Festival Futures Forward (FFF) is a forum platform within the Vietnam Festival of Creativity & Design (VFCD) 2026 for collectively questioning, imagining and shaping what festivals might become. Festival Futures Forward (FFF) is a two-part roundtable series, opened by a night of provocation-length keynotes and these provocations then expand through the FFF Inspiration roundtable before becoming material for the Future Festival Blueprint: a participatory co-design process exploring sustainability and resilience, audience agency, regional networks, social impact, and the relationship between festivals and cities.
Bringing together festival directors, cultural practitioners, researchers and audiences from Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Europe and beyond, FFF moves from provocation to dialogue to collective action. The 2026 forum features Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director of Ars Electronica, Austria; Andrea Möller, Director of Media Art Friesland Foundation / LUNA Festival, Netherlands; Cecile Huang, Director of C-LAB, Taiwan; June Tan, KLFEST representative and festival leader, Malaysia; and Truong Uyen Ly, former Director of Hanoi Grapevine, journalist and creative-spaces researcher, Vietnam.
FFF is not only a forum about the future of festivals; it is an experiment in how a festival can think, sense and reflect on itself in real time. Audience polling will run as a real-time participatory data visualisation installation throughout the festival week, allowing participants to see their individual choices accumulate into A Live Festival Pulse over time.
Speaker(s): Gerfried Stocker, June Tan, Uyen Ly Truong
For invited participants only.
Track 02: Forum | Festival Futures Forwards
Language(s): English - Vietnamese
Room: 600
Venue: Nina Next Space, 180/1 Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, Xom Chieu Ward, Ho Chi Minh City
Full description
The seminar brings together leaders, experts and practitioners in the creative industries and event/festival-organizing from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and internationally to share experiences, models and challenges in organizing creative festivals. The discussion focuses on building festivals that are flexible, sustainable and responsive to cultural and social contexts and audience needs.
The seminar also opens dialogue on the role of communities, audiences, partners, universities and cultural organizations in shaping the future of festivals, while exploring new models of collaboration and approaches.
Moderator: Yap Sau Bin, Kristefan Minski; Speaker(s): Gerfried Stocker, Andrea Möller, Cecile Huang, June Tan, Uyen Ly Truong
Morning Session: 09:00 - 11:30 | Afternoon Session: 13:30 - 16:00
Track 02: Forum | Festival Futures Forwards
Language(s): English - Vietnamese
Room: 250
Venue: Nina Next Space, 180/1 Nguyen Tat Thanh Street, Xom Chieu Ward, Ho Chi Minh City
Full description
The seminar brings together leaders, experts and practitioners in the creative industries and event/festival-organizing from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and internationally to share experiences, models and challenges in organizing creative festivals. The discussion focuses on building festivals that are flexible, sustainable and responsive to cultural and social contexts and audience needs.
The seminar also opens dialogue on the role of communities, audiences, partners, universities and cultural organizations in shaping the future of festivals, while exploring new models of collaboration and approaches.
Morning Session: 09:00 - 11:30
Afternoon Session: 13:30 - 16:00
