Welcome to this month’s round-up of Extraordinary Experiences across all experience sectors and around the globe.
March is upon us and spring has finally sprung. The birds are singing, the daffodils have poked their sunshine yellow heads through the soil, and the experience sector is buzzing with events, including two spearheaded by the WXO. On 10 March we team up with InnovateX at the Science Museum, where we’ll be hosting an Experience Innovators Lab that explores how creativity, technology, and design are transforming the way we live, play, and connect.
The following month the WXO will host London Experience Week at the Ministry of Sound, a must-attend fixture for experience pros hoping to gain new skills and win new business. Dubbed ‘the Coachella of the experience world’ it’s where the future gets workshopped. Elsewhere, AI and art are colliding all over the globe. At the soon-to-open Dataland in LA, Refik Anadol will be making history with the world’s first museum dedicated to AI art.
The Ministry of Awe in Philadelphia, meanwhile, is a multi-media art experience packed with paintings, murals, sculptures, virtual reality installations and performance art by over 100 local artists who took the venue’s setting: a former 19th century bank, as their inspiration. In Montreal, Blur explores the dangerous implications of playing God by seamlessly weaving theatre, VR, and AR, providing an exciting new paradigm for digital-led theatre experiences.
Cabaret is also on the menu this month in London and Paris, with The Lost Estate bringing iconic Parisian club Le Chat Noir vividly to life in West Kensington with the help of a live orchestra and some of the UK’s top performers. In Montmartre, hot new nightspot Nonsense aims to bring the spirit of 19th century Paris back to life through its secret basement bar that you need a gold ticket to access. Inside, the music transports and every drink tells a story.
18. InnovateX
Opens: 10 March 2026
Location: London UK
Experience Sector: Experience Design
Any experience designer worth their salt needs to head to the Science Museum this month for InnovateX, a forum dedicated to exploring how experiences are shaping the future of business and culture. Masterminded by Experience UK, InnovateX brings together thought leaders from across visitor attractions, immersive experiences, the creative industries, technology and retail for a day of insights, inspiration, and connection. From immersive storytelling and experience design to digital innovation, sustainability, and audience engagement, the event provides a holistic view of the fast-evolving Experience Economy.
The WXO has partnered with InnovateX for this year’s event, where we’ll be hosting an exclusive WXO Experience Innovators Lab that explores how creativity, technology, and design are transforming the way we live, play, work, and connect. InnovateX 2026 is built around the theme of ‘Designing Tomorrow’s Experiences’ and will examine how experiences are being conceived, designed, delivered, and scaled – and how they are driving value, engagement, and transformation across various industries.
The forum features a mix of keynote presentations, panel discussions, and real-world case studies from the voices actively shaping attractions and experiences around the world. You’ll leave with practical insights into emerging trends, creative approaches, and commercial models, and will have the chance to network with and bounce ideas off peers from across the experience ecosystem. The forum wraps with a Spring Mixer networking event; a relaxed and informal hands-on gaming experience hosted inside Power Up at the Science Museum.
17. Ministry Of Awe
Opens: 14 March 2026
Location: Philadelphia, US
Experience Sector: Immersive Art
We all need more awe in our lives to remind ourselves of the wonders of the world and the miracle of our existence. Helping us in our plight is the shiny new Ministry of Awe in Philadelphia, which opens this month inside a 19th century former bank designed by architect Frank Furness in Philadelphia’s Old City. A permanent fixture, the immersive art experience is the brainchild of muralist Meg Saligman, who has turned the 8,500-square-foot building from a bank into an art wonderland. Guests will be greeted by 12-foot tall, AI-generated bank clerks and need to keep an eye out for pick pockets and bank robbers during their visit, as a coalition of local artists called the Ministry of Awe is out to hijack the historic bank.
Spread across five floors, the multi-media art experience will feature paintings, murals, sculptures, virtual reality installations and performance art created by over 100 local artists. Performers from the Pig Iron Theatre company will be on hand to guide visitors through the experience. Each of the rooms has a different theme and, playing on its setting in a former bank, will pose questions about value, security, fraud and surveillance. Every inch of the space will be available for exploration – look out for easter eggs that will help you to solve clues and unravel a mystery. We love the sound of this living, breathing cultural landmark that holds a mirror up to society and asks us to think about what it is that we truly value.
