Some of the world’s most innovative and creatively ambitious artists and studios are in the running for a new global art prize, established to celebrate and define excellence in using creative technology to immerse audiences in new worlds.
Today, Wednesday 1 October, the Annwn Prize – the first global award that celebrates excellence in immersive storytelling – announces the 25 nominated works for its inaugural edition.
The Prize was launched in 2025 by Wales Millennium Centre and is produced with Crossover Labs, marking a major new moment in the global arts calendar.
Selected by a community of international curators and commentators, the nominated works demonstrate excellence in compelling storytelling; make audiences an active and integral part of the piece; and utilise technologies to enhance, augment or impact our sense of reality. They must have been exhibited in a festival, tour or venue programme between January 2024 – July 2025 to be eligible.
The full list of nominated works, arranged alphabetically by title, is as follows:
AI & ME: THE CONFESSIONAL AND AI EGO – Germany, mots
An installation that provokes reflection on self-image and the impact of artificial judgement, challenging perceptions of how we see ourselves through the lens of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
ANCESTORS – Netherlands, Smartphone Orchestra
An interactive and immersive group experience that will make the viewers profoundly connect with the fellow players and with future generations: taking a selfie they become the great-great grandparent of a human 200 years in the future.
COLLATERAL ECHOES – UK, Baff Akoto
An XR memorial honouring the lives of Black and Immigrant Britons lost to state violence through testimony, archive, and performance, giving voice to the communities who survive them.
COLORED / NOIRE - France, Novaya
An immersive AI-powered experience through 1950s Alabama, reliving Claudette Colvin’s courageous stand and pioneering role during the civil rights era. (our interview)
CONSENSUS GENTIUM - UK, Karen Palmer
A branching film app using facial recognition to explore surveillance, bias algorithms, and agency in both dystopian and utopian future realities. (our interview)
CONSTANTINOPOLIAD – UK/Greece, Sister Sylvester
An expanded cinema work inspired by Cavafy’s legacy, exploring lost queer archives and poetic memory through collective reading and ghostly imaginations.
DREAM MACHINE - USA, Nona Hendryx
An immersive, mixed reality Afrofuturist journey blending music, AR, VR, and AI to foster community engagement and the envisioning of new possibilities.
FRAGILE HOME - Czechia, Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina (Brainz Immersive)
An immersive mixed reality experience that enables users to experience the gradual transformation of familiar surroundings into the dwelling of a Ukrainian family, spanning from a peaceful past to the tumultuous present. (our interview)
HEARTBREAK AND MAGIC – UK, Libby Heaney
A heartfelt VR experience touching on grief, quantum physics, and the wider multiverse as a lens to explore the meaning of existence and unexpected loss.
HUK, THE JAGUARESS – Bolivia/Australia, Violeta Ayala, Dr. Yasmeen Hitti and Dan Fallshaw
A sentient digital being co-created with Indigenous artists to protect the Amazon and challenge colonial AI legacies through ecological knowledge interwoven with dance and rhythm. (our interview)
IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS – UK, Darren Emerson
An award-winning euphoric coming-of-age VR experience set in the heart of the rave scene on 1989, where music becomes a lifeline. (our interview)
IN THE EYE OF A DREAM - UK, Kinnari Saraiya
An immersive world which reclaims the dreams used in colonial racialist training, reanimating these carriers of prophecy as Indigenous technologies of survival.
LILI– USA/UK, iNK Stories
An immersive neo-noir adaption of Macbeth where users step into the role of dark web hackers to navigate a world of AI, surveillance and digital warfare.
NOWISWHENWEARE (THE STARS) – USA, Andrew Schneider
An immersive journey through light and sound where participants explore the cosmos – and their inner self – guided by stars, memory, and every decision that led to that moment.
OTO’S PLANET – Luxembourg, Gwenael François
An intriguingly interactive story, told through VR, about two unlikely roommates on a tiny, peaceful planet as they explore communication and cohabitation between one another after a fruit-related mishap. (our interview)
REFLECTIONS OF LITTLE RED DOT - Germany, Chloé Lee
A mixed reality open documentary, co-created by viewers with a custom projector to explore Singapore’s evolving landscape through personal stories. (our interview)
SPIRIT SYSTEMS OF SOFT KNOWING ༊*·˚ – UK/Germany, Keiken
An interactive installation by Keiken using haptic wearable wombs to explore empathy, perception, and interconnection beyond human experience.
