Siggraph 2026, the premier global conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques, is set to take place from 19 to 23 July in Los Angeles. The event will bring together a global community of researchers, artists, developers, and engineers to explore the latest advances shaping the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
This year’s conference features a landmark keynote from Disney research fellow and one of Walt Disney’s most prolific inventors Lanny Smoot. Smoot’s keynote, Inventions, Innovations, and Imagination: Lanny Smoot’s Prolific Path, will take audiences on a firsthand journey through a career built at the intersection of engineering, art, and storytelling, offering insight into how bold technical ideas become real-world experiences that audiences around the globe encounter every day.
“Having Smoot as our keynote speaker sets the tone for everything we are building at Siggraph 2026,” said the conference chair Chris Redmann. “His journey from groundbreaking R&D at Bell Labs to bringing creative ideas to life at Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Research is exactly the kind of leadership our community looks to for inspiration.”
“Each time that I have made a contribution to Siggraph, I have taken home more than I have given,” Smoot said. “I believe that successful technical practitioners love to create and want to learn from others who have new ideas that might fill the gaps in the dreams that they have. There is one other strong motivation, and it is the desire to show off a latest brainchild, but with a gentle human competitive spirit that ends with camaraderie.”
During Siggraph, in his keynote, Smoot will illustrate how invention functions best as a team sport, with breakthroughs emerging when engineers, artists, and storytellers bring complementary strengths to shared problems. He credits cross-disciplinary collaboration as the defining factor in his most significant work, noting that knowing enough about a teammate’s field to communicate a problem in their language is the foundation for turning ambitious ideas into finished experiences.
