Futureproof Festival 2026 has a sharper promise: the most honest AI conversation happening this year.
The year-one festival runs Wednesday October 28 through Friday October 30, 2026 at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver. One focused founding room. One shared arc. No conference-brochure sprawl. Attention is sacred; hallway drift is a thief.
Wednesday night opens with a party: doors, music, a welcome from Kris, and the DEFRAG live set with Philippe Pasquier, Erica Lapadat-Janzen, Arshia Sobhan Sarbandi, and Kris Krüg — creative AI as performance, anchoring the threshold moment.
Thursday asks where we are: what AI is already doing to people, to culture, to institutions, and to the way we understand ourselves. The day moves from the opening keynote through single-track conversations and an evening BC + AI Film Festival. Friday turns toward what we build next: craft, demos, community judgment, the Squatchies, the closing keynote, and the 2027 reveal. The Metacreation DEFRAG wrap party closes the festival — included with Festival Pass.
The format is intentionally coherent. Futureproof is not trying to be the biggest AI event in the region this year. It is trying to be the festival people remember because the whole room moved through the same ideas, argued with the same questions, and carried the same weekend home in their nervous systems.
The confirmed BC + AI community roster is already strong. Anthonia Ogundele, Loki Jorgenson, Suzanne Gildert, Tanya Slingsby, Simon Haworth, Jesi Carson, Sarah Downey, Philippe Pasquier, Erica Lapadat-Janzen, Arshia Sobhan Sarbandi, Kate Armstrong, Michael Tippett, Kevin Friel, Luke Minaker, Andrew Reid, Gordon Hamilton, Maya Bruck, Udbhav Kansal, Sev Geraskin, Kris, and others in the speaker registry are part of the public lineup. Additional speaker announcements will roll out only as each name and session frame is approved.
The keynote bookends matter, and so does precision. The festival is being built around invitations for speakers whose work is central to how we think about AI and humanity. Their status is invited, not confirmed. That means their names are program ambition, not public promise. If they confirm, we will say so plainly.
That is not small print. It is the standard Futureproof has to hold if the festival is going to be worthy of the honest-conversation promise. Confirmed means confirmed. Invited means invited. The audience should never have to guess which is which.
That community spine is the real point. Thursday morning moves from the keynote slot into "What we already feel" with Loki, Suzanne, and Tanya. Thursday afternoon asks the room to work, not just listen, with Jesi and Sarah leading "Ethics in motion." Thursday night belongs to the 2nd Annual BC + AI Film Festival. Friday begins with the new craft of AI filmmaking, moves into hackathon demo day, and ends with a closing keynote slot, Squatchies, the public handoff to year two, and the DEFRAG wrap party.
This is still Futureproof Festival. It is just distilled.
The full-week plan is not gone. It becomes the 2027 blueprint. Year one is the proof of demand, the founding-attendee class, the asset engine, and the cultural argument that Vancouver can host a serious AI festival with public-interest stakes without flattening it into a trade show or a branded tote-bag hallucination.
Tickets are the next step. The 2026 festival is built as a focused founding room, with Festival Pass ($650 early bird / $950 standard), VIP Pass ($1,650), and Student Festival Pass ($250).
If you want to be in the room where year one becomes real, start at /tickets.