Updates
Learn more as the festival takes shape.
Drop your email and we will send the important bits: tickets, lineup notes, access paths, and the occasional useful signal.
Presented by BC + AI · Vancouver · Oct 28-30, 2026
The most honest AI conversation happening this year.
No hype. No panic. Just real people shaping what comes next.
Futureproof brings artists, engineers, researchers, founders, educators, skeptics, and builders into the same festival: opening night, two program days, film, demos, live performance, and the kind of conversation AI deserves.
Get involved
Interested in Futureproof? Start here.
Some people want to attend, some want to sponsor, and some want to bring something tangible into the room. All three paths are open, with the public claims kept clean until the details are approved.
Sponsors
Sponsor lanes are open.
Back the founding year through visibility, access support, hospitality, or a custom package built around what you want to make possible.
Exhibit
Booth and demo-table inquiries are open.
Tell us what you want to show. We are collecting interest for sponsor demo tables, booth-style activations, and hands-on festival moments.
Who
For people who still believe nuance matters.
Futureproof is for artists, engineers, researchers, educators, founders, policymakers, skeptics, and community builders navigating the AI shift in the real world.
No boosterism. No doom theater. Just honest conversation about what comes next.
What
A festival, not another conference.
Opening night plus two days of conversation, craft, culture, critique, and practical work. Enough curiosity to stay open. Enough friction to stay honest.
When
Registration is open. The real conversation happens in October.
Futureproof runs October 28-30, 2026: one opening night plus two program days for people who can hold critique and curiosity at the same time.
Now
Registration
Tickets are open on Luma. The public page stays the source of truth for pricing and availability.
Festival
Oct 28-30
One opening night plus two program days at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre.
Early Bird
August 15, 2026
Planned close date. No pressure tactics, just the current public ticket truth.
Where
The Space Centre. Not another convention hall.
Vanier Park, skyline views, planetarium energy, and the same home base as the Vancouver AI community gathering.
Read attendee guide
Photo: Socratic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Venue proof
A place with sky, water, and room to think.
Vanier Park gives the festival something most AI events do not have: a real edge of the city, a planetarium dome, and a community already used to showing up there.
Why
Because AI is happening to actual people.
AI is reshaping culture, work, education, creativity, governance, and everyday life. Futureproof exists to create a more honest public conversation, one that leaves room for skepticism, possibility, disagreement, and curiosity.
Not performance. Not ideology. Conversation.
Program Snapshot
The festival shape is already visible.
The lineup will keep sharpening, but the founding loops are here: live AI performance, a film festival inside the AI festival, hackathon demos, critique, practical work, and space for the community to meet itself.
Wed Oct 28
Opening Night
Where the room becomes a community.
- DEFRAG opening live set — creative AI as performancePhilippe Pasquier, Erica Lapadat-Janzen, Arshia Sobhan Sarbandi, and Kris Krüg anchor opening night with generative visuals, live-coded sound, and artist-led AI performance.
Thu Oct 29
Program Day One
What AI is already doing to people, culture, and attention.
- Opening Keynote + Q&AQ&A facilitated by Anthonia Ogundele.
- Working Session: Ethics in motion90-minute participatory session. Real artifacts come out.
- 2nd Annual BC + AI Film Festival
Fri Oct 30
Program Day Two
The craft, the practice, and what comes next. DEFRAG wrap party included.
- Hackathon Demo Day6 finalists, 5 minutes each + jury Q&A. Live community vote. Andrew Reid hosts.
- Closing Keynote + Q&AQ&A facilitated by Kris.
- Futureproof 2027 reveal
- Metacreation DEFRAG wrap partyThe festival closes with DEFRAG as the cultural after-hours anchor. Included with Festival Pass.
Across all three days
Critique beside curiosity.
Artists beside engineers. Founders beside skeptics.
No forced consensus. Just honest conversation and shared exploration.
Built From Community
This did not appear overnight.
Futureproof grew out of an existing community already gathering, questioning, building, teaching, experimenting, and debating together in public. This festival is an extension of that foundation.
Community proof
The room is already real. Space Centre seats, actual attention, no rented buzz.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
People still talk to each other here. Useful, weirdly radical, deeply Vancouver.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
The audience gets a microphone. Futureproof is not built for passive nodding.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
Film Club energy: screen glow, sharp questions, art in the room.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
The human part stays on screen. That is the work.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
MAC brings the weird questions with enough rigor to hold the room.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
The Space Centre looks better when the lights are on and people are inside.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Community proof
A community with a pulse, a phone in the air, and very little patience for beige.
Photo: BC + AI community archive.
Community proof
Packed, warm, paying attention. The opposite of a hype funnel.
Photo: Michelle Diamond.
Presented by BC + AI
Built with people who already show up.
BC + AI is the presenting ecosystem. These confirmed partners bring venue, research, creative community, data practice, and actual humans who have been doing the work before it looked shiny.
Hackathon hosted by Rival Technologies.
Early bird registration