Mozilla Festival returns to Barcelona, celebrating community-led technology solutions

The festival takes place under the theme of Wilding 28 – 30 October 2026, featuring over 200 interactive sessions, art installations, and experiences.

BARCELONA, SPAIN, October 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Following the success of last year’s Mozilla Festival, the Mozilla Foundation, in partnership with the City of Barcelona, and as part of Open Tech Week, is bringing Mozilla Festival back to Barcelona for the second consecutive year.

This year’s festival, themed ‘Wilding’, will take place Wednesday, October 28 to Friday, October 30, 2026, at the iconic Recinte Fabra i Coats – a former textile factory and hub of creative expression – and will explore how communities and technologies can evolve collectively, naturally, and intuitively,

More than 2,000 builders, technologists, artists, and activists from across the globe will gather across three days for over 200 sessions, experiences and art installations designed to challenge, connect and build.

Internationally acclaimed poet, comedian and activist ALOK Vaid Menon will serve as the festival emcee, alongside a host of other speakers from tech, science, advocacy and the creative arts.

Zeina Abi Assy, Festival Director, says, “Technology today is fueled by a closed, controlled, and often extractive system, and Mozilla Festival exists to be a counterpoint. The theme this year, Wilding, borrows the impetus nestled in wildflowers and brings that into the framework of how we build technology. Over three days, the festival celebrates the work of our global community who are already stewarding the alternative. And during MozFest, we get to prototype a different and more just future together.”

This year’s main stage will confront alternative and often difficult questions about our digital lives head-on. Covering topics such as:
– The different technologies each generation inherits, and the responsibilities, opportunities, and stories they carry into the future.
– The challenges and possibilities of emerging technologies, especially AI, and how uncertainty can open up important conversations and help us build resilience.
– How creativity in tech can produce technologies rooted in care, reciprocity, and shared power.
– How we can build sustainable futures for generations to come.

Speakers include activist Alaa Abed El-Fattah, Co-Founder, Manalaa and Omraneya, industry leader Issam Hijazi, CEO of UpScrolled, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation, NYT bestselling author and inventor Gitanjali Rao, and artist Stephanie Dinkins,

This year, artists, musicians, and activists across mediums have been invited to interpret and challenge AI, data, and digital power. Commissioned artists include creative technologists Chipo Mapondera and Sarah Al-Yahya , filmmaker and artist Violeta Ayala, and coder and artist Alida Sun.

Other sessions include:
– Sonic Wilding. Led by a Sudanese music producer, Khaled Alsedeg, this session looks at grassroots digital archives for Sudanese heritage and how technology can help preserve endangered musical traditions.
– Intimacy When the Other Side Is a Variable. Filmmakers including Shakti Mb share the latest screening of this film, which explores a subculture of AI botmakers.
– Wild Lots. An installation first displayed for NYC’s 2026 Open Data Week, using urban data to spark speculative thinking about the lifecycles of cities, imagining how vacant space might be returned to nature through processes of rewilding.

As always, young people are at the heart of this year’s festival, with a dedicated track tackling the most urgent questions about digital life. By putting creativity and lived experience at the forefront, these youth-led sessions showcase how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not just users of technology, but co-authors of its future:
– Legislative Tech Theatre: Testing the Technology We Need. A participatory session for ages 13–17, led by young people interested in technological innovation, that adapts the spirit of Legislative Theatre to digital rights, artificial intelligence, and platform governance, with a particular focus on mental health.
– Rooted Intelligence: What Happens When AI Literacy Grows From Within. What does AI education look like when it isn’t imported, but grown? This hands-on workshop draws from a multilingual AI guidebook built for and with African girls in The Gambia.

“Last year at MozFest, we unlearned the old rules of the internet. This year, we go feral,” says Nabiha Syed, CEO of Mozilla Foundation. “Wilding is simple: the future of tech shouldn’t grow in a monoculture owned by a handful of companies. It should be open code, open governance, open doors. It should be messy, diverse, and gloriously alive. MozFest is where we stop asking permission and start building for each other first.”

ENDS

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For the latest information, festival programming, and badges, visit: www.mozillafestival.org and apply for press badges here.

For press enquiries, please contact: press@mozillafoundation.com

About Mozilla Festival: Mozilla Festival is Mozilla Foundation’s annual convening at the intersection of art, technology, and society. Since 2010, Mozilla Festival has served as the premier gathering for digital rights activists, ethical technologists, and communities building a healthier internet. Each year, Mozilla Festival serves as a laboratory for bold ideas and collective action to create technology that reflects the values of openness, equity, and human dignity.

Festival Tracks: Mozilla Festival unfolds across eight tracks, each a focused space where Wilding takes root. Through a decentralized process, each of these tracks is co-designed by community Co-Curators from across regions and disciplines. Wilding asks us to re-imagine the foundations of a better tech future.

About Mozilla Foundation: Mozilla Foundation is a global nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, inclusive, and equitable. Founded in 2003, it supports people-first technology through funding, advocacy, education, and research.

Rooted in the open-source movement and guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla Foundation focuses on critical issue areas like ethical data practices, healthy digital ecosystems, and shifting digital power toward individuals and communities. Its work connects technologists, researchers, policymakers, and activists to reimagine and rebuild systems to serve the public good.

With over two decades of global impact, Mozilla Foundation continues to lead the movement for a better technology future—powered by people, and open by design. Learn more at mozillafoundation.org.

Lauren Hendry Parsons
Mozilla Foundation
press@mozillafoundation.com
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