October 14–18, 2026
Mesh is a recurring festival for art and technology in Basel. The programme spans exhibitions, performances, screenings and workshops, complemented by a conference of talks, panels and lecture performances. This year’s edition, titled Infrastructures of Care, asks how we want to live together: how we can use, shape and change technologies to support more just and caring ways of doing so. Mesh creates spaces for connection, exchange and solidarity, understanding care as something held in common and shaped together. At its centre stands one question: How do we want to live together — and how can technologies help us get there?
Contents of the 2026 edition
The programme is structured around seven care themes:
Commons of Connection shows how closeness emerges, even when encounters increasingly take place digitally. Memory Machines asks who decides what gets remembered, and preserves suppressed knowledge. Future Playgrounds creates cross-generational spaces for collectively testing out futures. Wild Cities brings cities into focus as habitats for humans, animals, and plants. Circular Systems centres on ecological and technological cycles rather than consumption.
Non-Public Publics (in collaboration with Make/Sense and Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM)) mobilises practices for defying logics of fragmentation. Rounding out the programme is the hands-on theme Urban Actions | Spatial Utopias lead by iart, through which Mesh also takes shape in large-scale spatial installations.
First highlights of the 2026 edition
Exhibition: Martin Messier, Gabriel Abrantes, Sophia Bulgakova
Performance: Aïsha Devi, Noémi Büchi in cooperation with Brigitte Fässler, Buena Tarde & ztaa, Myriam Bleau und Nien Tzu Weng, Slikback
Conference: Anna Puigjaner & Ethel Baraona Pohl, Wendy Chun
Club Night: Demdike Stare and others
For everyone
Mesh is open to everyone—whatever your age, whether you're curious or experienced, coming alone or with the whole family. Whether this is your first time or you've been with Mesh for years: we invite you to discover spaces for closeness, exchange, and new ideas together with us. From 14–18 October at Dreispitz Basel—we look forward to seeing you.
Mesh is a joint initiative of HEK (House of Electronic Arts), the Basel Academy of Art and Design (HGK Basel FHNW) and iart (studio for media architectures)
