Welcome to this month’s round-up of Extraordinary Experiences across all experience sectors and around the globe.
April is here and we’re already a quarter of the way through the year. The clocks have sprung forward, the cherry blossom is in bloom, and we’re being treated to longer, lighter days. All the more reason to make the most of the host of extraordinary experiences in this month’s round-up, which includes a dynamic pair of London experiences that tell the stories of Cleopatra and Ramses II respectively, with the help of cutting-edge tech and sacred artefacts.
Brand extensions are also having a moment this month, with Italian fashion house Gucci creating an online detective game with Google Gemini to accompany its La Famiglia collection, and French sportswear brand Lacoste opening a chic café in Paris where you can buy green striped croissants and pastries shaped like their iconic tennis shirts. Over in Seoul, quirky eyewear brand Gentle Monster has taken the concept of experiential retail to new heights at its 14-floor flagship featuring a giant animatronic sausage dog called Sunshine.
Immersive audio experiences are highlighting the power of sound to stir emotions and calm frazzled minds. In Washington D.C. a 15 tonne, pumpkin-shaped cloud equipped with a 360-degree sound system is scudding into town for a fortnight of art music and wellness experiences including a NASA-engineered sound bath designed to calm your nervous system. In New York, supernatural storytelling experience The Listening blends live performance, cinematic music, haunting lighting, and immersive audio into an all-consuming experience.
The natural world is also being put under the microscope this month at a pair of experiences that highlight how everything in nature is connected. In Poitiers, Moment Factory has weaved its experiential magic at a new permanent fixture at Futuroscope theme park centred around an eccentric botanist, while at Mandai Wildlife Reserve in Singapore, Exploria unearths the secrets of the natural world via interactive multimedia, AR, and gamified exploration.
18. La Famigilia: Mystery Unfolds
Open now
Location: Online
Experience Sector: Gaming
In an interesting merging of fashion and tech, Gucci’s new creative director, Demna, has turned the brand’s recent ‘La Famiglia’ collection into a game that invites players to step into the world of the collection’s eccentric characters. Called La Famiglia: Mystery Unfolds, the game begins with a phone call from La Contessa and turns players into amateur sleuths. On entering the game, you’re invited to La Contessa’s villa party after her prized necklace is stolen, taking on the role of detective in a bid to find the thief before the night ends.
Developed using Google Gemini, the game expands Gucci’s digital footprint, transforming its e-commerce site into an immersive experience. La Famiglia: Mystery Unfolds comes off the back of on-trend launches like the NFT auction with Christie’s, the Roblox scavenger hunt, and its Miley Cyrus x Metaverse crossover for Gucci Beauty. While Demna was at Balenciaga he flexed his digital muscles, spearheading the brand’s virtual agriculture experience and its YEEZY GAP Engineered by Balenciaga collection, which included a digital game.
17. Tequila Town
Opens: 2 April until 5 May 2026
Location: Miami, US
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Tequila Town, which will be taking over Toledo Studios in Miami this month, sounds like our kind of town to mosey on down to. Moving the spirit beyond its salt and lime shooter roots, the immersive experience takes you on a multi-sensory journey where you’ll get to learn about the agave-based nectar’s creation from seed to glass. Tracing the rituals and traditions behind agave cultivation, harvesting and Tequila production, it kicks off with a cinematic train ride deep into the heart of Jalisco before you enter a 25,000-square-foot Tequila playground.
The experience unfolds across a dozen themed rooms representing a chapter in Tequila’s multi- layered history. You’ll move from the dusty fields of Jalisco to buzzing distilleries, tracing the agave plant’s journey from its growth and harvesting to roasting, distilling and barrel ageing. Co-created by Mexican-American multimedia artist Danié Gómez-Ortigoza, expect shifting soundscapes, immersive visuals, live performances, and re-creations of historic spaces. It ends at the Cristalino Canitina, a market space filled with music, street food and Tequila-laced cocktails.
16. Museum Of Edible Earth
Open now until 26 April 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Learning
Ever wondered what the earth tastes like? If you fancy getting your hands dirty then this temporary exhibition at Somerset House is for you. Making its UK debut, the Museum of Edible Earth invites visitors to indulge in a spot of ‘geophagy’; the practice of eating earth both for its health benefits and as a ritual. Created in Amsterdam in 2017 by artist, researcher and earth eater ‘masharu’, the internationally touring museum brings together samples of edible clay, chalk and mineral-rich earths from around the world.
