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DFW26 Is a Wrap: Five Days in Boulder That the Fulldome Community Will Be Talking About


Roughly 400 people came through Fiske Planetarium over five days in April. Attendees represented 14 countries. Two screening blocks sold out. And the people who were there left with something harder to measure than a badge scan: new friends, new ideas, and a clearer sense of where this industry is going.


Dome Fest West 2026, the 5th Annual, wrapped April 26 in Boulder, Colorado. Here is what happened.


Wednesday: Before It Even Started

The festival technically opened Thursday. But for a lot of people, DFW26 began Wednesday night at the Filmmakers Mixer in the Marriott Hotel Bar. By the time people moved on to Bohemian Biergarten for the after-meetup, the conversations that would carry all the way through Sunday had already started. That is how this community works.



Thursday: The Expo Opens

The expanded Fulldome Forward Expo kicked off Thursday morning with a series of panel conversations that set the tone for everything that followed. "Audio That Actually Plays Everywhere." "Show Me the Money." "The Programmer's Perspective." The sessions were substantive and honest, the kind of conversations about the state of the industry that rarely happen in any other setting. After the morning panels, the expo hall opened and the room filled with the mix of energy that makes DFW different from most conferences: filmmakers, planetarium directors, technology vendors, and distributors all in the same space, sharing work and trading ideas.


The day closed with a speed networking session that many attendees called one of their favorite parts of the entire festival. The format, designed and facilitated by Dan and Kael Francis, was built around shared conversation and shared purpose rather than cold introductions across a table. Meeting people felt easy and natural. More than a few attendees mentioned it as the moment DFW stopped feeling like a conference and started feeling like a community.



After the expo, the films started. Block 1, Cosmic Journeys: Exploration & Discovery, opened the Fiske dome to a packed house. Carter Emmart's Encounters in the Milky Way, narrated by Pedro Pascal, was among the works on the program. The afterparty at Outback Saloon kept things going into the night.


Friday: Open Space, Keynote, and the Visual Music Night

Friday morning opened with an Open Space roundtable facilitated by Tammy Barrett from the Giant Screen Cinema Association. Open Space is a participant-driven format where the agenda emerges from the room rather than a program committee, and the conversations that came out of it were remarkable. Topics ranged from audience development and inclusive programming to production workflow, distribution models, and the future direction of fulldome content.


What struck people most was the honesty in the room. These were not polished presentations. They were working conversations between practitioners who care deeply about the same questions. The material from that morning was rich enough that we are turning it into a four-part blog series. The first post goes up June 12.

Friday afternoon brought the keynote with Phil Streather on the main stage at the Marriott, followed by sponsor presentations and Tom Ammermann's audio session. The expo floor ran through the afternoon, and then the evening returned to the dome.



The Works-in-Progress Showcase gave filmmakers space to share work still finding its final form. Seeing films in process alongside finished, award-winning work is one of the things that makes DFW genuinely useful for the creative community.


Block 2, Harmony of Sound & Vision, closed out the night. The program included James Hood's Astronomica and Resolution: A Cinephonic Rhapsody for the Soul, directed by Scott Berman with music by The Polyphonic Spree. In a dark dome with spatial audio, that block is not something you watch. It is something that happens to you.



Saturday: A Full Day of Films

Saturday ran all day. Programming spanned science, environment, AI, space, family films, and experimental work across four daylight blocks. The Laser Light Spectacular that closed Saturday night drew the largest combined attendance of any block across the full weekend, packing Fiske's dome to capacity. After four intense days, nobody wanted it to end.







The DFW26 Award Winners

The DFW26 jury screened the full festival slate and deliberated across every category. These are the films they chose.


  • Sphere of Light: Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, Episode 1: ADAPT

  • Best Artistic Feature Film: Resolution: A Cinephonic Rhapsody for the Soul

  • Best Artistic Short Film: UP

  • Best Musical Feature Film: Kael Alden "Space and Time"

  • Best Musical Short Film: The Rift

  • Best Educational Film: Life: The Greatest Story

  • Best Science Film: REMIXED: The Unexpected Side of Science

  • Best Environmental Film: Minam River Wildlife Area

  • Best Children's Film: Little Eve: Stories of Planet Earth

  • Best Narrative Film: Edge of the Sky

  • Best Interactive Experience: The Pleasure Machine

  • Best Live Experience: LUMINESCENCE

  • Juror's Choice Award: Qualia

  • Audience Choice Award: Qualia


Qualia took home both. The jury and the audience landed on the same film independently. That does not happen often, and when it does, it means something.


The DFW Lifetime Achievement Award: Carter Emmart

Dome Fest West 2026 also presented the DFW Lifetime Achievement Award to Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the foundational figures in scientific dome visualization. His work spans decades of bringing the universe to life inside planetarium domes, and his film Encounters in the Milky Way, narrated by Pedro Pascal, screened at DFW26 to a full house. It was the right year to honor a career like his, and the right room to do it in.


Sunday: The Quiet Morning and the Awards

Sunday began differently from every other day of the festival, and deliberately so.

The 9 a.m. block was Inner Cosmos: Transformation & Consciousness, a program of meditative, awareness-driven fulldome work. It is the kind of programming that a lot of planetariums have not yet fully explored, and the response in the room made a strong case for why they should. Qualia, the film that would go on to win both the Juror's Choice and Audience Choice awards, screened here. Artists and planetarium staff alike remarked afterward about how peaceful and restorative that Sunday morning felt. After the intensity of a full festival week, sitting in a dome watching something genuinely contemplative was exactly what the room needed. The fulldome format is uniquely suited to this kind of experience. You cannot replicate it anywhere else.


The 11 a.m. block, Earth's Evolution: Past, Present & Future, carried the morning forward before the festival moved into its final act.


The awards ceremony followed at approximately 12:30 p.m., right after that second morning block ended. With the whole community still present and a quieter, more reflective energy carrying over from the morning screenings, the timing felt right. It was not a loud closer. It was a grateful one.




What People Took Home

Artists left with real leads on venues. Planetarium directors left with a shortlist of new content to bring to their locations. The speed networking sessions that people walked into nervously, they walked out of with plans to stay in touch.


Scott Berman, director of Resolution: A Cinephonic Rhapsody for the Soul, put it this way: "It was truly an honor to not only screen at DFW but to win an award was incredibly rewarding. Most of all, the connection to this beautiful community was and is invaluable. These relationships are what have turned this into a lifelong passion that will never leave me. Thanks Dome Fest West and Ryan for your continued support. I will be back every year!"


Matt Heenan, Assistant Director of Planetarium Sales at the American Museum of Natural History, summed up the room: "DFW was a blast! Such a wonderful mix of creative people across the fulldome space, all sharing amazing work from different points of view. Looking forward to next year!"



Thank You to Our Sponsors and Partners

DFW26 happened because a remarkable group of organizations chose to put their names and resources behind it. We do not take that lightly. Every sponsor on this list represents a belief in what this community is building together, and we are genuinely grateful for each one.



Presenting Sponsor

Fiske Planetarium is more than a venue partner. The Fiske team's commitment to DFW shows up in every screening, every moment the lights go down, and every conversation that happens in that lobby. We could not do this without them.


Gold Sponsors

Our Gold sponsors bring the resources and industry credibility that make a professional-grade festival possible. We are proud to have them in the room.


Silver Sponsors


Friends of the Festival


Thank you to the Fiske team, our volunteers, our jury, and every filmmaker who trusted us with their work.


See You in Boulder


DFW27 is April 21 to 25, 2027 at Fiske Planetarium. Film submissions open July 8. If you make fulldome films, that is your window.

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