Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and MIT President Sally Kornbluth will open MIT Future Fest with a “The Future Begins Here” panel on Wednesday, September 30 at 3:30 PM in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. Curated by the MIT Museum, the inaugural five‑day festival runs from September 30 to October 4, 2026 across the MIT campus and showcases the future of science, technology, art, and design.
The opening panel features Moderna co‑founder and Flagship Pioneering CEO Noubar Afeyan, MIT professor and entrepreneur Sangeeta Bhatia, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO and co‑founder Bob Mumgaard. Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley will moderate a discussion on how public, private, and educational institutions can collaborate to sustain talent pipelines, translate discovery into impact, and build the future.
Governor Healey highlighted Massachusetts as a hub of innovation, saying MIT Future Fest offers a global stage for the state’s leadership in AI, robotics, clean energy, and life sciences. She noted the administration’s investment in talent, research, and partnerships to attract world‑class minds for study, research, startup formation, and scaling.
President Kornbluth emphasized that breakthrough discoveries stem from decades of curiosity about how the world works. She described the festival as a gathering of engineers, inventors, artists, scientists, designers, and entrepreneurs to foster transformative innovation, asserting that the future is something we create together.
The program includes more than 70 public talks, tours, performances, exhibitions, installations, and open labs. Full details and additional highlights are available at mitfuturefest.org.
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