This article studies the problem of exponential ℋ ∞ filtering design for Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems with sampled-data measurements under the data packet dropout phenomenon. A novel switched system approach is developed, and thus the resulting filtering error system is rewritten in a time-varying delayed switched system form. Based on novel piecewise time-dependent Lyapunov functionals, sufficient conditions are obtained to guarantee the exponential stability with ℋ ∞ performance of the filtering error system. The full-/reduced-order filter design results in the form of solving a set of linear matrix inequalities are obtained. Finally, simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the method.