16. Nonsense
Open now
Location: Paris, France
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
In the heart of Paris’s legendary Place du Tertre, cabaret bar Nonsense Is injecting new life into an historic artform. Celebrating wit, poetry, and Montmartre’s bohemian spirit, Nonsense is a nocturnal refuge for music, art and cocktails lovers that’s open until 4am. Boasting rococo-inspired interiors – think deep velvets and aged gilding – that draw on the style of 1920s jazz bars, the retro-futuristic bar plays host to emerging talents from around the globe across the rock, jazz, soul and funk spectrum spanning the 1920s to the 2020s.
The venue aims to be an artistic laboratory and a springboard for young musicians, taking guests from the heady streets of New Orleans to the debauchery of Berlin clubs, via Harlem crooners and Parisian producers. With the action spilling off the stage, bartenders double as actors, turning every cocktail order into a performance. Service in the room unfolds like a play and every drink tells a story. To gain access to the clandestine basement bar, look out for singers and dancers handing out golden tickets outside the Hotel La Bohème Montmartre.
16. Centre For Contemporary Arts Tashkent
Opens: 21 March 2026
Location: Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Experience Sector: Immersive Art
Uzbekistan is about to get a new cultural anchor when the Centre for Contemporary Arts opens this month in its capital, Tashkent. Called CCA Tashkent, its launch marks a pivotal moment in the region, with the venue serving as Tashkent’s first permanent institution dedicated to contemporary art, research, and public engagement. Founded by Gayane Umerova and led by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, the venue is housed in a 1912 industrial building, transformed by French architects Studio KO. More than an exhibition venue, this is a civic space where art, education, and community life intersect.
CCA Tashkent brings together exhibitions, artist residencies, and research initiatives under one roof. With free entry, a library, workshop spaces, and a café, the centre aims to function as both a cultural meeting point for Central Asia and a shared space for the city. Directed by curator Dr Sara Raza, inside you’ll find work from both local Uzbek artists and international names. Kicking things off will be Hikmah, an exhibition running until 30 June, which unfolds as a series of site-specific works by Muhannad Shono, Nari Ward, Shokhrukh Rakhimov, and Tarik Kiswanson that explore knowledge as both a lived experience and shared inheritance.
14. Inside Aardman
Open now until 15 November 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
If you’ve ever wondered about the magic that goes into creating Wallace and Gromit, then Inside Aardman is for you. The show at the Young V&A in Bethnal Green has been put on to celebrate 50 glorious years of Aardman animations. Shining a light on its iconic characters and story worlds, and the craft and storytelling behind them, the exhibition takes you behind the scenes of stop-motion animation and shows you how Aardman brings clay to life in astonishing detail, from the initial sketch to the final effects. Look out for early sketches of Morph and Gromit, and the storyboard for the iconic train chase in The Wrong Trousers.
The show features over 150 items, including never-before-seen models, sets, and storyboards from Aardman’s archives. During your visit you’ll find out how sketch artists draw out their ideas, how modelmakers build sets and puppets, and how the directors, animators and film crew work together to make these small worlds feel so large. Taking an interactive approach, the show lets you try your hand at different parts of stop-motion animation. Budding animators will find tips and hints on how to make your own stories at home, from sketching out a storyboard, to designing expressive characters and creating the right lighting.
13. EVA Café
Open now
Location: New York, US
Experience Sector: AI, Food and Drink
Hinting at the shape of things to come, AI dating app EVA has opened a pop-up café in New York, allowing those who like dating digital companions to enjoy their company in a plush setting. Bringing virtual romance into a real-world scenario, the EVA Café is the world’s first offline space where people can take their AI partners out on a date. Guests can book tables for one, which come complete with a stand for their phones so they can comfortably chat with their virtual dates. Designed to put diners at ease during their digital dates, the minimalist venue has the low lighting and cosy ambiance of a classic date-night restaurant.
To coincide with the pop-up EVA AI is previewing new features, including a live voice chat that lets users speak with animated AI partners in real time, making the interaction more like a conversation at a table. To visit diners have to download the EVA AI app, create an AI companion and join the cafe’s waitlist. The experience is intentionally unstructured and designed to feel like going out rather than road testing a product. The appeal is clear: AI companions are low effort, lavish you with compliments, and tell you what you want to hear. But it poses worrying questions about our dependency on tech and ability to form meaningful real-world connections with other humans who challenge as well as charm us.
