Storyworld 2026:
Climate, conflict & Collective action
a season of participatory climate futures
What happens when climate change reshapes not just our environment — but our systems of power, governance, and cooperation?
StoryWorld 2026 is a participatory season of immersive experiences (storyworlds) exploring how climate, conflict, and collective action collide — and what new futures might emerge in response.
Across a live simulation, a collaborative studio, and a final series of public gatherings, you’ll step inside unfolding scenarios, respond to real-time dilemmas, and help imagine new ways forward.
This is not just storytelling.
It’s a space to explore, question, and co-create the futures we might live into.
🔔 Start here
New to the storyworld?
Join our live Launch & Learn—a free, hour-long, interactive “orientation” where you’ll step into a real scenario, make sense of emerging signals, and respond alongside others.
It’s the best way to experience the format before deciding how deep you want to go.
How it unfolds
From there, the StoryWorld unfolds across 3 interconnected phases, each exploring how climate futures take shape at different scales.
Phase 1: The arctic turning point
A warming Arctic has opened new shipping routes, intensified geopolitical tensions, and drawn global attention to a fragile and rapidly changing region.
In this immersive simulation, participants will step into a near-future scenario shaped by competing claims, environmental risk, and rising pressure to act.
As new developments unfold, you’ll be asked to interpret signals, navigate uncertainty, and respond to complex, interconnected challenges.
But beneath the surface lies a deeper question:
June 3rd 2026 (Toronto Climate Week)
A live in-person simulation experience
What happens when the existing rules-based order falls apart, no longer equipped to equitably manage a climate-altered world?
Phase 2:
Planetary Commons
Summer 2026, live online
A cohort-based multi-week virtual experience
This is the core studio experience of the StoryWorld—a small cohort working together over multiple sessions to navigate unfolding scenarios and shape the direction of the narrative.
“A coalition of nations, organizations and communities has convened in response to escalating climate shocks and repeated failures in global coordination.”
The Planetary Commons studio is a participatory space for imagining and prototyping these possibilities — grounded in perspectives, experiences, and futures often underrepresented in global decision-making.
Across multiple sessions, participants will:
engage futures and foresight methods
respond to evolving signals of change shared as “live news” broadcasts
co-create artifacts, narratives, and institutional designs
Selected outputs will be published as part of the Climateverse Dispatch, contributing to a growing archive of speculative futures.
Help shape the studio
We’re currently gathering input on timing, format, and accessibility.
Phase 3: The watershed moment
Fall 2026 (in-person, Toronto)
Where decisions flow across systems, scales, and species.
As global pressures intensify, decisions return to the local level: to cities, communities, and the ecosystems that sustain them.
This phase unfolds through a series of in-person experiences in Toronto, exploring:
overlapping provincial and municipal authority
ecological limits and interspecies perspectives
equity, access, and lived experience
Participants move through immersive simulations and collective decision-making—navigating tensions not as observers, but as participants.
[More details to come]
StoryWorld 2026 is an invitation to move beyond passive observation and into active exploration.
And there’s no single way to participate!
✨ step into the StoryWorld
Whether you attend a single event or follow along through the Dispatch, you’ll be part of a growing community engaging with the possibilities of climate futures — together.
Start with the orientation/preview, step into a live experience, or follow the unfolding narrative over time via the Dispatch.