Top Sessions

• The Future Stage: Opera, AI and Immersive Performance – Hannu Jarvensivu, Marta Genova, and Carlos Ochoa on how XR and AI are pulling younger audiences into classical music and opera
• Designing for Impact: What Makes Immersive Experiences Work – Charlotte Mikkelborg, Alina Goldwoman, and Sonya Seddarasan on the design decisions that separate technically impressive from genuinely felt
• From Archives to Impact: Unlocking Cultural Heritage in the Immersive Age – Roger ter Heide on AI-driven WWII characters at Kamp Amersfoort, and HERIFORGE on turning fragmented digital heritage into reusable creative assets

Other Relevant Sessions

• Church of VR in Focus
• State of the Union: Creative Industries
• From Community to Ecosystem: The XR Landscape from the Lowlands
• From Imagination to Implementation
• Culture Reimagined: AI, XR and Audience Experience
• The Space Is the Experience: Rethinking Cultural Venues in the Age of XR
• Location-Based XR: Where Culture Meets Entertainment
• Unlocking Cultural Heritage for Reuse and Collaboration
• Innovation in Opera, Dance and Performing Arts: New Models for the Future
• Guided Tour (Church of VR)

Programme Overview

Day 1 – Tuesday 23 June 2026

•     09:00   Vision & Impact Conference (Main Stage)
•     09:45   IMPULSE Pitches – Round One Content Creation (Main Stage)
•     10:30   Church of VR & XR Expo (Church of VR & XR Expo)
•     13:20   Church of VR in Focus (Main Stage)
•     14:00   State of the Union: Creative Industries (Main Stage)
•     14:10   From Community to Ecosystem: The XR Landscape from the Lowlands (Main Stage)
•     16:20   From Imagination to Implementation (Main Stage)

Day 2 – Wednesday 24 June 2026

•     09:30   The Future Stage: Opera, AI and Immersive Performance (Second Stage)
•     10:45   From Archives to Impact: Unlocking Cultural Heritage in the Immersive Age (Second Stage)
•     13:00   Virtual Worlds Association (Summer Opportunity Lounge 1)
•     13:00   HERIFORGE (Summer Opportunity Lounge 2)
•     13:15   Culture Reimagined: AI, XR and Audience Experience (Second Stage)
•     13:45   XR Showcase: Mental Health & Well-being (Main Stage)
•     14:00   The Space Is the Experience: Rethinking Cultural Venues in the Age of XR (Second Stage)
•     15:00   EIT Culture & Creativity (Summer Opportunity Lounge 1)
•     15:00   Location-Based XR: Where Culture Meets Entertainment (Second Stage)
•     15:00   XR Showcase: Distribution & Deployment Infrastructure (Main Stage)
•     16:00   Designing for Impact: What Makes Immersive Experiences Work (Second Stage)
•     16:30   Creative Industries & Entertainment Meetup (Cafe)
•     19:00   Our Future on Earth (Second Stage)

Day 3 – Thursday 25 June 2026

•     09:30   Unlocking Cultural Heritage for Reuse and Collaboration (Roundtable)
•     10:30   Innovation in Opera, Dance and Performing Arts: New Models for the Future (Roundtable)
•     11:00   HERIFORGE (Summer Opportunity Lounge 2)
•     11:30   Guided Tour (Church of VR) (Church of VR & XR Expo)

Also Explore

IMPULSE – The European XR Accelerator

IMPULSE connects selected European XR projects with funders, curators, and distribution partners through coaching, one-on-one meetings, and live pitching. The Content Creation round on Day 1 features projects working in immersive storytelling, spatial narrative, and artistic XR:

MusikaliVR – front-row seats to live concerts in 180° VR / Gut Instinct – you are a piece of food on an epic journey through the human body / Insight Realm – step inside your own mind and physically dismantle your biases / Black Box Mensch – hand-drawn VR that makes radical ideology viscerally real / Symphony of the Deep – you are a sperm whale, navigating darkness by voice / When She Married a Peepal Tree – a haunting Indian folktale as a living XR world / Under The Pillow – a family’s guardian spirit is fading, and you are sent to save it / Growing Up Human – an AR book where hand-drawn Irish wildlife leaps off the page / Wild Reindeer-VR – feel the fight, flight, and flock of survival in a Norwegian landscape / In My Skin – the daily reality of a single mother seeking belonging, built for empathy / Tiny Lands VR – 250,000 copies sold as a game, now stepping into VR

Explore IMPULSE

Church of VR

Church of VR brings together the best immersive works of the year – selected for craft, ambition, and the questions they ask. Open across all three conference days.

Works in the 2026 selection engage with identity, memory, displacement, gendered fear, and emotional co-regulation. Highlights include EmbodyXR by Mercurial Dance (wellbeing through movement and immersion, funded by Innovate UK), A Walk Home Alone at Night (psychological horror grounded in lived gendered experience), Lesbian Simulator (an ode to sexual orientation told with colour, play, and a serious undertone), Lacuna (a VR documentary tracing one woman’s lost memory of WWII separation), Exodus by Hotel Modern (hundreds of refugees crossing a devastated landscape, made with 3D scanning and custom tracking), and Empathy Creatures (an AI-powered emotional installation exploring collective healing and our shared responsibility).

Curator Alex Falk

Explore Church of VR

XR Expo

The XR Expo floor is where you get your hands on it. Hardware, software, and platforms from across the XR and immersive technology landscape – cutting-edge tech you can actually try, from the companies building the next wave.

Explore XR Expo