IMMERSIVE X & Virtual Worlds Museum™ Announce Partnership

The Virtual Worlds Museum™ is excited to announce a new partnership with IMMERSIVE X, the global XR festival in VR, bringing together two initiatives with a shared commitment to immersive culture, education, and community.

Taking place virtually November 10th through 12th, 2026, the sixth edition of IMMERSIVE X will bring together an international community of creators, researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators, technologists, and organizations under this year's theme, Reclaim the Future. The festival asks an important question: how can XR and immersive media help us imagine, design, and actively shape more meaningful futures?

For the Virtual Worlds Museum™, this partnership is a natural extension of our mission to explore, preserve, document, and make virtual worlds more accessible to the communities shaping them.

A Natural Alignment

IMMERSIVE X and the Virtual Worlds Museum™ share a belief that the future of immersive technology should be experienced together.

Since its founding in 2020, IMMERSIVE X has developed into an international, community-driven gathering that takes place inside spatial virtual platforms. Its mission extends beyond discussing XR. The festival creates environments where people can experience new ideas, meet across geographic and disciplinary boundaries, and participate directly in the culture being created around immersive technology.

The Virtual Worlds Museum™ approaches the same ecosystem through preservation, education, discovery, research, and cultural documentation. Through our Exhibits, Museum Hubs, Spotlight Video Series, and Teleportal, we are building resources that help people understand where virtual worlds came from, explore the platforms that exist today, and consider where this rapidly changing medium is heading.

Both organizations are also deeply interested in the people behind the technology. World builders, researchers, artists, educators, community leaders, platform developers, and independent creators are not simply users of virtual worlds. They are actively building their culture.

That shared perspective is at the heart of this partnership.

IMMERSIVE X is supporting the continued development of the Virtual Worlds Museum™ Spotlight Video Series as Associate Producer, helping us document the creators, communities, platforms, and ideas contributing to immersive culture.

The Spotlight Video Series takes our research directly into virtual worlds. Through interviews and field reports, we meet world builders and creators inside the environments they helped shape, preserving stories and perspectives that could otherwise disappear as platforms and communities evolve. With the help of Carlos Austin and Evo Heyning, the series has expanded to include both active virtual worlds and sunset platforms whose cultural contributions deserve to be remembered.

At the same time, the Virtual Worlds Museum™ is becoming an official sponsor of IMMERSIVE X, supporting its work to bring together a global XR community and create meaningful conversations across platforms, industries, and cultures.

This exchange reflects what we believe healthy immersive ecosystems should look like: organizations sharing knowledge, infrastructure, audiences, spaces, and resources rather than operating in isolation.

The Teleportal: Helping People Navigate the Ecosystem

The Virtual Worlds Museum™ Teleportal adds another important dimension to the partnership.

The Teleportal is an interactive map and gateway to virtual worlds. Built by Julian Reyes and Steve Van Loon, from the Museum's research and curated Exhibits, it helps visitors discover platforms, learn about their histories and communities, explore their websites, and, on supported devices, launch directly into compatible virtual worlds.

This is particularly relevant to IMMERSIVE X because the festival itself demonstrates one of the defining characteristics of today's immersive ecosystem: important communities and experiences are distributed across many different platforms.

Discoverability is therefore becoming increasingly important.

A thriving ecosystem requires more than compelling individual worlds. People also need ways to understand what exists, find relevant communities and experiences, and move more easily between destinations.

Through the Teleportal, the Virtual Worlds Museum™ is exploring how mapping and navigation can help make that fragmented landscape more understandable. Through IMMERSIVE X, people can then experience that ecosystem socially, meeting the creators and communities who are actively shaping it.

Together, these approaches connect discovery, education, documentation, and participation.

IMMERSIVE X Comes to Virtual Worlds Museum™ Hubs

The partnership will also come to life inside the Museum hubs themselves.

Virtual Worlds Museum™ hubs in ENGAGE, VRChat, and Second Life will host selected IMMERSIVE X talks and panels, creating additional destinations where festival conversations can take place and remain connected to the broader history of virtual worlds.

Our Museum Hubs are designed as gathering points inside the platforms we document. Rather than treating the Museum as a single destination, we are building a distributed cultural institution that can exist across multiple virtual worlds.

Hosting IMMERSIVE X programming across several of these environments reinforces that model.

A conversation about virtual worlds can happen inside a virtual world.

A discussion about interoperability can take place across platforms.

And a conversation about the future of immersive culture can become part of the culture itself.

