Future Forum 2026
Future Forum 2026
esse-sense Future Forum 2026
Orchestrating knowledge into industry creation
2026 9/16Wed–17Thu Tokyo Midtown Yaesu
Biomanufacturing, rejuvenation and longevity, neuroscience and BMI — in the fields that may become the next industries, some 200 researchers from universities and research institutes meet corporate executives, investors, universities, government and startups about 1,000 people for two days. An invitation-only conference, now in its fourth edition.Two days to meet research knowledge before it becomes a business, and to leave with a hypothesis for your own next theme.
On 16 and 17 September 2026 we hold the fourth esse-sense Future Forum: Encountering the Future — orchestrating knowledge into industry creation. Read the history of how industries were created, and in every case an accumulation and an orchestration of knowledge by researchers and research institutes came first, before any business was built.
One technology, one discovery, one question. They meet people, capital and place, they are bound together, and in time they become an industry. We propose to read that whole process not as the work of a single protagonist but as collaboration across sectors and an orchestration of knowledge — that is this year's theme.
Deep Science and Deep Knowledge: inquiry that descends to the roots of life and matter, and inquiry that descends to the roots of human life — body, place, the everyday. And the questions futures research throws back at us from the future.
Some 200 researchers from universities and research institutes, together with corporate executives, investors, universities, government and startups about 1,000 people spend two days together at a conference we believe to be without parallel in Japan, Two days to meet research knowledge before it becomes a business, and to leave with a hypothesis for your own next theme.
This year we welcome, on the first day, Patrick Noack of the Dubai Future Foundation, who builds future strategy for industry creation in Dubai and leads its largest invitation-only conference of some 3,000 people. Through his keynote and his conversation with leading Japanese researchers and executives, we build a bridge between Japan and Dubai. Alongside him, executives of Prime-listed companies, founders of strong startups, researchers working at the frontier of each field, and players from financial institutions, foundations and venture capital take the stage — and meet one another.
We look forward to welcoming you again this year.
Yuya Nishimura, CEO, esse-sense Inc.
“The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it and execute it.” Under that principle, the Government of Dubai established a future-strategy institution in 2016: Dubai Future Foundation . Known for its landmark building, it operates the Museum of the Future and hosts one of the world's largest futurist gatherings, Dubai Future Forum . It brings futures research, future councils across thirteen industry sectors, and the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution UAE into a single organisation, and has spent a decade carrying foresight through to implementation.
Dr Patrick Noack, who gives the keynote, leads all three of those core functions at the Foundation. He was previously a senior policy adviser at the Royal Society, and has worked on scenarios and foresight for more than twenty years across government, the United Nations and the private sector. Here you hear the design directly from someone who has implemented foresight as industrial strategy at national scale: how knowledge of the future is connected to the creation of industry.
Sources: Dubai Future Foundation official site; Dubai Government Media Office (figures for Dubai Future Forum 2025 as announced by the organisers). Final wording of the title will be confirmed with the speaker.
Futures anthropology sits at the frontier of both anthropology and futures studies. Rather than trying to get the future right by probability, it uses ethnography to grasp how people imagine, hope for, fear and already live the future in their daily lives. Neither the adoption of a technology nor the turning of an industry happens anywhere but on top of that imagination.
The field grew out of a lab, “Anthropology at the Edge of the Future”, held at the 2014 EASA conference in Tallinn, and took form as the ten-point Futures Anthropologies Manifesto. The Future Anthropologies Network (EASA), founded in the same year, has since carried the practice outward through panels and labs at international conferences. Prof. Sarah Pink , who gives the keynote, is a co-author of that manifesto and a co-founder of the network.
What decides a future strategy is not the accuracy of its scenarios but how its premises are set. From the person who opened this field, you hear how to see the myths embedded in technology — the stories about the future we believe without noticing. It is time to inspect the premises your own plans stand on.