The activation is both a nomadic museum and an online research platform documenting an expanding global collection of edible soils, which contains over 600 samples from 44 countries including: Armenia, Cameroon, the Côte d’Ivoire, India, Mexico, and Nigeria. Guided soil tasting sessions will take place daily at a communal table where visitors can sample specially sourced earths from the museum’s collection and learn about their flavour profiles, mineral content, and cultural histories. Adding a co-creative element, soil scoffers are asked to leave tasting notes on compostable cards that will be added to the archive.
15. Café Lacoste
Open now
Location: Paris, France
Experience Sector: Immersive Dining
We’ve had the Prada Caffé inside Harrods and the Tiffany Blue Box Café in New York boasting a menu by Daniel Boulud, and now Lacoste has opened a permanent café in Paris. Following a successful pop-up in Monaco, Café Lacoste is a stone’s throw from the sportswear brand’s flagship store in Paris. Developed in partnership with the Giraudi Group, the 100-square-metre space blends tennis-inspired aesthetics with a contemporary menu by chef Thierry Paludetto. Extending its brand footprint to homeware, you can munch on a green striped pistachio croissant and leave with French porcelain stamped with the Lacoste logo.
The menu includes classics like club sandwiches and eggs benedict. We love the look of the café’s signature desserts shaped like Lacoste’s iconic polo shirts in six different flavours. On the drinks front, we’re intrigued by the sound of the L’Eau de Croco (crocodile water). The launch highlights how the line between retail and hospitality is becoming increasingly blurred as brands seek to expand their footprints and create liveable worlds for their fans to luxuriate in. It’s a clever move, offering those who can’t afford expensive designer togs an accessible entry point into the brand’s world, and the chance to create shared memories there.
14. Museum Of Narratives
Open now
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Experience Sector: Museums, Immersive Learning
A space dedicated to the sharing of Japanese culture through stories has opened at Takanawa Gateway Station in Tokyo. Called The Museum of Narratives, the venue will host events and exhibitions that fuse Japanese tradition, learning, entertainment, and technology. High on its agenda will be the creation of live performances that immerse audiences in story worlds. It aims to be a gateway connecting diverse fields, where visitors discover new aspects of themselves and pose questions about story creation and shared narratives.
Boasting a vast performance space with LED panels covering the stage, atatami room, and three terraces where visitors can enjoy foot baths and cherry blossom viewing, the museum has a restaurant, café, and public seating areas. The venue will stage performances that fuse recorded footage with live performances. Its inaugural show, Spiral: The Story of Humanity’s Continuous Evolution invites guests to marvel at the spirals found throughout the natural world. On 22 April it will be followed by live manga show ‘MANGALOGUE: Phoenix’.
13. Ramses And The Pharaohs’ Gold
Open now until 31 May 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Learning
Following the long-awaited reopening of theGrand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Cairo, we’ve all gone cuckoo for Cleopatra and crazy for King Tut. The latest Egyptian royal to be put under the spotlight is Ramses, who has a dedicated show at Battersea Power Station. Created by Gem, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, and entertainment juggernaut NEON, Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold celebrates the reign, power, and legacy of Ramses the Great, and features 180 artefacts from GEM on display in London for the first time, including the solid silver coffin of Shoshenq II and the original wooden coffin that held Ramses II’s mummy.
Part of a world tour that has included runs in Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, and Tokyo, exhibits include intricately carved sarcophagi, animal mummies, ancient jewellery, royal funerary masks, and sacred amulets from the reign of Ramses II over 3,000 years ago. Through immersive galleries, guests can take a deep dive into the lavish world of Ramses the Great, who ruled Egypt for nearly 67 years, sired over 100 children, and helped to shape the enduring legacy of Ancient Egyptian civilisation. The exhibition includes a VR experience that explores Ramses’ reign, from the Tomb of Queen Nefertari to the temples of Abu Simbel.
12. Immersive Museum Sibiu
Open now
Location: Sibiu, Romania
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Illustrating how immersive exhibition spaces have spread their tentacles across the globe is new permanent fixture the Immersive Museum Sibiu. Helping to put the Romanian city on the map for immersive digital art in Europe, the €1 million, 600 square metre downtown venue is a hub for interactive digital art and immersive soundscapes featuring works by Julius Horsthuis, Maotik, and local multimedia artist Daniel Popescu across four themed rooms of interactive storytelling designed to appeal to locals and tourists of all ages.
