IPS 2026 in Fukuoka has now finished and what a fabulous conference it was. With some 600 delegates , more than 100 presentations, 20 workshops, 11 panel discussions and dozens of vendor sessions it was an absolutely jam packed program. With six (and sometimes up to 10) concurrent sessions running at any one time it was a challenge to stay on top of it all.

The conference commenced on Sunday 21 with a Welcome Gathering at the Ohori Park Noh Theatre which a performance of Iwato Kagura. This was followed by a reception at the Artist Cafe, which featured a stunning exhibition by Japan’s foremost leading astrophotographer Kagaya.

The conference itself was held across three venues:

The Fukuoka City Science Museum was the main venue for Monday and Tuesday. The museum opened in 2017 and is spread over the 3rd – 6th floors of a building that is a 14 minute train ride from central Fukuoka. (The ground floor is a high end supermarket and the 2nd floor a bookshop). Sessions took place in the Planetarium, Science Hall, Science Show Stage, Laboratories and a Workshop room. This worked quite well as all of the conference delegates were in the one building and sessions were all well attended.

The final three days of the conference (Wednesday – Friday) took place at the Fukuoka International Congress Center and the Fukuoka Kokusai Center. These two venues are a short 3 minute walk apart and located along the Fukuoka watefront about 12 minutes by bus from the centre of the city. The Kokusai center was the location of the Exhibition Hall with all of the sponsors booths:

The Sponsors Exhibition included 3 IPS domes ranging in size from 8 – 12 metres. In addition to the IPS domes, several vendors brought their own including Goto and RSA Cosmos. RSA Cosmos also had a section of their LED dome on display.

The Fukuoka International Congress Center included five conference rooms for presentations, a large Session Space for Poster sessions (as well as displays by the Japan Planetarium Association), and finally the Main Hall which was used for the IPS business meeting, awards ceremony and group photograph.

The range of talks, presentations and sessions at the IPS conference was quite amazing. There were many talks about AI, and discussions about its use in production. There were also interesting presentations on new technologies, including LED dome technology.

This was a great conference, and it was wonderful to share it with this fine group of Australians.