S.M.I.L.E.S.: AN AGENDA OF SENSORY ADVENTURES
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reSOUND by d’strict — HERO NYC
Through October 31, 2026, at HERO Rockefeller Center.
The Korean collective behind the Times Square Whale opens its first permanent US room with seven themed environments where walls sing, floors ripple, and light moves like water. d’strict has been the quiet pacesetter in digital art for three years; this is the proof, anchored to a Midtown address with no excuse not to visit. Bring shoes you don’t mind looking at your feet in — the floor projections do a lot of the work.
Video Games & Music — Philharmonie de Paris
Now running at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Twenty-plus interactive installations tracing fifty years of game music — from Tomita’s NES synth experiments through Hildur Guðnadóttir scoring Battlefield. The Philharmonie giving a major exhibition to game audio is the closest thing to a S.M.I.L.E.S.-native curatorial mission anyone is programming in a European institution this year. Playable, listenable, and the rare exhibit where the headphones cord is the central design problem.
Wake the Tiger — Westfield London
London expansion launches summer 2026; Bristol original currently open. The Bristol original was already Europe’s most-talked-about indie immersive. The London expansion is 80,000 sq ft inside a shopping centre, which is either a sellout or a heist depending on how it lands.
The Horror Show — Academy Museum
September 27, 2026 – July 25, 2027 at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, LA.
The Academy doing horror is the kind of programming choice that makes a SMILES editor’s job easier — set pieces, props, and immersive recreations across the canon, presented with the credibility a franchise pop-up could never buy. The exhibit tracks the genre from silent-era Caligari through contemporary A24, with sound and lighting designed to actually unsettle. Worth pairing with COSM or Meow Wolf LA for a properly themed LA weekend.
Meow Wolf Los Angeles
Opens later in 2026 at the Howard Hughes Center. Built inside a derelict Cinemark, which is the kind of source material a writer’s room would kill for. Sixth permanent location, but the first one whose premise is openly about the death of the format it lives in.
https://meowwolf.com/visit/los-angeles
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Snarkitecture: The Playground — Washington, DC
July 3 – August 30, 2026 at the National Building Museum. The studio behind The BEACH and Fun House returns to the Great Hall with a new immersive summer installation. Less spectacle, more interactive environment for play and gathering — the right summer commission if you’ve outgrown the Instagram-trap version of immersive design.
Dataland — Los Angeles
Opens June 20, 2026, at The Grand LA. Refik Anadol's 25,000 sq ft "first museum of AI arts" inside a Gehry building. The inaugural show, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, is trained on data Anadol pulled from the Amazon. The Infinity Room comes with AI-generated scents, which is either thrilling or insufferable depending on your mood. Either way, it's the year's most-watched opening.
Air by Kenzo Digital — SUMMIT One Vanderbilt
Open ongoing at SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, NYC.
Kenzo Digital built a mirrored cube pressed against the highest sky lobby in Midtown and let the skyline do half the work. The piece reads as either spiritual or self-conscious depending on the weather, and that ambivalence is the point — Air is a meditation on visibility that only completes when you bring your body into it. Pair the ticket with anything else on this list and you have a single-day Manhattan immersive crawl.
Frameless: The Infinite Impressionists — London
Opened May 22, 2026 — ongoing. The Marble Arch venue’s most interactive show yet — ripple Monet’s water, smear Van Gogh’s sky. Good test case for whether projection-mapped Impressionism still has anything to say.
Venice Biennale 2026 — In Minor Keys
May 9 – November 22, 2026. Koyo Kouoh’s posthumous curatorial vision pulls the Biennale back from spectacle. The pavilions that responded best: Austria’s SEAWORLD VENICE (Florentina Holzinger turning the pavilion into a church/water park/sewage plant), Greece’s Escape Room (Andreas Angelidakis as queer Platonic cave), and the Saudi pavilion (Awartani’s mosaic of threatened heritage motifs).
Fondazione Dries Van Noten — Venice
Palazzo Pisani Moretta, through October 4, 2026. Studio San Polo opens late 2026. The inaugural show, The Only True Protest Is Beauty, spreads 200+ works across 20 rooms of a palazzo. Less retail moment, more permanent thesis statement about making things by hand. The most editorial-friendly destination on the list.
Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy — Venice
May 6 – November 16, 2026 at Gallerie dell’Accademia. The first solo exhibition by a living female artist that the Gallerie dell’Accademia has ever staged, in direct dialogue with Titian’s late Pietà. Abramović’s most institutionally serious moment in years, and the one to see if you only have a day in Venice during the Biennale.
Olafur Eliasson: Presence — QAGOMA, Brisbane
May 1 – June 26, 2026. Multi-sensory mid-career survey at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. The other Eliasson to track is A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake, a public wake he staged in Utah this spring — quieter, sadder, harder to monetize.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/04/14/olafur-eliasson-great-salt-lake-utah-public-art-project
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YOKAI Immersive Experience
The "YOKAI Immersive Experience Exhibition" is the world's first immersive experience-type digital art museum where visitors can immerse themselves in the art of yokai, the pride of Japan, such as "Hyakki Yagyo Emaki", "Hyakumonogatari", "Oni", "Tengu", "Kappa" and "Tsukumogami" painted by various artists in the Edo and Meiji periods using cutting-edge video technology and 3D modeling.
EXPERIENCE IMMERSE
IMMERSE yourself in 10 city blocks of Downtown Orlando filled with hundreds of live performances, immersive art installations, and unexpected creative experiences.
IMBA Theatre — Singapore
February 13 – August 31, 2026 at Gardens by the Bay. A new immersive venue inside the most over-photographed garden in Southeast Asia. Inaugural show: Botero: The Heart of Volume.
IGNITE Broward
Get ready for an immersive celebration of light, art, technology, and community at four distinct locations across Broward County.
The Gates, Central Park
Standing out as a unique chapter in the Park’s history—The Gates is revered as a celebration of art, nature, and community. The Gates AR experience invites all visitors to engage in this timeless story through a fresh, contemporary format, revisiting the dialogue of the past while unveiling new layers of meaning in today’s conversations.
reSOUND
This large-scale multi-sensory art project invites you to explore immersive installations, digital art, and omnidirectional soundscapes crafted through a collaboration between artists, designers, scientists, and media & sound experts around the globe. This experience redefines art through innovation, blending technology, design, and sensory exploration like never before.
Astra Lumina
Experience Astra Lumina in full holiday glow! Festive décor, enchanting light tunnels, and seasonal touches that make your walk under the stars even more magical.
Ring in the New Year at Astra Lumina with a glowing New Year's celebration tunnel, festive surprises, and an unforgettable walk beneath the stars!
Monet Expo: The Immersive Experience
Claude Monet: The Immersive Experience is another mind-blowing and unique digital art experience showcasing over 300 of Monet's paintings and sketches." "The 360-degree digital art exhibition invites you to step into the world of the French painter Claude Monet.
Ruth Asawa A Retrospective
Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). The exhibition is organized by Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, and Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; with Dominika Tylcz, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Assistant Curator, and William Hernández Luege, Curatorial Associate, Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA.
Civa – Contemporary Immersive Virtual Art - VIENNA
|indeterminate⟩⟨apparatus| brings together artistic approaches that view the indeterminate as an aesthetic, political, and speculative realm. The artists engage with quantum concepts through poetic gestures, multi-layered embodied experiences, and playful abstraction. They explore the infrastructures of emerging quantum technologies and experiment with their creative potential. In doing so, they shed light on the frequently overlooked ecological and social implications that these technologies present while also negotiating their possibilities and inherent ambivalences.
visionOS 26 + the Spatial Gallery
Apple Vision Pro, available now (visionOS 26.1). The ‘shared spatial experiences’ feature (two Vision Pro users, same room, same scene) is the thing that finally makes the headset feel less anti-social. The Apple/Real Madrid immersive doc shot with 30+ Blackmagic immersive cameras is the format’s first credible piece of long-form journalism.
WNDR Boston
Coming off an exciting blockbuster run of superhero films this summer, WNDR is tasking all superhero (and villain) enthusiasts to come unite at this exhibit. Admission includes museum access and a special welcome beverage.
Outernet London – The Now Building (London, UK)
Welcome to Outernet
Outernet is the most visited cultural attraction in the UK, an immersive entertainment district bringing together breath-taking arts, culture and music experiences for all the family.
Arte Museum Las Vegas - Eternal Nature
Immersion beyond Imagination
Only at Arte Museum Las Vegas
Discover “Eternal Nature,” an immersive art experience unlike any other.
