The Barbican has announced its headline 2026 Immersive show: Liam Young exhibition, debuting next summer. The exhibition will run from 21 May to 6 September 2026, promising a cinematic journey through speculative futures shaped by technology and climate realities.
Liam Young, a BAFTA-nominated director, producer, and artist, blends design, fiction, and futures thinking. As a result, his work balances warnings with imaginative possibilities. Therefore, viewers confront environmental urgency while exploring hopeful alternatives.
The exhibition features films, costumes, miniature models, comics, and sound-led installations. Consequently, visitors immerse themselves in worlds that feel fantastical yet grounded in real-world challenges.
The centerpiece, World Machine (2026), is a new commission for the Barbican. It combines live-action footage with CGI to imagine Earth as a planetary-scale AI system. Vast wind and solar farms power data centres, showing how technology might coexist with rewilded landscapes. Despite its scale, the work retains a note of fragility, reminding audiences of our delicate chance to begin again
In addition, the show presents Young’s most influential films. Planet City (2021) imagines housing the global population within a single hyper-dense metropolis. Meanwhile, The Great Endeavour (2023) visualises infrastructure designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Furthermore, After the End (2024), co-created with Aboriginal actor Natasha Wanganeen, spans 50,000 years to explore life beyond fossil fuels.
Visitors can navigate these worlds with the help of comics, graphic novels, and audio narratives from science fiction, film, and storytelling experts. Consequently, the exhibition stitches Young’s imagined cities, landscapes, and communities into coherent, immersive futures.
Luke Kemp, head of creative programming, highlights the exhibition’s importance. “Now is the time to imagine different futures and create the worlds we want, rather than those imposed upon us,” he said.
Similarly, Devyani Saltzman, director for arts and participation, added: “Liam Young exhibition shows that envisioning alternative futures helps us understand today with imagination, rigor, and hope.”
Barbican Immersive will present the exhibition, which will tour internationally after its London premiere. Therefore, the Liam Young exhibition promises to engage audiences with visionary worlds and challenge perceptions of possible futures.
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