Combining cutting-edge projection technology, sound design, and scenography to create multisensory experiences, among the activations is Nautilus by multidisciplinary collective H3, that takes visitors 20,000 leagues under the sea in a submarine to explore ocean environments. Foreign Nature, meanwhile, invites viewers on a hypnotic journey where nature and technology intertwine in a continuous dance, while In This World is a constantly shifting environment where the boundary between real and virtual begins to dissolve.
11. La Serre Des Mondes
Open now
Location: Poitiers, France
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Multidisciplinary designers du jour Moment Factory have struck experiential gold again with their latest activation – La Serre des Mondes – at Futuroscope theme park in Poitiers. The permanent attraction, a multi-sensory botanical world, illustrates how narrative environments can elevate theme park offerings and heighten visitor engagement. Following on from Moment Factory’s successful Les Abysses de Lumière at Aquascope, Le Serre des Mondes turns Pavilion 360 into a living ecosystem that unfolds across a four-act story.
Blending narrative design and projection mapping, guests begin their journey in the workshop of botanist Isaac Verdelius, where his quirky botanical collection responds to their movements. The action then moves to the greenhouse, which is facing a threat to its delicate balance. Verdelius invites visitors into a secure airlock, where he learns what’s wrong with his collection and asks them to help save his plants. The finale gathers guests around a giant tree, where pulses of light and rhythmic drumbeats help to restore the ecosystem.
10. Cleopatra: The Experience
Open now until 12 July 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
It’s not just King Ramses II that’s basking in the spotlight this month, as Egypt’s last great queen, Cleopatra, has her own show that’s currently lighting up London. Taking place at Immerse LDN, Cleopatra: The Experience allows Egyptologists to delve into the royal’s extraordinary world and learn the story of her reign, power, loves, lifestyle and legacy with a little help from cutting-edge immersive storytelling and ancient artefacts. Inside you can witness Cleopatra’s coronation, enter the Temple of Isis, and explore her private chamber.
Revealing the fierce intelligence and ruthless ambition that shaped her rise as one of history’s most iconic leaders, the exhibition explores why Cleopatra remains a symbol of female power and fascination to this day. Her story is brought to life through a glasses-free hologram experience, VR, a free-roaming Metaverse, and a giant video mapping room. “She’s a pop icon and there’s a legend behind her, but we wanted to show the real woman, drawing on what contemporary sources and classical authors said about her,” said curator Nacho Ares.
9. 15 Tonne Sound Bath
Open now until 12 April 2026
Location: Washington D.C., US
Experience Sector: Immersive Audio
A giant, pumpkin-shaped iridescent orb is descending on Washington D.C. for fortnight of art, music, and wellness. Having blazed a trail at Burning Man and Art Basel Miami, the enormous audio-visual ‘cloud’ equipped with a 200,000-watt, 360-degree sound system is scudding into D.C. for a two-week run at BERHTA. Billed as the world’s first spherical sound and light experience, Fluffy Cloud blends art, acoustic physics, and precision engineering to transform live entertainment. Created by Jorge Perdomo García-Granados, the residency will include sound baths, immersive light shows and three gigs, including one from the Ministry of Sound.
Headlining the event is the 15-Tonne Sound Bath, a 45-minute multisensory immersion engineered using cutting-edge research from leading institutions like MIT and Harvard to deliver calibrated frequencies, lights, and scents that calm your nervous system. With NASA-derived zero-gravity recliners, relaxation elixirs, and no phones, the 20-person sessions promise to deliver the deepest state of relaxation your body has ever experienced through brain entrainment and full-body sensory stimulation. Described as a “profound, almost religious” experience, one participant felt like they were flying, until they fell asleep. Expect 15 tonnes of state-of-the-art sound and light tech to envelops your body from overhead.
8. Yokai Immersive Experience
Open now until 28 June 2026
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Experience Sector: Immersive Learning
Following a successful run in Nagoya, the Yokai Immersive Experience, produced by Hitohata, has arrived in Tokyo’s Tennozu district. Combing folklore and cutting-edge tech, it brings Japan’s supernatural creatures known as ‘yokai’ to life. The exhibition uses projection mapping and holographic screens to breathe new life into classic images of yokai. Featuring over 300 depictions of the curious creatures, the exhibition boasts eight rooms based around distinct themes, such as the yokai birthplace and yokai processions. Walking the line between eerie and endearing, yokai can be terrifying monsters or devious little pranksters.
