Oceania Futures and Foresight Symposium 2026, Meanjin, Australia

The co-creation committee (Dr Elissa Farrow, Dr Melissa Innes, Kathryn Maggs and Helene Barrie) warmly invite futurists and foresight practitioners across the Oceania Region (and those curious to learn more) to bring their knowledge and practical foresight and immersive skills to this community-building event. 

Why Attend the 2nd Oceania Futures and Foresight Symposium? After the success of the first Symposium where 60 people came together in Meanjin in April 2025. The futures community were keen for another gathering in 2026. This event is your chance to connect, learn, and shape the future with a diverse group of like-minded professionals. You will hear from over 20 speakers and contributors and receive a playbook of materials and presentations. This symposium is a unique event and the second time it has been held ever with an Oceania focus.

Overall 2026 Theme - “Seeking Tomorrow: Navigating Futures Through Oceanic Knowing”

This theme builds on the 2025 Symposium and invites us to navigate complexity honouring ancestral wisdom, creative courage, and collective care.  

Intent of Day 1: Collective Compass — Exploring the echoes of our Ancestors

Focus: Understanding how ancestral perspectives guide us in exploring futures.

Explore knowledge, storytelling, and practices as ways of sensing futures and uncertainty. Discuss sustainability, resilience, and relational ways of being that can create connected communities.

Key question: How can expansive ways of knowledge help us orient ourselves in an uncertain and complex future?

Day 1 grounds us in wisdom, context, and connection.

Intent of Day 2: Journeying together — Designing Transformational Futures

Focus: Applying futures thinking foresight, creativity, and collective action to shape the futures we desire.

Experience and emphasis on tools and approaches from futures research and application, scenario planning, and innovation, inspired by oceanic ways of knowing. Explore transformational change, leadership, and practical pathways for navigating complexity.

Key question: How do we move from knowledge to collective action, journeying toward futures we want to create across Oceania?

Day 2 empowers us to be inspired to curate collective actionable foresight and design

The Program will evolve closer to the event with EOI for speakers and contributors now released https://forms.gle/CWKiAZHGUEM4pNuE8 closing 30 November 2025. 80% of sessions will be experiential and practical. This is a space for diverse voices, deep listening, practice-based insights, creative methods, and courageous ideas. Our 2026 theme, like the 2025 Symposium, aspires to honour Indigenous, Pacific and Oceanic ways of knowing. We are currently reviewing the framing and governance with Indigenous partners to ensure it is culturally grounded, responsible and accessible.

To read about the first Symposium in 2025 explore the article written by original collaborators and curators Dr Jeanne Hoffman and Dr Elissa Farrow https://jfsdigital.org/the-oceania-futures-and-foresight-symposium-as-an-embodied-practice-of-regional-transformation/

Join us on 26-27 March 2026 to co-create and share futures that reflects Oceania's values and aspirations. Connect, collaborate, and commit to making a tangible difference for the future of our communities.

Note: This event is driven by the Oceania region's futures and foresight community’s desire for collaboration and is organised by volunteers committed to fostering these important conversations. This is non-profit event, with no corporate or institutional sponsor we kindly ask that you cover your own travel, accommodation, and conference fees. All speakers are kindly donating their time and covering their costs. This fee covers catering, venue costs, and administration, keeping the event accessible and sustainable. It is not associated with any professional association or university. The co-curating team are volunteers.

We acknowledge that the co-curation team live, work and create on unceded land of the Jagera, Yugura, Yugarpul, Turrabul, Quandamooka and Gubbi Gubbi peoples. We pay respect to elders past, present and emerging and the key role our ancestors play in still holding our past, present and future.

Contact Dr Elissa Farrow on +61407025804 or drelissafarrow@gmail.com for offers of assistance or special group ticket deals.