Coachella has transformed one of the world's largest music festivals into a testing ground for artificial intelligence, collaborating with Google DeepMind during this year's event to build and evaluate experimental tools aimed at reshaping how artists design performances and how fans experience them.
The new experiments center on "world models" — AI systems capable of generating interactive digital environments. The festival's innovation team spent the 2026 event building three prototypes using Google DeepMind's Project Genie, the company's world-model platform.
The first prototype, called "Turning Performances Into Interactive Experiences," captures live shows and reconstructs them as explorable 3D environments. During the festival's opening weekend, teams recorded lighting, audio, visuals, and the movement of both crowds and artists during a Quasar stage set, then recreated the performance in Unreal Engine.
Coachella said the technology could eventually produce "living archives" of performances that fans can walk through, replay from different angles, or view with alternate visuals generated in real time. "There are definitely ways we're looking at how fans on-site can engage with that content in the future," said Cenicola. "Looking further ahead, with glasses and the emergence of that form factor, that's certainly a place we're thinking about this content living and making it an even more immersive experience for fans on-site."
The second prototype is a stage-design tool built for artists. The software allows performers to upload visuals or enter text prompts to preview how a show would appear on a 3D model of Coachella's stages at various times of day and under different crowd conditions. The stated goal is to give smaller acts access to production planning tools that are typically available only to artists with larger budgets and teams.
The third project is a mobile game called Coachella vs. The Game, in which players control an astronaut exploring digital worlds inspired by festival artists. The team likened the concept to games available before visiting a theme park — giving fans a way to engage with the lineup before arriving at the festival. "Typically, you're looking at six to 12 month development timelines to really push a high-quality experience," the team noted.
When asked why Coachella chose Google DeepMind over competitors such as OpenAI or Anthropic, McMahon pointed to the company's visual AI capabilities and an existing working relationship. "For us, we live in a really visual world, and they have the best visual models," he said. "We work with them across the festival, from our YouTube livestream, which is part of a Google relationship. We've found them to have really great models that are easy to use, and they've been shipping at a really fast rate. We're excited to keep exploring with them."
The AI initiatives build on years of Coachella experimenting with new technology to extend the festival's reach beyond the physical event. In 2024, the festival launched Coachella Quests, a game on the Avalanche blockchain that let attendees complete challenges and earn perks through NFT stamps. That same year, Coachella introduced Avalanche-based NFT passes and collectibles, following the collapse of an earlier Solana NFT partnership tied to the implosion of crypto exchange FTX.
"An experience like Coachella Quest was a way for us to shine a light on things and say, 'Hey, have you thought about this?' — without doing it in a boring menu kind of way," McMahon said. "How do we make it interactive — a way to explore and discover at the festival — and give fans a chance to bump into each other and say, 'Oh, you were going to see that thing or collect that thing too.' Those happy accidents are something we continue to get really positive feedback on."
Coachella has also invested in augmented reality experiences for livestream viewers. This year's AR broadcasts featured digital effects layered over performances that were visible only to online audiences.
None of the current AI projects have been released publicly; they remain internal proofs of concept. Cenicola said the festival is reviewing lessons from this year's event before deciding what might roll out in future editions. "It's difficult right now to put a firm timeline on it," he said. "We're in the phase where we're taking all the learnings from these three proofs-of-concept that we wrapped up last weekend and working with our team and with DeepMind to understand what the next steps are."
Why it matters
The stage-design prototype is specifically aimed at smaller acts who lack access to high-end production planning resources, meaning the tool's practical value is tied to whether it can genuinely lower the barrier to professional-grade show design — not just replicate what well-funded artists already do.
The mobile game prototype highlights a compressed development window: the team noted that comparable high-quality experiences typically require six to twelve months to build, making the speed of iteration a meaningful signal about where AI-assisted game development currently stands.
All three projects remain internal proofs of concept with no confirmed release dates, so the festival's stated next step — reviewing learnings before committing to a rollout — means the public-facing impact of this work is still undetermined.
