Futureproof Festival 2026
The most honest AI conversation happening anywhere this year.
Oct 28-30, 2026 · H.R. MacMillan Space Centre · Vancouver
Most AI events make you pick a lane
Booster, skeptic, buyer, founder, policy person, artist, educator.
That's not how this lands in real life.
Futureproof puts artists, engineers, educators, ethicists, filmmakers, founders, students, healthcare workers, policy people, and stubbornly curious citizens in one shared arc... because AI is already happening to all of us at once.
The point isn't another generic AI conference.
The point is to gather the people who will actually have to live with what gets built.
What the three days look like
Wed Oct 28: Opening Night Outsized Vancouver AI Meetup energy. Creative AI culture. The dome when we can use it. The honest conversation starts loud.
Thu Oct 29 : Where We Are Talks with teeth. Demos you can touch. Cross-disciplinary rooms - education, life sciences, ethics, consciousness, policy - without the department silos.
Fri Oct 30: What We Build Hackathon Demo Day (hosted by Rival Technologies). Practical work beside culture. Community voting. Squatchies Year Two. DEFRAG closing night.
Keynotes and session names publish when confirmed.
The Space Centre is not a hotel ballroom
Futureproof Festival lives at H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park home base of the monthly Vancouver AI Meetup, with planetarium bones and enough local weirdness to keep the conversation honest.
Worth the trip if you're coming from outside Vancouver. Worth clearing your calendar if you're already here.
Partners already in the room
Presented by BC + AI.
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre: venue home base
SFU Metacreation Lab: creative AI research · DEFRAG closing party
CreativeMornings Vancouver: creative community reach
Data for Good Vancouver: data practice community
Hackathon hosted by Rival Technologies
A note from Kris
I'm the person who keeps dragging the Vancouver AI Meetup back into real rooms with real faces and real stakes.
Futureproof is that habit getting practical: focused enough to be excellent, strange enough to matter, honest enough to be useful.
If you've been in the room at the Space Centre you already know the vibe.
- Kris Krüg, Festival Director · BC + AI
BC + AI members save 25%
Active members get 25% off Futureproof Festival passes. Membership keeps you close to the work after the ticket lands and supports scholarship seats, documentation, and the community infrastructure that makes this possible.