Society 5.0 Festival
3 & 4 November 2026 | Amsterdam
With an inspiring mix of talks, hands-on workshops, interactive installations, and boundary-pushing performances, the festival brings together creatives, researchers, designers, technologists, educators, policymakers, and citizens. It’s a collective space to explore the fusion of digital and physical worlds, spark new ideas, and co-create visions of a more inclusive, sustainable, and human-centred future.
Theme 2026: Reimagining Autonomy
In a world shaped by platforms, data flows, apps and devices that mediate our lives, autonomy is under pressure and ready to be reimagined.
Concerns about autonomous technologies, addictive algorithms, and dependency on big tech are increasingly shaping public debate. Autonomy is often framed as the ability to think and act independently, free from external influence. But in practice, our actions are always embedded in social, technological and ecological systems.
At the Society 5.0 Festival 2026, we approach autonomy as a relational practice – not something we possess individually, but something shaped and sustained collectively through our relationships with others, technologies, and environments. Autonomy, in this sense, is not a fixed state but an ongoing collective practice of safeguarding the personal freedom of interconnected individuals.
We invite creatives, researchers, educators, technologists, and citizens shaping our future, to explore autonomy as a relational and situated practice. What does it mean to act autonomously in a world of intelligent systems? How can we design for autonomy while acknowledging interdependence? And what role do education, research and creative practice play in shaping these perspectives?
Through talks, workshops, installations and performances, the festival creates space to critically examine and collectively experiment with new forms of autonomy. Forms that balance control and care, resistance and responsibility.
Call for proposals
The festival programme includes open slots for researchers and lecturers from the CoE CI institutes to engage participants through interactive formats such as prototypes, installations, workshops, and discussions. Activities should align with the festival theme and actively involve visitors.
The 2025 festival in photos
Curious about the vibe? Check out the photos from the 2025 edition and get a glimpse of the energy, ideas, and people that shaped the festival.
Follow our trail
In 2025, we launched the Society 5.0 Most Interesting Person Trail — a human-powered video series. Each month, a new voice shares their perspective on the intersection of humanity and technology, and nominates the next, expanding the trail beyond our network. Through this, we foster connection and highlight diverse perspectives to help shape a desirable technological future.
Discover previous editions
Discover previous editions of the Society 5.0 Festival and explore the ideas, projects, and conversations that have shaped the festival over the years.
About
At the Society 5.0 Festival, we explore new ways of working to shape a desirable future society. During this two-day festival – filled with workshops, performances, installations, and talks – creatives, researchers, citizens, technologists, educators, designers, students, and (policy)makers come together to access, generate, sense, and reclaim our hybrid future.
The Society 5.0 Festival is organised by the Centre of Expertise Creative Innovation (CoE CI), an impact network for the creative industry, in which the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Mediacollege Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences collaborate.
Meet the partners making this year’s festival possible: VPRO Medialab, The Social Hub, and EIT Culture & Creativity.
