mesh festival 2026

Mesh is an international festival on art, technology, and urban futures. For its second edition in 2026, we welcome contributions from artists, researchers, technologists, cultural workers, collectives, educational institutions, NGOs, associations, and community initiatives.

The festival explores how digital technologies reshape cities and how hybrid urban spaces—physical, virtual, ecological, and algorithmic—can become healthier, more sustainable, and more democratic.

Contributions may take the form of art works, discursive formats, or collaborative projects, including installations, video, performance, music and sound, interventions, talks, lectures, panels, workshops, mediation and outreach initiatives, community actions, NGO partnerships, and institutional programs.

The 2026 curatorial framework Urban Actions | Spatial Utopias – Infrastructures of Care approaches care as a social, ecological, and technological practice embedded in the urban fabric. We are looking for experimental, bold, and forward-thinking projects that rethink how care can inform more accessible, resilient, and just urban societies.

Your project may relate to one or more of the festival’s five strategic thematic zones:

1. Commons of Connection
   Rethinking proximity, exchange, and solidarity in the digital age.

2. Wild Cities
   Cities as co-evolving habitats integrating human and non-human needs.

3. Memory Machines
   Collective memory in times of digital archives, disappearing cities, and shifting realities.

4. Future Playgrounds
   A shared world shaped together, with a dedicated space for children and young adults.

5. Circular Systems
   Regenerative infrastructures beyond extractive logics in resources, energy, and data.

You may apply to one or multiple categories. We welcome applications that envision pairing any form of contribution with the discursive formats, so that visitors can encounter a topic through a sensory or collective experience and, at the same time, deepen their understanding of the theoretical context behind the research or cooperation. The application form will guide you through all necessary subcategories and details—such as technical requirements, placement preferences (gallery, stage, public space), target groups for workshops, indoor/outdoor specifications, and any use of video, sound, light, or special materials.