Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has been a place where the impossible gets prototyped on Tuesday and reimagined by Friday. We have built the future in glass-walled labs, in late-night demos, in conversations that began as wild speculation and ended as the technologies now woven into daily life.

Now we turn forty. And on this anniversary, we are not here to gaze fondly into the rearview mirror. We are here to slingshot — to use the gravity of forty years of audacity to launch the next forty. 

Festivities kick off with our Anti-Gala on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 (5–9 PM) — a distinctly Media Lab take on the black-tie tradition — followed by a full day of programming on Thursday, October 22, 2026 (9 AM–5 PM), organized around three forces shaping the human condition right now, and three provocations about who we want to become:

Welcome home. Welcome forward.

Details will unfold here. Keep checking back.

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