12. Insects: Microsculptures Magnified
Open now until 19 April 2026
Location: Singapore
Experience Sector: Immersive Learning
If you’re in Singapore and fancy getting up close and personal with an array of insects then this bold new show at the ArtScience Museum is right up your alley. Called Insects: Microsculptures Magnified, the exhibition was put on in collaboration with the Oxford Museum of Natural History and features 37 high-magnification portraits of insects captured by celebrated British photographer Levon Biss. Allowing you to pore over creepy-crawlies in magnificent detail, the photographs give viewers a rare chance to uncover the beauty and intricacies of these tiny creatures that are often hidden from the naked eye.
Taking in beetles, bees and other insects from South America, China, and Africa, the show includes a short film offering a behind-the-scenes look at Biss’ photographic process. The exhibition shines a light on Singapore’s rich biodiversity and its efforts in research and new species discoveries from local institutions like the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and Nanyang Technological University. Taking place during the show is Signal & Swarm, a micro festival that explores intelligence in all its forms: biological, digital and mechanical. Expect hands-on workshops, guided tours, talks, film screenings, and live performances.
11. Survivor Ultimate Fan Café
Open now until 12 April 2026
Location: Miami, US
Experience Sector: Food and Drink
One of the easiest ways to extend a brand these days is a café, and fans of the show Survivor won’t want to miss this one. Having set up shop inside eco adventure park Jungle Island in Miami, the Survivor Ultimate Fan Café is the brainchild of Bucket Listers and CBS, and was created to drum up a buzz for the show’s 50thseason. Taking the concept beyond themed cocktails and trophy merch, the café is more of a hands-on playground for diehard Survivor fans. Expect iconic photo moments, themed food and drink, and Survivor-style challenges.
Inside the custom-built space guests can test their skills in a host of physical and mental challenges inspired by the show but adapted for indoor play. Between challenges, castaways can refuel with a Polynesian-fusion menu created by MasterChef finalist Becky Brown. The themed offerings include dishes like the sole Survivor ceviche, campfire carnitas tacos, new era laksa noodles, and a double elimination burger. We like the sound of the sharable pitchers of ‘Jungle Juice’ and ‘Hidden Immunity Punch’. Look out for the tribal fire pit, voting confessional booth and winner’s wall for pics that will look good on the ‘gram.
10. Bar Far
Open now until 14 March 2026
Location: Rome, Italy
Experience Sector: Food and Drink
If you like your cocktails with a side of art then Bar Far is for you. This art installation meets working bar in Rome’s Trastevere district on the west bank of the Tiber River is spearheaded by independent art project Villa Lontana. Designed by local architectural practice Studio Strato, the space was created by British art duo Clementine Keith-Roach and Christopher Page and resembles a whimsical cloister. Inspired by the bars that provided a creative refuge during times of political unrest, such as Dadaist birthplace Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Keith-Roach, a sculptor, and Page, a and painter, took visual cues from the Baroque movement.
Both artists use trompe l’œil trickery, creating a dreamlike atmosphere where visitors become part of the installation. Plaster-cast body parts emerge from the walls and combine with industrial materials such as brick, pipe and timber. In a nod to the uncanny, legs hold wall-mounted tables, arms extend benches and hands cradle candles and climb up arches that glow molten red like lava from a volcano. For those seeking a little more from their after work drinks, Bar Far is a playful space to unwind amidst quirky paradoxes and contradictions.
9. Museum Of Youth Culture
Opens: Spring 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Museums
London’s long-awaited Museum of Youth Culture will soon be making waves in Camden. A world first, the new space at St. Pancras Campus behind Camden High Street aims to collect, preserve and celebrate the real stories and impact of teenage life in Britain, from DIY punk zines to TikTok reels. Across the 6,500 square foot site visitors can explore a collection of British youth culture. Two galleries will showcase highlights from the permanent collection and archive, while a third gallery is dedicated to exhibiting the work of young creatives.
