Sónar+D opened its call for the 2026 edition this summer. The creativity-and-technology congress runs alongside Sónar, Barcelona’s long-running festival of electronic and advanced music, and has grown into one of Europe’s key gatherings at the intersection of music, digital art, and emerging technology. Its program spans talks, workshops, installations, performances, and showcases, drawing artists, technologists, researchers, and industry from around the world. The open call invites participation across those formats, for work exploring where sound, code, AI, and new tools meet.
Watch: Sónar 2024 | Frequency of Now (YouTube)
A congress inside a festival
What makes Sónar+D distinctive is its setting: embedded within a major music festival, it treats electronic music and technological creativity as part of the same culture rather than separate spheres. That produces a particular energy — live audiovisual performances and club culture alongside serious discussion of AI, immersive technology, and the future of creative work, with the audiences for each spilling into the other. For readers across this site’s music-technology, creative-coding, and community beats, it’s one of the more relevant international gatherings, distinguished (like MUTEK, its closest peer) by roots in electronic music, but with Barcelona’s particular scale and industry draw.
What to expect and how to approach it
The call typically spans multiple tracks — from installations and performances to talks and professional showcases — connected by a substantive engagement with technology as a creative force. As with the other open calls this site tracks, prospective participants should review the current edition’s formats, themes, deadlines, and any fees on the Sónar+D site, and look at past programs to gauge the sensibility. It sits alongside MUTEK, Gray Area, Transmediale, and the STARTS and Lumen prizes as a node in the international art-and-technology calendar — the one where the beat never fully stops.