Feel waterfalls crash around you,
stroll among endless blooming flowers,
and hear the ocean’s gentle whisper.
Every moment is a symphony of light, sound, and scent.
Théâtre des Lumières : Lee Ungno
Théâtre des Lumières
A symbol of Korean culture industry and center of history is reborn with lights!
Artech House NY Blooming Wonders
ARTECHOUSE is the nation’s first innovative art organization dedicated to the intersection of art, science and technology. As a pioneer in the field of experiential art, it creates, produces and presents innovative technology driven exhibitions, expanding the possibilities of art and how we experience it. From immersive art spaces to an extended reality (XR) mobile app, ARTECHOUSE is where curiosity-seekers of all ages go to experience creative innovation without limits. Founded in 2015, ARTECHOUSE has become the premier destination, both online and offline, for genre-pushing, technology-driven art.
Artech House TX Rolling Stones Presents AMPLIFIED
AMPLIFIED offers a 50-minute immersive journey into the music, history, imagery and culture of rock ‘n’ roll, encompassing over 1,000 photographs, 200 videos, 1,300 Rolling Stone covers, and featuring over 300 iconic artists whose music changed the world. Narrated by actor/musician Kevin Bacon, the unprecedented audio and visual experience transports audiences utilizing ARTECHOUSE’s cutting edge, 270-degree, floor to ceiling 18K-resolution digital canvas and state-of-the-art surround sound.
TEAMLAB BORDERLESS TOKYO
Wander, Explore, and Discover in One Continuous Borderless World
teamLab Borderless is a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map created by art collective teamLab.
Artworks move out of rooms, relate to other works, influence each other, and at times intermingle, without boundaries. Through this group of works, one continuous world without boundaries is created.
Immerse your body in borderless art. Wander, explore with intention, discover, and create a world with others.
Area 15 Illuminarium Las Vegas
From traveling space to music-powered trips through iconic rock moments, the best immersive experience in Las Vegas starts at Illuminarium.
MERCER LABS NY Maestros and the Machines
If Da Vinci had the technology we do today, what would he have created?
That’s the question being asked at Mercer Labs’ newest exhibit, “Maestros and the Machines,” featuring sound by Timbaland. The exhibit investigates: what could’ve been created if past artists, musicians and geniuses had technology as we know it today.
The new exhibit, which showcases an immersive atmosphere with cutting-edge digital tools, soundscapes and more, is conceived and directed by artist and Mercer Labs founder Roy Nachum. (You might recognize Nachum’s name because he designed Rihanna’s Anti album cover.)
MEOW WOLF HOUSE OF ETERNAL RERUN
Cosmic Adventure of Explorable Art
Find out what happened to the residents of this family home and discover uncharted realms beyond the walls.
Frameless beyond reality
Travel on a mind-bending journey as mirrors and clever projection take you beyond the boundaries of reality. Surreal, otherworldly and dreamlike, this gallery will envelope you in the strange and extraordinary.
S.M.I.L.E.S.
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S.M.I.L.E.S. *
Big Smile Co’s So Many Immersive & Live Events Simultaneously (SMILES) is a global guide for immersive arts events: exhibits, art fairs, public art, film festivals, screenings, concerts, and interactive experiences.
Share your extraordinary sights and sounds in virtual or actual worlds HERE.
S.M.I.L.E.S. GUIDES
Maria Consuelo Gonima
Since 2000, the founder of Big Smile Co has been transforming unconventional spaces into interactive art experiences. From her early days at Cinematexas and the Austin Museum of Digital Art to her work at Tigerbeat6 and Asphodel, including its spatial cinema studio Recombinant Media Labs, Gonima has consistently pushed multisensory boundaries.
Big Smile Co continues this work, collaborating with immersive media leaders Meow Wolf, Tribeca Festival, Survios, Wevr, Double Eye, Parade Animation, Intelligent Mischief, and beyond.
Kiira Benz
Founder of Double Eye Studios, Kiira is a S.M.I.L.E.S. contributor. She is a versatile director exploring the intersection of theater, hybrid cinema, and virtual reality. Kiira has collaborated on immersive works with Intel, Google, and Meta, and she has received recognition for her innovative approach to live VR performance from the Tribeca Festival, Venice Film Festival, and others.