The 2026 Nebula Awards Conference Schedule
Thursday, June 4
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Workshop 1-1 – The Art of the Query
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 1-1 – The Pitfalls of Contracts and Representation
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 1-2 – Historical Perspective: The Evolving World in SFF, with SFWA Grand Master Joe Haldeman
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Workshop 1-2 – TBA
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 1-3 – Speculative Poetry: Building the Poem’s World
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 1-4 – Incorporating Neurodiversity into your Characters and Worldbuilding
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Meet & Greets for both panels and workshops. Visit their tables to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Workshop 1-3 – Game Writing: How to Engage and Motivate Your players through Worldbuilding and Story
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Panel 1-5 – Building Emotional Resonance with Hard Science and Facts
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Panel 1-6 – Indie Publishing: How Do We Create Worlds that Capture Readers?
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM, Volunteer Reception
Friday, June 5
7:00 AM – 8:00 AM, (Sunrise Virtual) Panel 2-1 – Comics Writing: Tools to Build Your Comic and Graphic Novel Worlds
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 2-2 – Diverse Sexual Perspectives and Eroticism in Worldbuilding
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 2-3 – The Business of Writing: Developing Writing Revenue Beyond Publishing
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 2-4 – Ecology and Worldbuilding
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, (Virtual) Panel 2-5 – Micro Poetry and Other Trends in Speculative Poetics
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Workshop 2-1 – Worldbuilding in Speculative Romance and Romantasy
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 2-5 – Horror Writing as Breakage and Resistance
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 2-6 – Game Writing: Framing Historical Narratives in Game Building
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, (Virtual) Panel 2-7 – Pathways to Success – How Do You Find Your Big Breaks?
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Workshop 2-3 – Scriptwriting Need-to-Knows with the new SFWA Scriptwriting Committee
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 2-8 – Why Speculative Poetry Matters and Improving Exposure
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 2-9: Game Writing Deep Dive
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, (Virtual) Panel 2-10 – All things Indie: Novels/Film-making/Games/Promotion
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Special Grand Master Presentation: A Crash Course in Worldbuilding and Worldbreaking
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM, Meet & Greet with our Grand Master
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Nebula Finalist Reception
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM, Nebula Finalists and VIP Autographing
10:00 PM – 11:00 PM, After Dark (Virtual) Panel 2-11 – TBA
Saturday, June 6
7:00 AM – 8:00 AM, (Sunrise Virtual) Panel 3-1 – Dreaming Together: Worldbuilding as a Larger Practice
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Workshop 3-1 – Writing with Disability and/or Neurodiversity
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 3-2 – TBA
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 3-3 – Building Authentic and Diverse Worlds
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM, Panel 3-4 Online – TBA
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Workshop 3-2 – Writing Outsiders: Crafting Characters in Worlds They Don’t Belong
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 3-5 – How Important Is Plot, Really?
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, Panel 3-6 – Crash Course in Speculative Screenwriting, with Toastmaster Tananarive Due
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, (Virtual) Panel 3-7 – (Tentative) From Indie to Nebula Finalist
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Workshop 3-3 – Editing and Publishing Your Work
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 3-8 – Your “First” Paragraph: How to Start Your NEXT Story
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 3-9
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 3-10 Online
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM, Meet & Greets for all the panelists. Visit their tables or Zoom rooms to learn more and keep the conversation rolling!
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM, Nebula Awards Reception
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Nebula Awards Banquet Dinner
8:00 PM – 11:00 PM, Nebula Awards Ceremony
Sunday, June 7
7:00 AM – 8:00 AM, (Sunrise Virtual) Panel 4-1 – TBA
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM, East Coast Americas SFWA Meetup
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM, European SFWA Meetup
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, (Virtual) Panel 4-2 – TBA
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Middle Americas SFWA Meetup
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM, Pacific Coast Americas SFWA Meetup
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Affinity Group Meetup
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, (Virtual) Panel 4-3 – TBA
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, Affinity Group Meetup
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM, (Virtual) Panel 4-4 – TBA
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Affinity Group Meetup
4:00 PM – 6:30 PM, SFWA Writing Date – Join us for a taste of the weekly SFWA community experience!
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM, Australian & New Zealand SFWA Meetup
We’ll have more programming news for you in the coming weeks, and we can’t wait to see you out, in person or online.
Remember: A virtual ticket to the Nebulas also scores you free virtual attendance to StokerCon, to celebrate our industry peer’s 10th anniversary conference the same weekend. Secure your tickets today!
“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”
from The Fifth Season, by 42nd Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recipient N. K. Jemisin
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is gearing up to a phenomenal outing in Chicago, where we will convene this June 3-7 for our 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference and Nebula Awards Ceremony.
The Nebula Finalists are set, and our 42nd Grand Master N. K. Jemisin has paved quite the ambitious trail for us to venture along for this year’s professional development offerings.
Did you know that “worldbuilding” is the most commonly searched term in our extensive resource offerings at Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA?
It’s often at the core of what we do as writers, and yet the term is packed with tension and contradiction. Do writers ever really “build” worlds, or are we simply in the business of twisting, refining, and reimagining the worlds to which we belong? Is our work as speculative writers ever really an “escape”, or are we always in deep dialogue with explicit and implicit rules and contracts around us?
Chewy questions like these helped to inspire the theme for our 61st Nebula Awards Conference. This year, we are exploring Worldbuilding and Worldbreaking, in tribute to the work of this year’s Damon Knight Memorial Award Grand Master, N. K. Jemisin. Our programming will foster professional development and writing craft by celebrating worldbuilding on the page, in our broader genre community, in the world at large, in history, and works of alt-history.
We are developing programming that explores these facets of worldbuilding, and also of worldbreaking. We define worldbreaking as any departure from restrictive social norms that creates pathways for deeper understanding, empathy, and liberation.
Our core focal points are:
- Worldbuilding and worldbreaking on the page: How do we convey the limits of our narrative worlds, and how do we move beyond them?
- Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in SFF community: How do we create resilience, care, curiosity, audience shares, professional uplift, and dynamic conversations around our SFF?
- Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in the broader world: How does the work we do on the page translate to the world we live in, and vice versa?
- Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in history: Exploring deep lore around the ways in which SFF has worked in other generations to shatter social norms.
- Worldbuilding and worldbreaking in alt-history: There is a special slice of SFF dedicated expressly to imagining our world in a slightly different historical light. If you’re a creator of such work, we look forward to talking together about the strengths and challenges of writing in this dynamic subgenre and form.
SFWA Resources
- Safety Resources for Online & In-Person Events
- The Legacy Kit & Estates Program
- Emergency Medical Fund
- Griefcom, Legal Affairs, & Contracts
- Writer Beware®
Your contribution makes a difference.
Learn more about our Where the Need Is Greatest, Givers Fund, Emergency Medical Fund, and Legal Fund here.
You can also send along a check to our mailing address:
2261 Market Street
Suite 86695
San Francisco, CA 94114
Contact office@sfwa.org if you have trouble making your donation.