Alternative futures within sónar+D 2026 festival lineup
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The 2026 edition of Sónar+D returns with a festival lineup that reframes technology in the era of post-AI, the physicality in the digital culture, and the different alternative futures. Set in the historic Llotja de Mar, the event brings together artists, researchers, and thinkers whose work moves across music, design, performance, and digital culture across talks, workshops, installations, and live shows. This year, the program builds a shared theme: technology not as a consumption, but as a tool to question, shape, and actively engage with. Three themes come through: ‘AI &; Music’ shows our move towards a post-AI life, ‘Beyond the Screen’ explores our physical relationship with digital products and technologies, and ‘Digital Gardens and Dark Forests’ attempts to investigate alternative futures in the state of commercial internet.
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A central thread running through this year’s lineup is the shift toward what many participants describe as a post-AI condition. Here, artificial intelligence isn’t treated as a novelty, but is embedded in creative practice, which brings up new questions about authorship, collaboration, and control. Speakers such as François Pachet, Nao Tokui, and Anna Xambó approach AI as a system to negotiate, as their talks and sessions reflect how musicians and technologists are adapting to a reality where machine learning is already integrated into composition, production, and performance. This integration is visible in the live program, where the opening sequence sets the tone with a duet between pianist Ignasi Terraza and an AI system, a space in which human timing meets machine response.
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Nao Tokui | all images courtesy of Sónar
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Program focusing on people re-engaging with technology
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The theme of AI and music continues, just like in the past Sónar+D festival lineups, but this 2026, the program tries to highlight how new technologies make clear interactions with music and the people who make it. Projects like Dadabots extend this logic into generative audio, producing continuous streams of sound that evolve without fixed structure. Ταυτόχρονα, the program highlights a counter-movement within the same field, as others move away from it, focusing on physical systems and analog processes. This contrast is visible in performances such as those by Shoeg, who replaces algorithmic systems with chains of controllers, synthesizers, and motion sensors. Here, the emphasis shifts from automation to control, from prediction to gestures.Â
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The coexistence of these approaches within the lineup underlines the event’s question on how much agency should remain with the human, and how much can be delegated to systems. This extends into the body, since another theme across the Sónar+D festival lineup is the return of physicality. After years dominated by screens and interfaces, many of the participating artists are working to reintroduce touch, movement, and presence into digital practice. Performers such as Evicshen and Fitnesss construct instruments that are worn, attached, or carried. Sound is generated through pressure, friction, and movement, turning the body into both input and output. In collaboration with Riusforza, choreography becomes a system that produces sound and light, linking physical action directly to digital response.This focus on embodiment is also present in the talks and workshops, where artist Mónica Rikić introduces robotics into discussions about care, putting machines in direct interaction with what people need.
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the 2026 edition of Sónar+D returns with a festival lineup that reframes technology in the era of post-AI | photo by Nerea Coll
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Interactive participation in workshops, talks, and discussions
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Elsewhere, Keiken explores perception and worldbuilding through participatory formats, asking audiences to reflect on how they interpret and construct reality, moving away from passive listening and requiring attendees to engage directly with tools, systems, and concepts. A similar approach appears in workshops led by practitioners such as Chia Amisola and communities like 0xSalon, where the focus shifts to the structure of the internet itself. Participants are invited to explore alternative frameworks, including small, self-organized networks and experimental digital spaces. This theme connects figures such as Yancey Strickler and Mindy Seu, who approach the internet not as a fixed infrastructure, but as something that can be redesigned.
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These discussions are not limited to theory. Many sessions combine analysis with participation so that the audiences also become contributors, such as collective readings, interactive talks, and game-based workshops. In this way, this space within the Sónar+D festival lineup becomes an area for exchange instead of presentation. The exhibition program also reinforces this approach by translating abstract ideas into physical installations, with works by Volvox Labs and Superbe operating as systems that respond to input from the audience. In Astral Twin, robotic arms move in continuous cycles, balancing repetition and variation. Then in From0, sound is captured and transformed into motion through a series of pendulums. Both installations require interaction to function fully, making visitors part of the work, and this emphasizes participation, aligned with the broader theme of the festival.
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Roxanne Harris
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The architecture of Llotja de Mar plays a key role because the event’s stages and spaces have been redesigned to fit the theme of engagement. Circular layouts place speakers at the center of the room, surrounded by the audience, and outdoor and transitional areas host conversations and informal exchanges. This design reflects the program’s overall structure, where different formats, talks, performances, workshops, and exhibitions, are interconnected and not separated. Another layer of the lineup focuses on community involvement. Local groups and networks are invited to take part in the program with takeovers and collaborative sessions. The presence of communities such as Barcelona Music Tech Hub and The Generative Art Museum highlights how innovation often emerges from collective practice rather than individual work.
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Whether through AI-driven music, body-based performance, alternative internet models, or interactive installations, the Sónar+D festival lineup addresses the question on how people can actively shape the systems that shape them. The result is a program that functions less as a series of separate events and more as a continuous environment, where ideas introduced in talks reappear in performances, are tested in workshops, and are experienced in installations. This circulation creates a feedback loop, so concepts move between formats and evolve through interaction and not stagnate. Sónar+D 2026 runs from June 18th to 19th at Llotja de Mar in Barcelona, Spain.
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Chia Amisola in Southern Exposure SF
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the program builds a shared theme: technology as a tool to question, shape, and actively engage with | photo by Nerea Coll
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this year’s lineup discusses the shift toward what many participants describe as a post-AI condition | photo by Cecilia Diaz Betz
