SXSW 2025 wrapped in Austin in March of last year. With ten months of perspective, what stood out then is mostly still standing now — and a few things I dismissed at the time turned out to matter more than they looked.

This is a field note from the perspective of someone who designs immersive work for a living, not from the perspective of a tech reviewer. SXSW is useful to me because it’s the largest annual gathering of the people who fund, commission, and consume the kind of work I build. The technology demos are downstream of that.

What stood out

The Wonder section was where the actual industry was. SXSW’s Wonder programming — the immersive and experiential track — has been building for several years. In 2025 it crossed a threshold. The most senior producers in the experience economy were there, the work being demonstrated was at a higher production tier than in past years, and the conversations in the hallways had shifted from “what’s possible” to “what’s worth doing.” That’s the more interesting conversation, and it’s the one this industry needs to be having.

The work that landed in Wonder shared a few traits. It was built for in-person, not for a headset. It rewarded sustained attention rather than glance value. It came from teams that included artists, ritual practitioners, and theatrical specialists alongside the technologists. The aesthetic center of gravity moved away from spectacle and toward intimacy.

This is the same shift I’m seeing in my own client work. The producers commissioning at the flagship tier increasingly want intimate, durable, attention-rewarding work. The trade show floor — a few years ago dominated by larger-and-louder activations — is starting to feel out of step with the senior buyers it’s supposed to serve.

AI integration in live experience hit its first useful generation. The AI-driven content tools at SXSW 2025 were past the demo stage. Several were ready for real production work. The useful ones weren’t the generative-content tools getting all the press — those still produce work that fails at the flagship tier. The useful ones were the integration tools: AI-assisted lighting cue generation that adapts to the audience’s energy, real-time crowd-sensing systems that adjust pacing, conversation-aware sound design that shifts the score based on what the audience is doing.

I came away thinking AI’s first real wins in this industry will be in show control, not in content generation. That seems even more obvious now than it did then.

The brand-activation tier was the weakest part of the festival. Several of the largest brand activations at SXSW 2025 felt out of phase with the producers they were trying to reach. The format — large footprint, high production budget, photographable moments, sponsor logos — is the format the brand-activation industry has been building since 2015. The senior producers who set cultural agendas have moved past it. The audience who shows up for the brand activations is increasingly not the audience the brands actually want.

This is a real shift, and the brand-activation industry is going to have to respond to it. The producers commissioning the most interesting work at SXSW now are the festival programmers themselves, the cultural-institution partners, and a handful of media platforms with real curatorial intent. The traditional brand-activation playbook is going to keep producing diminishing returns until the industry rebuilds it for the new audience.

What I’m taking into 2026

The Wonder-section aesthetic — intimate, durable, attention-rewarding — is the direction the senior end of the experience economy is moving. Clients who are still briefing for spectacle are increasingly producing work that lands with the wrong audience.

AI for show control is going to be a real tool by late 2026. The studios that build relationships with the better tools now will be ahead of clients who don’t ask about it until next year.

The brand-activation industry needs a rebuild. The clients I’m advising in this space are spending more time on what we’re not doing than on what we are. That’s the right ratio, given the moment.

The center of gravity is moving. The producers who notice early will be the ones whose work still feels current in 2027.

Alt Ethos works with a small number of producers each year on flagship immersive projects. To start a conversation: [CTA link]