Satellite Events

NIME 2026 will be held in London, UK and online from 23-26 June 2026. This page lists other events which are happening in close proximity to the conference which may be of interest to NIME attendees.

The NIME Open Day on 27 June is organised by the NIME chairs at Imperial College London, but is not a part of the main NIME conference. The remaining events listed below have no formal relationship to NIME or this year’s conference chairs. Please contact the organisers directly for more information.

AI Music: Critical Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Beyond Ethics

17-20 June 2026, University College London

A 4-day PhD / Post Doc / ECR Workshop

In the week directly preceding NIME, and also in London, we are running a 4 day workshop intended to give those interested an overview of recent critical research and thinking on AI, music, and culture more broadly conceived. The workshop will take the form of lectures, readings, presentations, and a great deal of group discussion. It will be delivered by researchers from Georgina Born’s five year MusAI ERC project.

As public and academic controversies around AI mount, the workshop responds to the widespread felt need for greater critical understanding of AI and what it represents, and for interdisciplinary perspectives that move far beyond the limited frame of AI ethics. The workshop is the second outing of a (highly successful) pedagogical experiment that took place at Queen Mary, University of London’s Centre for Digital Music in summer 2025. For those wanting a sense of the previous outing, course materials can be accessed at https://tiny.cc/MusAI2025. The aim with these experiments is to build a wider community of researchers and teachers who can add to these critical perspectives and employ them going forward in their own work. Those attending will leave with important resources to build on. The workshop is aimed mainly at PhD students, postdocs and early career researchers from any discipline working or intending to work at the intersection of music and AI, but all those interested can apply.

The workshop is free to attend. We will have a limited number of bursaries available to help with travel and accommodation costs. However, those with access to support funds are strongly encouraged to apply for them.

Please note: the expectation is that those participating will attend all 4 days in person, to create continuity and an intellectual and artistic community. Numbers will be limited to c. 25.

To register your interest, please get in touch with Owen Green (owen.green@ucl.ac.uk) explaining your stage of career, institutional affiliation, and (in one paragraph) why you are interested in attending. Please also let us know if you have sources of funding to cover your expenses.

NIME Open Day

27 June 2026, Imperial College London

A free post-conference showcase and social event

Interested to learn what NIME is about but can’t attend the conference? Looking for a low-key way to meet other people interested in new musical instruments?

On Saturday 27 June, 12-5pm (the day after the NIME conference finishes) the Augmented Instruments Lab will host a NIME Open Day at Imperial College London. This will be a day of informal demos, performances and socialising. Attendees are welcome to bring their own demos to show, subject to available space and safety considerations.

Attendance at the NIME Open Day is free and open to all, whether or not they have registered for the main NIME conference. Spaces are limited, so all attendees will need to register separately for the Open Day, whether or not they are already attending the rest of NIME, using the following link: NIME 2026 Open Day sign-up.

The Open Day is a drop-in event. Registered attendees are welcome to attend for part or all of the 12-5pm time. During that time, we expect to have roughly two phases of demos (12-2pm and 3-5pm) and an “open jack” event where small groups of participants can play together. The day will also feature work from the Augmented Instruments Lab, including a performance on the magnetic resonator piano, and demos of the department’s Turret Lab, an acoustically isolated space with a 3D loudspeaker array for conducting research on spatial audio perception.

The location for the NIME Open Day is the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial (25 Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DB). The easiest access on public transport is by tube to South Kensington station. South Kensington is also the home of many of London’s famous museums (Science Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A), the Royal Albert Hall, Hyde Park and many other attractions. We are starting the Open Day in the afternoon to enable out-of-town visitors to spend the morning at these attractions. The museums are free but pre-booking is usually required to reserve a space.

Registration is free but mandatory for attending the Open Day. In the event of more interest than space in the building, registration will be first-come, first-served. Anyone who registers is welcome to attend, but we may not be able to accept all demo proposals. Please see the sign-up form for the safety and logistical requirements for all demos. We will notify attendees by 1 June on whether their demo can be presented.

Please contact the Open Day chairs, Brittney Allen and Adam Schmidt, on openday@nime2026.org with any queries.