Sources: Future Anthropologies Network (EASA) official page; “Futures Anthropologies Manifesto” in Salazar, Pink, Irving and Sjöberg (eds), Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2017); Monash University researcher page. Final wording of the title will be confirmed with the speaker.
Both mornings are for receiving, from outside, an account of what is actually happening. Day 1 takes industry creation from the Dubai Future Foundation, which has implemented the future as industrial strategy at national scale. Day 2 takes future creation from futures anthropology, which questions the myths inside our technologies. You hear these practitioners and researchers directly, in keynotes and panels (sessions with international guests are simultaneously interpreted).
Keynote — three sessions
Panel — 12:50 / Industry creation and the orchestration of knowledge
Note: the 10:00 opening on Day 2 is given by Yuya Nishimura and Yutaka Anma of esse-sense, and by PwC Consulting LLC Isao Miyama(Partner / Director, Future Design Lab), among others. Some speakers are To be confirmed; we will announce it once confirmed.
Keynote — two sessions
Panel — 12:40 / Leadership that connects the future to industry
Note: the 10:00 opening (Yuya Nishimura and Yutaka Anma of esse-sense, together with Ushio Usami, Managing Executive Officer and Head of Public Sector, Amazon Web Services Japan). esse-sense chairs the sessions. Some speakers and titles are still being arranged, and some invitations are still outstanding.
| Time | A4F ROOM 1Deep Science | B4F ROOM 2Deep Knowledge | C4F Temporary OfficeThemes & Global | D4F Panorama RoomStartups × VC | E5F StudioInvitation-only workshops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:30 | Deep Sync by STORIUM 2026 14:30–18:30, continuous. With pre-matched VCs, CVCs and corporates: 35 min × 3 conversational sessions. Open to R&D-driven startups that have passed a prior selection. A materials corner runs alongside, and you may come simply to take the materials away (pre-registration required). Entries close 23:59, Tuesday 18 August 2026 Apply here → | ||||
| 16:00 | |||||
| 17:30 |
| Time | A4F ROOM 1Deep Science | B4F ROOM 2Deep Knowledge | C4F Temporary OfficeThemes & Global | D4F Panorama RoomStartups × VC | E5F StudioInvitation-only workshops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:30 | Deep Sync by STORIUM 2026 14:30–18:30, continuous. With pre-matched VCs, CVCs and corporates: 35 min × 3 conversational sessions. Open to R&D-driven startups that have passed a prior selection. A materials corner runs alongside, and you may come simply to take the materials away (pre-registration required). Entries close 23:59, Tuesday 18 August 2026 Apply here → | ||||
| 16:00 | |||||
| 17:30 |
The timetable is provisional. Content, times and speakers may change.
Both mornings are keynotes and panels on the main stage. Both afternoons, five venues (A to E) run twenty-four breakout sessions at once — open panels, thematic sessions, startups with VCs, invitation-only workshops — plus the seventy-two slots in track D.
The forum is made possible by companies that share our aim of creating new industries.
An invitation-only researchers' conference begun in 2023, where corporate executives, R&D leaders and investors meet frontier researchers and look for where the next business or industry begins. 2026 is the fourth edition.
2024 figures: 1,467 attendees (2,392 including repeat days), 34 sessions, 170 speakers. About 3,000 people across three years.
Source: esse-sense Future Forum 2025 sponsor materials and activity report.
What speakers said, where the room looked, the countless conversations exchanged. A record of past editions. Click a photograph to enlarge it.
Photographs from past editions of the esse-sense Future Forum (2023 and 2024). Credit: Miratuku (NPO) / esse-sense.
Prices exclude tax; 10% consumption tax is added. The fee covers both days. Your rate is determined automatically by the date of application in Japan time.
Corporate executives, new business development, R&D and technology strategy, innovation strategy, CVC, financial institutions, universities, government, foundations and startups. Two days for about 1,000 people, by invitation, for those imagining what industry does next.
About 3 minutes / Payment by credit card (Stripe)
