VIA — Visual Innovation Awards — runs a season of film and AI events across Europe, and in 2026 that season is built around three Italian cities. Each one has a different shape on purpose: a festival, a hackathon, and a screening night. Together they cover the full arc from watching new work, to building it, to putting it in front of an audience.

This guide explains what each event is, when it happens, and which one is worth your time depending on whether you make films, write code, or simply want to see where the medium is going.

The 2026 season at a glance

  • Rome AI Festival — 19 September 2026. Screenings, artist talks, new creative tools, and public conversation.
  • Turin Hackathon — 10 October 2026. Cross-disciplinary teams take an idea to a working film prototype.
  • Florence AI Cinema Night — 15 November 2026. A curated evening of AI cinema and live exchange.

Why Italy, and why now

Italy has an unusual density of film culture: historic cinemas, working studios, film schools, and audiences who still treat a screening as an event rather than a stream. That existing infrastructure is exactly what makes it a good place to test what AI does to the moving image. The tools are new; the rooms are not.

The season also reflects a shift in who makes films. The distance between an idea and a finished sequence has collapsed. A director with a clear vision and a small budget can now produce imagery that would have required a full VFX pipeline a few years ago. That changes who gets to participate, and it raises questions about craft, authorship, and taste that are better argued in a room than online.

Which event is for you

If you want to see the work and meet the people making it, start with Rome. It is the widest of the three: films, talks, and tool demonstrations in one programme, built for both practitioners and a general audience.

If you would rather build than watch, Turin is the one. It is a working session, not a conference — teams of filmmakers, developers, and designers form around ideas and present what they actually got running by the end.

If you care most about the finished result and the conversation around it, Florence closes the season with a curated evening in a historic cinema: new films, the people who made them, and an audience in the same room.

What VIA is trying to do

VIA exists to give this work a stage in Europe. Not a trade show, and not a technology showcase where the tool is the point — a festival circuit where the film is the point and the tool is simply how it got made. The awards, the hackathon, and the screenings all feed the same goal: build an audience and a peer group for European filmmakers working with AI.

Programme details for each event are announced ahead of the date. If you are a filmmaker, studio, or cultural institution who wants to take part, the fastest route is to get in touch directly.