The exhibition provides insight into how yokai such as the long-nosed tengu or the shapeshifting fox spirits developed from myth and superstition to become enduring cultural figures. The main attraction is a room themed on a wild dance of the yokai. Moving images of the creatures fill the room’s walls, ceiling and floor, accompanied by atmospheric music. Explanations of yokai drawings and caricatures from the Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) eras add an educational element. The show also includes realistic 3D-modelled figures of yokai, allowing visitors to enjoy their finer details up close and snap selfies with them.
7. V&A East
Opens: 18 April 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Museums
The V&A Storehouse opened to much fanfare last May, allowing culture magpies to fawn over iconic items like David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust outfits and rare Picasso prints. This month the V&A East Museum will open its doors, marking a significant addition to London’s East Bank as a cultural and educational hub. Designed by architects O’Donnell + Tuomey, the five-floor museum in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park focuses on the voices that are shaping global culture right now, and will launch with a major exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story, which traces the impact of Black British music on UK culture from 1900 to today.
The exhibition features instruments, clothes, and photography connected to pioneering figures in music, and incorporates sound tech developed in partnership with Sennheiser. Alongside the debut show, two floors will house the free to access ‘Why We Make’ galleries, showcasing objects across disciplines to explore the motivations and meanings behind the creative process. With its galleries hosting over 500 objects from the V&A’s collections, the V&A East will serve as a civic destination and a resource for curatorial programming. Taking a collaborative approach, the venue has worked with emerging creatives from across East London.
6. Exploria At Mandai Wildlife Reserve
Open now
Location: Singapore
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Billed as Southeast Asia’s largest indoor nature-themed attraction, spanning 10,000 square metres, Exploria unveils the hidden realms of the natural world, from prehistoric eras and extreme environments to microscopic ecosystems across a quintet of themed worlds. Through interactive multimedia and gamified exploration, visitors can explore, play, and uncover the secrets of the natural word. Bringing its wonders within reach, the venue is home to five distinct immersive worlds that illustrate how everything in nature is connected.
Realm of the Giants boasts monumental installations, AR activations, and a 360-degree theatre experience. In Micro Worlds, meanwhile, you’ll find interactive glass orbs and projection domes, while AI Extreme Frontiers provides virtual expeditions and simulator rooms. At Infinite Wonderland, guests can explore the biodiversity of rainforests and coral reefs, while World of Darkness uncovers the secrets of life without light in the depths of the ocean. There’s a light and sound show called The Planet Awakens and the chance for visitors to personalise their experience via RFID wristbands that activate interactive installations.
5. Magic Universe
Open now
Location: Madrid, Spain
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Magic Universe at Madland in Madrid has to be seen to be believed. Part escape room, part multi-stage journey, it combines storytelling, theatrical production, live performance, and interactive adventure, placing visitors inside a fictional universe akin to Hogwarts in Harry Potter. You don’t just watch a story unfold, you enter and live inside it, moving through curated environments populated by live actors, effects, and interactive moments. Everything is built to seem real and all elements, from the sets and the music to the lighting responds to a cinematic narrative structure.
The way the rooms are manipulated, lifted, lowered, twisted, shaken, hidden and displaced around attendees sets a new precedent, allowing for seamless transformations of the space. What sets Magic Universe apart are the live performances. The choreography is on point, blending with the environment, which reacts to the actors’ moves with perfect timing. The narrative is as ambitious as the set design, and the level of detail across the experience is exemplary, with puzzles encouraging teamwork and blending seamlessly with the theme. Told from the perspective of Aranis, Madland plans to include future iterations that will explore the same story from different points of view, to encourage repeat visits.
One attendee said the two-and-a-half-hour journey where the impossible keeps becoming possible felt like “a glimpse into the future, showing what immersive entertainment can look like”. Produced on an epic scale, Magic Universe delivers effects that would be the highlight in other escape rooms every few minutes. Huge moments are the norm here and every time you think it can’t possibly get any stranger, it somehow does. “When it’s over, you can hardly believe what you’ve just experienced inside,” said another reviewer.
4. Vikings: The Immersive Experience
Open now until 31 May 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Learning
It was only a matter of time until Vikings got their own immersive experience. Taking place at Dock X in London’sCanada Water, the experience brings Norse history to life via transformative sets, virtual reality, replica artefacts and interactive installations. With an audio guide dialling up the drama, videos fuse history and myth, with the exhibition blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Visitors enter via a stone doorway into a mossy forest full of twisting vines and towering trees, and roam across a rune stone floor. A VR experience tells the story of Aslaug, from her beginnings as the daughter of gods and mortals to becoming Queen Kráka, wife of King Ragnar.
