Event: ISEA2026, the 31st International Symposium on Electronic/Emerging Art
Dates: November 6 to 15, 2026
Venues: ARTE Museum Dubai and galleries and public spaces across the city, plus an online academic programme
City: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organiser: Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, with ISEA International
Theme: ELYAH, Constellating Place, Data, and Identity
ISEA is the longest-running international meeting for art made with technology: digital installations, generative work, sound, light, robotics and the research behind them. It moves to a new city each edition. This year’s was first set for April 10 to 19, 2026, and was moved to November 6 to 15. Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who chairs Dubai Culture, opened it, and organisers call it the largest edition the symposium has held.
What’s in the programme
The scale is big for an academic art meeting. More than 100 artworks are on show across Dubai, alongside 145 academic papers, more than 50 artist and practitioner talks, more than 10 workshops, four special tracks with over 45 workshops, panels and presentations, seven Eco Labs workshops and more than 20 institutional presentations. The academic side runs online as well, so researchers who can’t travel can follow the paper sessions.
The headline piece is ELYAH, an interactive show at ARTE Museum Dubai that combines light, music, performance and digital technology and draws on the region’s history of reading the stars. The opening also brought a projection show on the façade of the Burj Khalifa. Works on the opening tour included Taeyoung Ahn’s Quantum Memory Fossils, Where Breath Becomes Light, Ina Hur and Serkan Jolboldin’s Cosmic Balance, a hybrid cosmos of water, light and gesture, and Orkhan Mammadov’s Saving Aesthetics.
Who it’s for
ISEA draws working artists, curators, university researchers in media arts and computing, and the museums and cultural agencies that commission this kind of work. The public programme covers exhibitions, performances, screenings, guided tours, master classes and artist talks, so most of the city-wide shows are open to visitors who aren’t registered for the symposium.
For Dubai, hosting ISEA fits a long push to build a cultural economy next to its business and tourism one. For the field, a Gulf edition brings a large new audience and new money into a scene that has mostly lived in European and East Asian institutions.
Registration and the full venue guide are on the ISEA2026 website.