Three sessions currently planned in Virtual Worlds Museum™ hubs illustrate how this partnership will come to life during IMMERSIVE X 2026.

1. The Teleportal Vision: Creating a Gateway to the Metaverse

Julian Reyes, will present the evolving vision behind the Virtual Worlds Museum™ Teleportal and demonstrate how it can help people discover, understand, and navigate an increasingly fragmented landscape of virtual worlds.

Combining a talk with a live demo, the session, which is planned to take place in the Virtual Worlds Museum™ Hub connects directly to one of the central ideas behind the partnership: making the wider Metaverse ecosystem easier to explore while connecting people with the platforms, communities, and experiences that give it life.

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2. Building Sustainable Ecosystems: How Platforms Can Become Safe Harbors for XR Creators

What does it take for a virtual-world platform to become more than a piece of technology and instead provide a sustainable home for the creators and communities building within it? Mélodie Mousset, Co-Founder & CEO of PatchXR, Yewnix, Project Leadership at BasisVR, and Charlene Nichols, CEO & Founder of The Omniverse City, moderated by Evo Heyning, CEO & Producer at Realitycraft, will explore what creators need from platforms to build sustainable practices, communities, and businesses and how platforms can become true safe harbors in an ecosystem where virtual spaces can change or disappear remarkably quickly. Hosted in the Virtual Worlds Museum™ VRChat Hub, the conversation brings together perspectives from creators and the wider immersive ecosystem to examine one of the most urgent questions facing Social XR today.

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3. From Sunset to Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Teach Us About the Future

Longtime virtual worlds journalist and author Wagner James Au joins a conversation connecting the lessons of virtual worlds that have disappeared with the remarkable longevity of Second Life. Together with a Philip Rosedale, Founder & CTO of Linden Lab, the session will explore what lost and enduring worlds can teach us about communities, creators, culture, technological evolution, and what it takes to build virtual spaces that last.

The setting itself is part of the story: the Virtual Worlds Museum™ Hub in Second Life and its Sunset Exhibit: Worlds of the Past preserve the memory of platforms that are no longer with us, placing their histories inside one of the world's longest-running virtual worlds.

Building Community Across Virtual Worlds

Perhaps the most important part of this partnership is community.

The immersive ecosystem remains distributed across platforms, countries, industries, research communities, artistic disciplines, and technical specializations. IMMERSIVE X was created in part to bridge those divisions by bringing people together inside virtual environments. The Virtual Worlds Museum™ similarly works to create neutral spaces where creators, researchers, educators, platform communities, developers, and visitors can discover and learn from one another.

Working together gives us an opportunity to strengthen those connections.

Spotlight can preserve the stories.

The Museum Hubs can provide gathering spaces.

IMMERSIVE X can bring together the conversations and people shaping the field.

The Teleportal can help audiences discover where those communities and experiences live.

Together, these elements create something larger than an event or archive. They contribute to an ecosystem in which knowledge, culture, communities, and virtual spaces can become easier to discover and more meaningfully connected.

Join Us at IMMERSIVE X 2026

IMMERSIVE X 2026 takes place online and in VR on November 10th through 12th, 2026, bringing together a curated international community for three days of talks, panels, performances, experiences, world hopping, networking, and conversation inside VR.

This year's theme, Reclaim the Future, invites participants to move beyond uncertainty and actively consider what kinds of futures immersive technologies can help us create.

How to Dive In

IMMERSIVE X is made for VR, but there's more than one way to step inside. The festival takes place across multiple virtual-world platforms, and access options vary from session to session. Many sessions can also be joined via desktop, mobile, or other devices, depending on the platform. Selected sessions will additionally be available via livestream.

Attendance is free, and IMMERSIVE X describes participation as intentionally curated to encourage meaningful exchange between people working across disciplines, continents, and perspectives. New participants can create an account and apply to join the community.

Whether you are a world builder, XR creator, researcher, educator, artist, developer, technologist, entrepreneur, cultural organization, or simply someone interested in where virtual worlds are heading, we invite you to join us. November 10 through 12, 2026

IMMERSIVE X 2026: Reclaim the Future. Step inside, meet the community, explore new ideas, and help shape what comes next.

Apply to attend IMMERSIVE X 2026

Become a Partner

If your organization shares this vision, there is another way to become part of it. Follow the example of the Virtual Worlds Museum™ and support IMMERSIVE X as a sponsoring partner. Help sustain and grow a unique community-driven festival of this scale that takes place entirely across virtual worlds, while connecting your organization with the people actively shaping the future of XR and immersive media.

Partner with IMMERSIVE X and help us Reclaim the Future.