Futureproof Festival key art: salmon swimming through an aurora toward a bright opening

Futureproof Festival of AI

An international AI culture and ideas festival

Understand AI. Shape what comes next.

Meet the people building AI, studying its consequences and defending what matters. Three days of research, creative practice and candid conversation. Bring the questions shaping your work.

Vancouver · October 28–30, 2026H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

Full festival ticket · CA$950 · Opening night + two program days · 38 speakers · No single-day tickets

On stage

Learn from the people doing the work.

All 38 speakers →
The program

Three days with a shape.

Opening night sets the questions. Thursday gets into the systems and decisions. Friday brings cultural policy, language reclamation, creative work and the closing keynote. Start with a session that matters to you.

Full program

Updated October 14, 2026 · session times may change before the festival

Festival home

We picked a planetarium on purpose.

A planetarium in Vanier Park, built for scientific curiosity. Vancouver AI has been gathering here for years. This October, bring the questions your work can't avoid and spend three days getting into them.

1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9·Festival home base: opening night + two program days

Start with your work

Bring a decision you need to make.

Who owns the infrastructure? Who controls the data? What should stay a human responsibility? Hear the research, question the assumptions and find the sessions that speak to the work in front of you.

Six questions running through the program
  • Community

    Compare approaches across professions. Learn how other people are responding to AI in their organizations, institutions and communities.

  • Creativity

    Examine authorship and craft through generative music, animation and film. See how creative practitioners decide where AI belongs in their work.

  • Ethics

    Ask who owns the models and data, who benefits, and who bears the consequences. Connect AI governance to decisions you can actually make.

  • Resilience

    Explore what AI means for institutions, knowledge and the planet. Consider which systems need to endure as the technology changes.

  • Education

    Build the understanding to evaluate AI claims, ask better questions and help others make informed choices. Examine the assumptions beneath machine intelligence.

  • Empowerment

    Understand where human agency belongs in AI systems. Bring that perspective to what you build, buy, commission, teach or govern.

The experience behind the festival

Challenging ideas. Useful connections.

Futureproof Festival grows out of Vancouver AI and BC + AI. These are reflections on earlier meetups, BC + AI courses and guest teaching, with the original context credited below each quote.

“… I was probably more impressed by the speakers who disturbed me than the ones I agreed with. This conversation is so important, and yet too limited in our everyday lives. …”

Gus SantosVancouver AI Meetup #10 · October 2024

“Two things can be true at once. AI is here and I'm going to keep enabling it across our teams. And it can be done responsibly, with humans first, by people who treat that as the actual job rather than a disclaimer at the bottom of a deck.”

Kerris HougardyTing InternetResponsible AI Professional · Cohort 1

“Kris helped shift how my design students see their future. In one hour, he demo'd building client prototypes in real-time, turned lectures into podcasts, and showed them how to be design orchestrators, not pixel pushers.”

Jai DjwaAgentic Digital MediaDesign educator · Guest teaching

“The course delivers very important insights into risks of large scale AI deployments. … Highly recommended for anyone who has a stake in the responsible use of PII data, environmental impact, and good governance of AI projects.”

Fiann O'Hagan
Fiann O'HaganWeb analytics and performance · Responsible AI Professional, Cohort 1
Read eight more perspectives from the community

“FWIW, the BC + AI Ecosystem, of which I'm a member, is different than any other AI group I'm aware of — full of artists and creatives, filmmakers and indigenous voices, as well as deep tech experts and entrepreneurs. It holds space for both wonder and scepticism around AI without veering too far one way or the other.”

Landon SteeleSteele Consulting GroupSteele Consulting Group · BC + AI member

“… The interactive format and tight-knit atmosphere fostered real connections—and I even lucked into meeting the perfect collaborator for my AI project.”

Jesse BensonVancouver AI Meetup #19 · July 2025

“I am stumped. I arrive in Vancouver and stumble upon this strange and colourful community that has done more for my BC network than any conference. …”

Simon Haworth
Simon HaworthIntellomxVancouver AI Meetup #10 · October 2024

“Something is happening here. The energetic dialogue at these events is hard to describe. It feels like we are witnessing the creation of something special, here in Vancouver, as the whole world figures out how to embrace AI.”

Arno ApeldoornNew Collider CreativeVancouver AI Meetup #25 · January 2026

“Kris Krüg has built something important for our community.”

Carly SteimanWorkbee Home ServicesFounder, Workbee Home Services · BC + AI community

“The opening grounding … made the rest of the night feel that before anyone says 'agentic workflow,' remember whose land, whose water, whose stories, whose labour, and whose data we are standing on. … Rock on, Mr KK!”

Suzy Easton
Suzy EastonVancouver AI Meetup #30

“I went to my first Vancouver AI community meetup event last month and it was buzzing with energy… Truly inspired.”

Pete YoungYoung Guns StudioEducator · Ed + AI community

“So pleased to have completed this course, the guidance was amazing, and the final capstone was a chance to explore responsible AI. If you want to round out your understanding of ethics, and responsible AI, this is well worth the time.”

David Gloyn-CoxEnterprise Architect · Responsible AI Professional, Cohort 1
Current ticket

CA$950

One ticket. All three days.

Make time for the questions your work demands. Your ticket covers opening night and two program days at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, October 28-30, 2026: research, creative practice, public policy and the chance to question what you hear.

  • Opening keynotes and a creative AI live set, October 28
  • Two full days of talks and audience questions, October 29–30
  • Creative performances and the closing party included
Festival artwork. Credit: Futureproof Festival.Open imageDownload

Registration is open

Your next AI decision deserves this much thought.

Three days of ideas, evidence and questions you can bring back to work. H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, Vancouver. October 28-30.

Ticket notes

Not ready to register?

Speaker announcements and program drops as they happen. Nothing else.

Other ways in

Put a startup on a table, stand behind the festival, help run it, or cover it.

Not the Future Proof you were looking for? There is a U.S. wealth-management conference with a similar name. This one is the Vancouver AI festival. More in the FAQ

Hand-painted Futureproof Festival scene: Squatchie on a mossy nurse log at blue hour, holding up a sword fern, the line "Come Curious. Leave Uncomfortably Inspired." lettered into the picture and the festival name drawn as a constellation in the sky
Come Curious. Leave Uncomfortably Inspired.

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