Madrid es Ciencia Fair 2026: Science, laughter and excitement with IMDEA
March 25, 2026
Science is the future, a better future
More than 28,000 visitors, 85 schools, nearly 1,200 teachers, researchers and science communicators, and around 3,600 students brimming with scientific curiosity and eager to explain their experiments. All this took place at La Nave, during the 15th edition of the Madrid es Ciencia Fair, organised by the Fundación para el Conocimiento madrimasd.
Inside the huge hall housing 99 stands, the ‘indomitable’ seven IMDEA Institutes, with nearly 200 researchers, were ready to give it all –just like the ‘indomitable’ Gauls from the village of Asterix– to show that science, as well as being essential, can be fun, really fun.
Construction robots, encrypted messages, organs-on-a-chip, microbiota in action, superfoods, blockchain, AI games, and the quantum world of nanoscience shared the limelight with graphene, 3D printing applied to medicine, the batteries of the future, elephant toothpaste, skin-changing metal, membranes that remove emerging pollutants, biosensors and biofactories, and much more.
As the winner of our #experimentaIMDEA wrote, “The Madrid Science Fair is like a grand symphony, where each experiment sounds like a note and together they create the harmony of knowledge.”
And the IMDEA Institutes, IMDEA Water, Energy, Software, Nanoscience, Materials, Nutrition and Networks, wanted to be part of that symphony of knowledge, of a way of understanding the world in which science is indispensable.
We’d like to thank everyone who joined us for this great celebration of science. First and foremost, the organisers from the Fundación para el Conocimiento madrimasd, without whom none of this would have been possible. And then there are those who, like Mía, reminded us that what we “love most about science is that we can all be part of it: it doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, age, gender or ideology. All you need is curiosity. You don’t have to be clever, have prior knowledge or a wad of cash. We’re all in it. We can all be scientists.”
We the ‘imdeanos’ had a great time, laughing and feeling touched by the looks of interest on people’s faces as we explained our experiments, seeing our stand packed with people hanging on our every word, or reading the messages left on our #experimentaIMDEA wall.
We were moved to read, time and again, the name of Ana, a teacher whom their students adore for having sparked their interest in science. Or seeing that some young people want to pursue a career in research to follow in the footsteps of their mothers or grandmothers. And seeing that for many, science is essential, the best tool for improving the world, helping us to understand ourselves and everything around us, the reasons behind things, or enabling us to do things that have never been done before.
And we’ve had a good laugh reading jokes that are difficult to translate –please forgive us for leaving them in Spanish– such as what a cat exclaims when its gold is stolen: “MiAu”; or the two scientists saying goodbye with “ácido un placer”.
We believe the best way to say goodbye is by recalling one of the phrases that has been repeated most often over the last three days: “Science is the future – a better future”.
See you at Madrid es Ciencia 2027!
