Inside the chrysalis: Katapult Future Fest arrives in Amsterdam 27-29 May

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KFF2026 opens on May 27 with Investor Day at Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam, followed by two Festival Days (May 28-29) at Ruigoord, a free-spirited artists' village on the outskirts of Amsterdam, known for its creative community, cultural festivals, and vibrant, unconventional energy. Registration and the full programme are available at katapultfuturefest.com. illuminem readers receive 20% off with the code ILLUMINEM-FRIENDS. 

Since 2017, the Katapult Future Fest has convened more than 3,500 change-makers from 55+ countries, organised by Stichting Katapult Future Fest Netherlands. In May 2026, it gathers again with a sharper thesis: that the extractive economy is dissolving, and what replaces it is already taking shape. The Industrial Extractive Age has reached its natural end. What follows is metamorphosis. The question shifts from how to rescue the old system, to how to compost it into the next one.

Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves before the butterfly takes shape, and what re-emerges is built from the same material, reorganised at a higher level of complexity. Festival participants take up the role of imaginal cells: the embryonic structures that, in a real chrysalis, carry the blueprint for the adult form and recruit the surrounding tissue around them. The destination has a name: Planetary Symbiosis. It threads past both primitivist retreat from technology and unrestrained techno-acceleration, towards a partnership with ecosystems, with emerging intelligence, with the realities of land, water, culture and community.

KFF2026 is convened with co-organisers TWIST and Katapult Ocean. It will serve as the meeting place for impact investors, entrepreneurs, academics and change-makers.

On the venture capital side, attendees include founding partners from Rubio Impact Ventures, Ananda Impact Ventures and Doen Ventures, alongside general partners from Katapult Ocean, the team at Regeneration.VC, and impact investors from Fair Capital Impact Fund, Identity.VC, ImpactVC and Better Society Capital, making the festival an unmissable gathering of impact-focused capital in Europe this spring.

Beyond funding, the programme draws institutional players including Royal Schiphol Group, Climate-KIC and TechLeap.nl, as well as leading speakers like Kate Raworth, whose Doughnut Economics framework has reshaped how cities and corporations think about growth, Rumman Chowdhury, one of the foremost voices on responsible AI and algorithmic accountability, and Indy Johar, co-founder of Dark Matter Labs.

The programme moves across five themes, each addressing a different layer of the transition. Investing for Systems Change examines how capital can be redirected away from endless growth towards long-term regeneration. This is how Industrial Extractive Age resources are repurposed to feed New System outcomes.

Deep Tech and Humanity explores the unprecedented acceleration of intelligence and capability: revolutionising coordination, holding complexity and enabling movements that biological intelligence alone
could not sustain.

Regenerative and Bioregional Futures delves into solutions grounded in land, culture, climate and community, ensuring that the new system is not abstract, but embodied.

Oceans and Nature examines the shift from protecting ecosystems to partnering with them as active drivers of planetary regeneration, exploring ocean solutions, water systems, circular materials, and governance models that give nature a voice – ensuring the New System is grounded in the living processes that regulate climate, provide energy, and sustain all life.

Culture, Creativity and Consciousness focuses on the foundational layer – the soil in which the new system must take root, enriched by human desire and creative energy. It cultivates values, imagination, courage and cultural narratives - making the emergence of the New System possible.

Across the themes, islands of coherence – regenerative farms, circular supply chains, indigenous stewardship models, place-based finance – are already operational, but largely disconnected. Connection is now the binding constraint. A scattered archipelago begins to behave like an emerging continent only when its islands start exchanging signals.

That is the invitation of Katapult Future Fest: a festival as mycelium network in the form of a festival. The metaphor captures something real about what gatherings of this kind can and cannot do. They cannot manufacture transformation; they can lower the cost of finding the people already working on it.

The transformation is happening either way. The choice that remains is whether to enter the chrysalis together.

Registration and the full programme are available at katapultfuturefest.com. illuminem readers receive 20% off with the code ILLUMINEM-FRIENDS. 

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