There’s also a 360-degree show where you enter an immersive space through a fog-filled portal called the ‘Mists of Time’ that transports you to another dimension. Inside, agiant Viking longship in the middle of the screen-wrapped room is a playful place to watch the show unfold. Soundtracked by folkloric music and battle cries, it tells the story of Aslaug as she grows into her role as Queen Kráka and avengesKing Ragnar’s death. Vikings: The Immersive Experience pairs cinematic mystique with Norse history to good effect. With education and entertainment at its core, expect maps, audio guides and artefact replicas for the history buffs, and interactive displays and tech-fuelled tales for younger audiences.
3. Haus Nowhere Seoul
Open now
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Experience Sector: Immersive Retail
A retail outlet with a difference, eyewear brand Gentle Monster is redefining what a flagship store can be. Its 14-floor Haus Nowhere complex in Seoul’s buzzing Seongsu-dong neighbourhood is part brand headquarters and part experiential museum. The first floor is home to a giant animatronic sleeping dachshund named Sunshine (after fragrance brand Tamburin’s latest scent) that snores and fidgets as visitors enter the store. On the second floor, Gentle Monster eyewear is showcased among robots with human faces. A floor above, items from homeware brand Nuflaat are adorned with talon-like, red-polished fingernails.
Designed to feel like a living organism, the space hosts installations by artist Max Siedentopf, an AI-powered photo booth that mirrors guests’ faces onto digital creatures, and a Nudake dessert teahouse where pastries resemble shiitake mushrooms and asparagus spears. Billed as ‘a space found nowhere,’ it’s like stepping into a sci-fi movie set disguised as a shop. The store’s architecture fuses brutalist concrete with futuristic elements, embodying Gentle Monster’s ambition to transform shopping into a surrealist immersive experience.
2. The Listening
Opens: 7-12 April 2026
Location: New York, US
Experience Sector: Immersive Audio
Taking over a basement in New York’s East Village for a six-night run is supernatural storytelling experience The Listening. Masterminded by AKS Immersive, it features a cast from Broadway and TV. Inspired by audio fiction series DRAMA: An Aural Experience, the show invites audiences into an intimate environment where live performance, cinematic music, haunting lighting, and immersive audio design converge. Performed for 30 guests at a time, attendees don headphones and experience original supernatural stories unfolding all around them, blurring the line between theatre, soundscape, and immersive storytelling.
Written by author Jeffrey James Keyes and directed by AKS Immersive, The Listening cleverly combines human-centred narrative experiences with cutting-edge tech, expanding the world of DRAMA into a live, communal experience. Lookout for powerhouse performances by Broadway’s Jason Veasey of Only Murders in the Building, Morgan Siobhan Green, Kalyne Coleman, and rising star David Israeli. The show features narration by L Morgan Lee, who lends her voiceover to the production. Together, the cast leads audiences through a theatrical universe where every sound, word, and breath envelops them.
1. London Experience Week
Opens: 20-24 April 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Experience Design
Dubbed ‘the Coachella of the experience world’, London Experience Week is back with a bang and the 2026 edition will be its biggest and boldest yet. Masterminded by the WXO, it’s where the future gets workshopped. Now in its fourth year, LXW is a must-attend fixture for experience professionals hoping to gain new skills and win new business. Taking place at the Ministry of Sound, the event will unite 750 creators, leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators from 40 countries to share, learn, and build the future of experiences, from immersive, location-based experiences to live events, experiential marketing, and tech innovation.
One of the week’s highlights is the World Experience Summit, comprising three days of star speakers, collaboration, networking, workshops, masterclasses, experiential activations, and parties. Think evening socials and curated networking sessions with big names in the industry. Running alongside it will be the London Experience Safari: five days of exploring London’s buzzing experience scene with fellow experience professionals. Expect a mix of hyped big ticket experiences, free fringe events, and exclusive behind-the-scenes tours.
Speaking at this year’s event will be a host of thought leaders who have been busy shaping the future of the Experience Economy, including Joe Pine, author of The Transformation Economy, Tom Lionetti-Maguire, founder of Little Lion Entertainment, and Mikhael Tara Garver, founder of Culture House Immersive, among many others. The WXO Awards, meanwhile, will celebrate the very best in new experience activations. You’ll leave with fresh insights, valuable industry connections that often turn into clients, and the necessary tools to pitch, price, and prove the value of experiences. What are you waiting for…