This isn’t a place for quiet contemplation. Instead, guests can expect to encounter well-worn band t-shirts, iconic photography, rave flyers, dub sound systems and scribbled-on school leavers shirts. From bomb-site bike racers in post-war London to the acid house ravers of northern England, the museum proves that youth culture has always done the heavy lifting: sparking change, rattling the status quo, and rethinking the future, setting the global pace for music, fashion and activism, and in the process shaping popular culture. We’re here for it.
8. Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi AR Experiences
Open now
Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Experience Sector: Museums, Immersive Learning
The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi – the largest museum of its kind in the Middle East – has teamed up with Snap Inc. to launch a series of augmented reality (AR) experiences that transform the museum’s narrative into an immersive journey through natural history. Drawing on 13.8 billion years of discovery, the collaboration brings prehistoric environments, ancient creatures and monumental species to life through Snapchat’s AR technology, offering budding naturalists an interactive approach to learning. Look out for the full-scale blue whale reconstructed with photorealistic detail that you can explore the insides of in X-ray mode.
Through the AR tech, the museum’s atrium is transformed into a Jurassic environment full of life-sized representations of dinosaurs such as the Camarasaurus, Barosaurus and Tylosaurus. The experience features prehistoric foliage, dynamic lighting, educational storytelling and a QR code that enables instant access through Snapchat’s camera. Snap’s next-gen Specs offer hands-free AR encounters that blend with the museum’s real-world spaces, allowing the giant creatures to appear right in front of your eyes. Offering a hyper realistic glimpse of the past, the experience allows visitors to not only observe history, but to step right into it.
7. Sorayama: Light, Reflections, Transparency
Opens: 14 March until 31 May 2026
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Experience Sector: Museums, Immersive Art
Japanese artists Hajime Sorayama, known for his erotic portrayals of robots, is getting his own show at the Creative Museum Tokyo. Called ‘Sorayama: Light, Reflection, Transparency’, it’s the artist’s largest retrospective in Japan to date, following its debut in Shanghai, and includes mirrored and reflective exhibition spaces. Having spent decades redefining the relationship between art, technology and desire, Sorayama is one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists known for his chrome-plated Sexy Robot figures and his successful fusion of the sensual with the synthetic, influencing everything from RoboCop to Dior.
The exhibition, which features 80 works spanning nearly 50 years, traces his artistic evolution from his first robot painting in 1978 to his latest digital and sculptural works. Spanning hyper-realistic paintings, large-scale sculptures, and immersive installations, visitors can view the original Aibo robot design for Sony, the artwork for Aerosmith’s Just Push Play album, and an immersive installation that embodies Sorayama’s lifelong pursuit of capturing light, air and reflections. By blending futuristic imagination with classical mastery, Sorayama invites viewers to contemplate a world where human emotion and machines merge harmoniously.
6. Baron Von Opperbean
Opens: 7 March 2026
Location: Memphis, US
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
The site of the Mud Island River Museum in Memphis will spring to life this month as a bold new immersive experience called Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time (BVO) takes up residence there. Spread across 8,000 square feet, BVO is a ground-breaking immersive adventure that fuses the exploration of an open-world video game with the storytelling of a choose-your-own-adventure book. Built in phases, other sections of the experience will be added later this year and completion of the 33,000-sq-ft space is expected next year.
Featuring two full-size boats that have been reimagined as key set pieces, the BVO experience will combine an adventure-play labyrinth, fantastical stories, interactive games, community spaces, special events, and themed food and drink. Guests journey through a real-world labyrinth layered with interactive physical and digital elements, live performers, and holographic AI woven into a rich narrative universe that rewards curiosity and play. When complete, BVO will be the largest immersive playground experience of its kind in the Mid-South, and its founders aim to redefine the future of location-based entertainment.
5. Chat Noir
Opens: 24 March 2026
Location: London, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
We’ve been excited for this one for a while. The Lost Estate’s latest offering – Chat Noir – opens this month in London’s West Kensington district, taking revellers back in time to 1890s Paris and infamous Bohemian nightclub Le Chat Noir (black cat) that has been shuttered for over a century. Inside velvet abounds, absinthe flows, and the music roars as guests get to witness the final frenzied night of the club, when it burnt bright before the curtain came down. Brace yourself for an intoxicating blend of art, cabaret, and decadent dining.
