Make
Hackathon demos
Build, test, and show work with the clock running and the room paying attention.
Presented by BC + AI · Vancouver · Oct 28-30, 2026
The most honest AI conversation happening this year.
Once a year, we reach the top of the arc: three days where ideas get a little weightless, then come back down changed.
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. Read the shape, then help us build it.
- Type
- Creative-tech festival
- Origin
- Community-grown
- Home
- H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
- Year
- 2026 / in motion
Program Snapshot
Seven ways in. One shared arc.
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.
/ Film/ Demos/ Hackathons/ Field trips/ Talks/ Live performance/ Workshops/ Meetups/ Film/ Demos/ Hackathons/ Field trips/ Talks/ Live performance/ Workshops/ Meetups
Shape
Practical sessions
Turn open questions into working patterns for teams, classrooms, companies, and public life.
Feel
Live performance
Let the cultural signal land in the body, not only the slide deck.
Move
Working conversations
Put critique and curiosity at the same table long enough for something useful to happen.
Watch
Film
A festival-inside-the-festival for the stories and images shaping how AI feels.
Hear
Talks and panels
People with receipts, doubts, tools, and taste speaking to the stakes in public.
Meet
Community proof
Artists beside engineers, founders beside skeptics, partners beside the people doing the work.
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.
Provenance
This did not start in a pitch deck.
Futureproof grows out of years of real rooms: meetups, film nights, research groups, demos, community partners, hard questions, and people who kept showing up before AI culture looked useful to sponsor.
The point is not to manufacture a conference. It is to give an existing ecosystem a sharper public shape, with enough taste and structure for people outside Vancouver to feel the signal too.
Shared Arc
A festival, not a pile of sessions.
Opening night sets the threshold. Two program days carry the room through culture, critique, demos, film, practical work, and the conversations that get better because they happen beside each other.
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.
Venue Concept
The Space Centre is not a backdrop.
Vanier Park, civic strangeness, skyline air, and a home base the Vancouver AI community already knows. The setting changes the room before anyone touches a slide.
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 public cultural setting, and a community already used to showing up there.
Positioning
Not curated at a crowd. Grown from one.
Most AI events arrive as a stage pointed at an audience. Futureproof starts from a community already building, questioning, teaching, filming, designing, organizing, and arguing its way toward better questions.
That is the bet: the future is being made by actual people, and the room gets better when the people living with the consequences help set the terms.
Signal check
The useful signal is not another room shouting louder. It is the moment the room gets clear enough to see what people have already been building.
Built From Community
The room is already real.
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.
Call for Talks
What's a talk you want to hear that nobody's giving yet? Or one you want to give that you never have?
We're building the program in the open. Send the thing you want to give, or the one you wish someone else would. Talks, workshops, demos, performances, experiences, strange little formats. First-timers included.
Pitch your ideaTakes five minutes. We read every one.
Get involved
Help shape the founding room.
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.
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.
Sponsors
Sponsor lanes are open.
Three founding-partner tiers, from $5,000 to a $25,000 presenting slot, each one backing the festival and the non-profit behind it. Custom activations can layer on top, and we will build the package 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.
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