely doesn't mean turning October break into a resume-building exercise for an eight-year-old. It means something simpler: the things that already make a great camp, hands-on building, making, performing, teamwork, turn out to also be the things the job market of the next decade will value most. You don't need to choose between "fun" and "future-proof." This October, for one week, you can have both.
Herbstferien run October 5 to 17 in Zurich and October 5 to 16 in Zug, with similar dates in Lucerne. Spots at these camps are filling up. If you've been putting off booking, this is the nudge: pick the one that fits your kid's spark, and get them on the list.
See all autumn camps on Momizen
Sources: PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer; World Economic Forum Future of Jobs research.