THE FOUNDERS PILLARS AND THE POWER LOOM – South Africa, Dr Meghna Singh, Simon Wood and Lesiba Mabitsela
A site-responsive Augmented Reality (AR) memorial transforming colonial architecture with a multimedia installation of African textiles and ancestral storytelling.
THE MANIKINS: A WORK IN PROGRESS – UK, Deadweight Theatre
An interactive show that casts a single audience member as a patient in the office of Dr. Ligotti, where they navigate the hidden agendas and supernatural techniques of the enigmatic psychiatrist and his secretary, Beatrix.
TRANSMISSION – INTO THE DARK – Australia, One step at a time like this
An award-winning, radio-based live performance guiding audiences through mysterious installations and nocturnal streets into the soul of the night.
TRAVERSING THE MIST - Taiwan, CHOU Tung-Yen
A surreal multi-user XR experience exploring desire, excitement and fear, set within the dissolving dreamscape of a Taiwanese sauna. (our interview)
TURBULENCE: JAMAIS VU – Australia, Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts
A mixed reality docu-essay exploring perception and jamais vu, through intimate storytelling and spatial interaction. (our interview)
WILFRED BUCK’S STAR STORIES – Canada, Lisa Jackson, Wilfred Buck and The Macronauts
This immersive XR work for domes and planetariums brings to life four stories, gathered and told by renowned Ininew (Cree) astronomer and star knowledge expert and author Wilfred Buck.
./MYTH.YOU (ITʼS LIKE IT HAVE FOUND A MYTH IN YOU.) – Japan, Michibumi ITO
A Virtual Reality (VR) that transforms your neural state shifts into a mythic, real-time essay-film of the self, through changing architectural sights reflective of your body’s experience.
[EOL]. END OF LIFE – Germany, DARUM
An immersive VR ruinscape exploring digital legacy, memory, and who determines what virtual traces are preserved or erased.
The ANNWN Prize was established to recognise and celebrate excellence in this fast-evolving artform and to present audiences with stories they can inhabit as well as watch. These works represent the very best of the bold and extraordinary voices shaping the future of immersive storytelling across the globe. These artists and studios are pushing boundaries, blending technology and creativity to craft unforgettable experiences. This moment is not just a celebration of their talent, but a testament to the growing significance of this artform.
Graeme Farrow, chief creative and content officer at Wales Millennium Centre
Artists from 14 different countries are represented on the list, and the stories and themes explored are markedly varied: from the intimate experience of grief to speculative visions of surveillance, and from the magical possibilities of quantum physics to a multi-sensory journey into the 1989 acid house rave scene or surreal explorations of desire in a Taiwanese gay sauna.
A shortlist of four finalists chosen by a selection committee will be announced in November 2025. The committee comprises six of the wider nominating panel: Mark Atkin, director, Crossover Labs; Ana Brzezinska, immersive curator, Barbican/Moment Factory; Samantha King, head of programme, VIVE Arts; Ellen Kuo, head of XR market, Newimages Festival; David Massey, senior producer for creative technology and storytelling, Wales Millenium Centre; Tom Millen, director, Crossover Labs.
Through an international network of industry experts, we have identified works that demonstrate immersive storytelling’s unique power to engage our senses while challenging us intellectually and emotionally. The works reflect how immersive arts have evolved from the confines of innovation and experimentation into a maturing medium capable of profound artistic expression that demands dedicated recognition. The Annwn Prize establishes Wales Millennium Centre as a leader in recognising and nurturing this rapidly evolving art form, providing a platform for artists in this space and an unprecedented opportunity for audiences to experience these works.
Samantha King, nominator and representative of the shortlist selection committee
The four shortlisted works will then be showcased to the public in a major exhibition at Wales Millennium Centre (our interview) opening in May 2026, during which a jury of industry experts and those from the arts and entertainment industry will select and announce the winner (Sunday 14 June 2026).
Supported by Peter and Janet Swinburn, the winning artist or studio will be awarded £20,000 along with a bespoke residency to support the development of new work.
The Annwn Prize’s mission is to provide a global platform to elevate immersive storytelling as a vital pillar of cultural expression, celebrate pioneering artists and drives critical discussion of this artform, bringing exceptional and compelling work to UK audiences.
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