MUTEK.JP 2026 runs 20–23 November 2026 — four days — at MoN Takanawa in Tokyo. Passport tickets are on sale now.
For readers who plan their year around this: that is roughly five weeks out, the lineup is published in full, and the professional programme is the part worth reading twice.
The headliners, and one world premiere
Three names anchor the bill: Max Cooper, Ryoichi Kurokawa, and Daito Manabe × ELEVENPLAY.
The closing night, 23 November, is a world premiere: Richie Hawtin and Ali M. Demirel performing PLASTIKMAN | 発酵ポリフォニー — “Fermentation Polyphony” — a piece built around sake culture, electronic music and visuals, at MoN Takanawa.
A Plastikman set structured around fermentation is either going to be the most interesting thing at the festival or an elaborate conceit, and there is no way to tell which from a listing. Hawtin has been serious about sake for over a decade, so it is at least not a thin premise.
Three days with three arguments
MUTEK.JP has organised the programme editorially rather than by stage, and the three framings are specific enough to be useful:
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | 3D, structure, and real-time work |
| Day 2 | Seven artists on perception, time and space |
| Day 3 | Six acts on body, stage, music and AI |
That is a legible curatorial spine, and it tells you where to go if you are attending for one reason. Day 1 if you work in real-time graphics. Day 3 if the question you care about is what performing bodies and machine systems do to each other — which is also the day Manabe and ELEVENPLAY sit on, and that pairing has been interrogating exactly that for a decade.
The full 2026 list: Azikazin Magic World, Dimension Plus, Daito Manabe × ELEVENPLAY, Eq (E.O.U + vq), Film Scores for No One (a Patrick Watson project), Grand River, Hania Rani presents Chilling Bambino, JACKSON kaki, Johanna Elina Sulkunen & Tapani Toivanen, Masayuki Azegami & Seiichi Sega, Max Cooper, mouse on the keys, NEUROSCAN (Canblaster & Neurotypique), Nicolás Melmann, Riccardo Giovinetto, Richie Hawtin & Ali M. Demirel, Robert Lippok & Lucas Gutierrez, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Seulement, and tamanaramen.
Digi Lab, and the IRCAM session
Under Digi Lab 2026, the festival lists a MUTEK.JP Pro Digi Lab – IRCAM Forum Workshop and Presentation.
No further details are published yet — no date within the four days, no named presenter, no registration link separate from the Passport. But the listing itself is notable. IRCAM’s Forum runs its own workshop programme out of Paris and takes it abroad under a Hors les murs banner, and a Tokyo appearance inside a festival’s professional strand is the kind of thing that does not get announced twice. If you were planning to catch an IRCAM Forum workshop and Paris in March does not work, this is a second option on a different continent.
Anyone who has attended an IRCAM Forum workshop knows the format: deep, tool-specific, oriented toward people who will actually use the software rather than toward a general audience. That is a different proposition from a festival panel, and it is worth checking the Digi Lab schedule when it firms up rather than assuming the Passport covers it.
Practical notes
Venue. MoN Takanawa — a single-venue festival, which is unusual for MUTEK and simplifies the logistics considerably compared with the Montréal edition’s spread.
Tickets. Passport tickets via mutekjp.zaiko.io. Individual prices are not published on the main programme page, and there is no indication of whether Digi Lab access is included or separate. Ask before assuming.
No open call. For artists looking at this as a submission opportunity: the 2026 programme page carries no open call, and with the lineup announced in full, this edition’s curation is closed. The time to watch for a MUTEK.JP call is the first half of the year.
For the broader calendar, the other item on the near horizon is CES 2027 in January, and SIGGRAPH 2027 has now confirmed Anaheim, 8–12 August 2027 with its submissions portal still showing “open soon” — so the CFP window there has not started.
Sources
- MUTEK.JP 2026 — official programme
- MUTEK.JP ticketing — Zaiko
- IRCAM Forum
- MUTEK
- MUTEK.JP 2024 aftermovie