Calgary Futures Forum 2026
📍 Contemporary Calgary, Calgary, Canada
📅 26–27 October 2026
Calgary Futures Forum 2026 is a two-day gathering designed to strengthen Calgary’s capacity for long-term thinking and collective imagination as the city approaches a population of two million.
Bringing together 150 leaders from industry, academia, arts and design, technology, government, and cultural and community organisations, the forum treats the future as a practice rather than a destination. The emphasis is on exploring possible futures together and developing the capacity to anticipate change, adapt earlier and build across uncertainty.
Programme Themes
The forum is organised around three broad areas:
Growing. Evolving. Adapting. Innovating. What “place” means. Exploring possible futures for Calgary, the wider region and the world, while strengthening collective imagination and ambition.
Leadership. Trust. Belonging. Generational Change. Building the capacity to look further ahead, course-correct earlier and collaborate across uncertainty.
Technology. Creativity. Human Ingenuity. Examining both the opportunities and risks of emerging technologies, and how they might contribute to meaningful challenges and new forms of prosperity.
Speakers
The programme combines international futures practitioners with local perspectives. Announced guests include Julian Bleecker of Near Future Laboratory and co-author of The Manual of Design Fiction; Lisa Kay Solomon, futurist-in-residence at Stanford d.school and host of How We Future; Greg Lindsay of MIT Future Urban Lab and Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab; Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman, Ubuntu Wisdom Keeper and researcher with Utrecht University’s Inclusive AI Lab; and Samantha Matters, Principal Futurist and co-founder of Eras Foresight & Consulting.
Rather than functioning primarily as a speaker-led conference, the Calgary Futures Forum is framed as a space for participants to explore and practise futures thinking together, using the city itself as a context for thinking about what could come next.
Participation is limited and application-based. Learn more via the link below.