50+ events, 100+ speakers
September 30–October 4, 2026
MIT Future Fest is a new five-day festival, opening MIT’s doors to the world September 30–October 4, 2026. General Release passes are now available, with a 10 percent discount.
The inaugural edition of MIT Future Fest brings together over 100 visionary leaders working on the frontiers of AI, quantum, health, climate, energy, public policy, contemporary art, design, and more. Speakers like filmmaker and artist Kahlil Joseph, MoMA senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli, architect Carlo Ratti, designer and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits, interdisciplinary artist and designer Behnaz Farahi, inventor of the iPod Tony Fadell, MIT Quantum lead Danna Freedman, rock climber and bionicist Hugh Herr, and aerospace engineer Danielle Wood will tackle some of the future’s most fascinating questions in a range of panels, open laboratories, immersive exhibitions, and evening performances.
MIT Future Fest was founded on the belief that the world's most pressing problems demand the convergent, interdisciplinary work that MIT excels in.
Program highlights
With 50+ events across five days exploring the next era of science, technology, art, and design, join us for the most anticipated highlights featured in Surface Magazine:
BLKNWS: MIT Edition by Kahlil Joseph will be a site-specific MIT Chapter of BLKNWS (2018–ongoing), an evolving artwork and media platform that dissolves the boundaries between journalism, archive, cinema, and speculation. This new edition of BLKNWS will bring together scholars, scientists, artists, and thinkers from MIT to ask what it means to imagine the future from one of the world's most consequential research communities.
Ocean of Dreams by Behnaz Farahi transforms MIT’s Kendall Square Plaza into a living, participatory ocean where people are invited to contribute their hopes for the future. Animated waves flow continuously, carrying messages submitted through a mobile web interface before gradually washing them away like words written in sand, joining an ever-changing collective landscape.
The Weavers by Jay Scheib is a new extended reality (XR) action-film-inspired performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's 1912 Nobel Prize-winning play, addressing the question: will AI take my job? The performance centers on a community of textile workers and their bosses whose labor, faith, and humanity are pressed to the brink of starvation by the unstoppable march of mechanization, automation, and the free-fall collapse of empathy.
Adaptive Archipelago by Daniel Sundlin and Skylar Tibbits is a prototype of a new modular floating structure to explore one of the most urgent design questions of our time: how do we create infrastructure that adapts as the world around it changes? Installed on the Charles River, the structure asks what a floating future could actually look like, and how design, engineering, and ecological thinking can come together to imagine and build it.
About MIT Future Fest
MIT Future Fest is a collaboration led by the MIT Museum, in partnership with MIT Technology Review and MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), with support from an advisory panel of world-leading researchers and experts. The festival foregrounds creative leaders in critical, timely fields from quantum and AI to climate, health and life sciences, united in their dedication to shaping our shared horizon. Every experience is tailored to connect with one or more of MIT’s strategic initiatives—the major cross-cutting bets that the MIT community is making on the future. These initiatives represent not just research priorities but a statement of institutional purpose: that the world’s most pressing problems demand the kind of convergent, interdisciplinary work that defines MIT’s mission.