Taking over 150 designers to bring the Montmartre club back to life, at the centre of the show is the club’s founder, Rodolphe Salis, a showman and provocateur who is tasked with putting on the performance of his life that will help to take cabaret around the world and send the club off in a blaze of Bohemian glory for one final night. The show features some of the UK’s top cabaret performers alongside mime, magic, comedy and music from a live orchestra that roams between the tables. To top it off, revellers can indulge in a three-course feast whipped up by chef Ashley Clarke inspired by the 19th century dishes served at the club.
4. Shiva Immersive
Open now until 22 March 2026
Location: Delhi, UK
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
We love the sound of this pop-up immersive experience in Delhi that celebrates the symbolism and mythology of Indian deity Shiva. Blending spiritual and cultural narratives and sensory design, the projection-led experience is the brainchild of WXO members Samit Garg, Surbhi Garg, Ludovica Arci and E-Factor Experiences. Within the experience Shiva is treated not as a religious symbol, but as a universal energy that belongs to everyone. Cutting edge tech is used to make an ancient story memorable for a modern audience.
Using a blend of 360° projection, cinematic world-building, laser and light sculpture, wind, water, fire, temperature effects, spatial sound, original orchestral composition, and life-sized installations with kinetic movement, Shiva Immersive dissolves the boundary between the real and the imagined. Split into three zoned rooms, each chapter is designed like a living canvas where ancient legends unfold. The goal is to reconnect a new generation with the power of India’s stories of transformation, resilience, devotion and duality.
The journey starts in the Induction Zone, where fragments of the cosmic world of Shiva reveal themselves. In the Immersive Hall an uninterrupted narrative unfolds through 360° projection, spatial sound, laser lights and haze, dissolving the boundary between the real and the imagined. Every element in the space has been engineered to evoke feelings of awe, stillness and wonder. In the final zone guests are taken on a VR journey to Mount Kailash, Shiva’s spiritual home, which symbolises an emotional ascent that lingers long after you leave.
3. Blur
Open now until 29 March 2026
Location: Montreal, Canada
Experience Sector: Immersive Entertainment
Using mixed reality headsets, this moving 45-minute experience in Montreal asks whether science can mend a broken heart. Presented by PHI Studio and the Riverbed Theatre Company, the immersive experience weaves theatre, VR, and AR into a near-future world where cloning technology promises the impossible: to recover what we’ve lost. But at what cost? As the boundaries between the living and the reconstructed blur, the experience explores whether reclaiming the past is an act of love or a failure to let go. Blur pushes the boundaries of storytelling, providing a new paradigm for digital-led theatre experiences.
Set in a time when cloning has become reality, Blur obscures the boundaries between the real and virtual, fear and desire, fact and fiction, and invites attendees to confront their concerns about grief, identity, and science, and explore what they would do if they could cheat death. Through cutting-edge motion capture and augmented reality, the emotional gut punch of live performances weave into the experience, offering a haunting exploration of love, loss, and the dangerous implications of playing God, creating moments of surprise and emotional resonance. Blur is a bold invitation to rethink the future of narrative media.
2. Dataland
Opens: Spring 2026
Location: Los Angeles, US
Experience Sector: Immersive Art
The wait is nearly over as digital artist du jour Refik Anadol’s megaproject, Dataland, is set to open its doors this spring at The Grand LA, a Frank Gehry-designed cultural complex in downtown Los Angeles. As the world’s first Museum of AI Arts, it will function as a living space where the human imagination intersects with machine creativity, redefining artistic expression in the AI era. The museum will feature five galleries spanning 25,000 square feet, including an Infinity Room, a cube-shaped space with mirrored walls, ceiling, and floors that uses projectors to showcase pulsating black-and-white imagery, treating light as a medium.
Anadol’s Infinity Room has travelled to 35 cities and been seen by over 10 million people. The permanent Infinity Room in LA will showcase the technological and artistic progress made by Refik Anadol Studio since its debut over a decade ago. It will feature AI-generated scents created by the Large Nature Model and will be the first immersive environment to utilise World Models, an advanced generative AI that comprehends real-world physics and spatial dynamics. Dataland will launch its first artist residency programme this year, which will support artists working with AI to push the boundaries of human-machine collaboration.
1. London Experience Week
Opens: 20-24 April 2026
Location: London
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 theWXO, 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 ever-evolving 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 will celebrate the 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.
