Responsive Dreams 2026: Barcelona's Generative Art Festival Returns
The Generative Art Museum (TGAM), the Barcelona non-profit dedicated to generative and computational art, opens the fourth edition of its Responsive Dreams festival on 25-27 September 2026. The event runs at Nau Dents de Serra inside Roca Umbert Fàbrica de les Arts in Granollers, about twenty minutes north of Barcelona by train. It is free to attend; attendance is confirmed through a registration form on the festival site rather than a ticket purchase.
Responsive Dreams was founded in 2023 as the first digital arts festival in the Barcelona area devoted entirely to art created with code. Each edition, TGAM commissions a group of artists to build works around responsiveness, animation, and interaction, then programmes three days of talks, live coding, and installations around them. The 2024 edition received a special mention at the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona awards for its contribution to digital culture, and past editions have been screened at Sónar and MIRA. This year's curators are Mónica Rikić and Xavier Hernández.
The artist list for 2026 spans established names in generative art and live coding: Agoston Nagy, Alba G Corral, Anna Carreras, Anna Lucia, fingacode, Licia He, Lev Manovich, Lukas Truniger, Marc Vilanova, Marta Verde, Mayte Gómez Molina, Myriam Bleau, Roxanne Harris, rudxane, Spongenuity, Stefano Contiero, Takk Iori, and others. Several appear as newly commissioned "dreams" — the algorithmic projects TGAM produces for each edition — presented across Friday and Saturday in short talks. Recurring installation meltdown, by Mayte Gómez Molina, Mónica Rikić, and Myriam Bleau, runs all three days.
The programme mixes formats. Friday opens with a press tour and a round table on dreams with eight of the commissioned artists, followed by live coding sets: Alicia Champlin's Headspace and Roxanne Harris's Syntax::stream in the evening. Saturday is heavier on installation presentations, including Lev Manovich on his installation, and closes with Myriam Bleau's live performance Soft Revolvers and a DJ set by Takk Iori with live visuals by Marta Verde. Sunday is dedicated to Genema screenings, an archive programme that brings back generative works from the 2023, 2024, and 2025 editions alongside new short pieces by the 2026 artists, ending with a DJ set by Hector. A live minting experience lets visitors collect works directly from the participating artists.
Registration is open now at responsivedreams.com. The full schedule with times is published on the festival site, and the venue is accessible from Barcelona's Rodalies line. For anyone following the Barcelona creative-coding scene, Responsive Dreams is one of the few places where the people building the tools and the people making the art share the same room.