Call for Proposals

Panoramas and the Future

hosted by

Panorama Konstanz & Yadegar Asisi

in Konstanz, Germany

23–25 September 2026

with an optional post-conference tour on 26 September

Hosted by Panorama Konstanz and Yadegar Asisi, the 35^th annual conference of the International Panorama Council will explore the theme of “Panoramas and the Future.” The conference will be held from 23–25 September 2026, with an optional post-conference tour on 26 September. We invite panorama custodians, professionals, scholars, artists, designers, media specialists and enthusiasts to submit proposals for full 20-minute presentations or 5-minute flash presentations.

Panoramas and the Future

The IPC 2026 conference explores how the concept of the future operates in panoramas and related media. Since the art form’s emergence with Robert Barker’s 1787 invention, panoramas have offered immersive virtual encounters with significant places, decisive events, and imagined worlds across diverse cultural contexts. Typically presented in purpose-built structures, panoramas aimed to make viewers feel physically transported elsewhere. The immersive impulse extended beyond monumental panoramas to more mobile and intimate forms, including moving panoramas, cosmoramas, dioramas, stereoscopes, print media and more. Today, panoramic logic animates contemporary immersive art and media, from VR and game environments to large-scale venues such as the Las Vegas Sphere, underscoring the panorama’s ongoing relevance as a foundational medium for transporting viewers in time and space. Meanwhile, surviving heritage exemplars continue to attract audiences, actively curating relations among past, present, and future.

Full presentations

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations that explore the conference theme by grappling with the concept of the future in practical, material, administrative, interpretive and/or theoretical terms. We also welcome presentations focused on the material and institutional labor required to sustain historic panoramas into the future.

Relevant questions include, but are not limited to, how are heritage panoramas being situated in contemporary cultural contexts, today and tomorrow? How do heritage panoramas frame past constructions of the future, and how does that illuminate the present? What futures are imagined for today’s immersive technologies and conventions? How might new history panoramas shape the future? What might panoramas look like in the future? What is the panorama’s future as an artform?

Proposals may also address the future in other ways. What happens when immersive media is used to reconstruct or virtually extend sites and structures that no longer exist? What changes when past environments are experienced through present-day media? How might the social, cultural, and political stakes of panoramic experience be understood going forward?

Flash presentations

We also invite proposals for 5-minute presentations that share news, updates, work-in-progress and other conversations around panoramic and immersive media. Presentations may take a variety of formats. If presenting slides, the max is 5. Presentations may also be accompanied by objects (alongside slides, or instead of slides).

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This interdisciplinary conference will interest a wide variety of scholars, professionals, artists, designers, conservators, custodians, students, and enthusiasts engaged with panoramas and immersive media. We seek contributions from thinkers and makers who take analytical, interpretive, historical, creative, or practice-based approaches to immersive and panoramic art and media.

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Preparing your proposal

Format your proposal in Microsoft Word (.docx) and include, in this order: 

• whether you are proposing a full presentation or flash presentation
• title of your presentation
• abstract or summary/description of your presentation 
  — 250–350 words for full presentations
  — 150–250 words for flash presentations
• four to five keywords
• detail about your presentation, such as...
  — will you present from a Mac or a PC?
  — will your presentation include video?
  — will it include physical objects or examples? 
  — share other details as you wish
• author/presenter name(s)
• author/presenter bio(s) (max 200 words)
• organizational affiliation or professional identity for each author/presenter
• complete mailing address(es) for each author/presenter
• email address for the corresponding author/presenter

Submitting your proposal

Please submit proposals and all queries related to submissions to secretariat@panoramacouncil.org

• Deadline for proposal submission: April 10, 2026
• Decisions will be emailed by May 1, 2026
• Conference registration will open May 29 and close July 17, 2026

Download the CfP as a PDF