Nominees 2026

Scenery – The Spatial Creation Suite you always wanted

Scenery – a product by Amped Labs, Berlin

Scenery removes the two things that stop most spatial projects: the build and the install.
Built natively on Apple’s frameworks, it gives designers, educators and brand teams the fidelity of a custom-built AR app – high-quality visuals, spatial audio, physics, hand tracking, and location-based AR with VPS – from a no-code editor on Mac and iPad. For technical teams a full JavaScript API and custom shader pipeline are just one panel away.
Every experience becomes a link or QR code that opens instantly on iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro or the web. No download. No app review. No procurement.
The same tool clears two different bars. 30+ universities: Stanford, Berkeley and FHP among them. Students get from idea to a working, shareable experience inside one course. Porsche, Sony Music and Paramount ship client work with it, alongside a growing roster of creative studios and enterprise teams.
Spatial experiences at production quality, on timelines and budgets that used to buy a prototype.

NEXUS – Descision Spaces

XR Essential GmbH, Hamburg

Projects rarely fail because of bad ideas. They usually fail because not everyone involved sees the same thing. With our platform NEXUS, we turn real environments into shared 3D spaces within minutes: browser-based, with multi-platform support, and fully immersive in VR when needed. Say goodbye to abstract 2D plans and complex CAD models that are hard to communicate, once and for all! Whether it’s high-resolution POS visualization, virtual showrooms, gardens or event spaces, or collaborative space planning, XR Nexus enables true spatial decision-making for everyone, with no technical background required.

NEXUS empowers teams to interact together in digital twins in real time, from anywhere, to evaluate spatial concepts and make well-founded decisions on the spot. Powered by cutting-edge technologies such as Gaussian splatting, AI-generated 3D models, AI renderings and an AI co-worker.

True to our motto: NEXUS – Decision Spaces

2Sync SDK (v2)

2Sync GmbH, Potsdam

The 2Sync SDK is a developer framework for auto-adaptive mixed reality: XR applications adapt to any real-world room at runtime. One application, any number of rooms.

The room is scanned, and the SDK analyzes walls, furniture and surfaces. Developers use a constraint system to describe what they need, and the SDK calculates the placement and procedurally generates objects and environments in real time. This lets XR installations scale across locations without being rebuilt for each room. Room data stays local on the device, with no cloud involved.

Since our last submission in 2023, we have fundamentally rebuilt the SDK and developed it into a production-ready framework: a new room scanner, room simulation, extended placement and 61 building rules, verified on Meta Quest and PICO, plus colocation across multiple building blocks (floor-point and two-point calibration).

The Amusement

Curvature Games, Hamburg

An abandoned amusement park, a tangled memory, a family shattered by the Great War… Discover an intense story in this redirected-walking VR adventure in which every step counts.
The Amusement is a narrative VR adventure game set in the 1920s in which you play as Samantha Burkhart. Sent by her mother to check her late-father’s abandoned amusement park, she is quickly facing complex childhood memories, as she uncovers and solves mysteries hidden in the park. Your exploration of the park uses redirected-walking techniques translating every real-life step into the game, creating an intense and fully immersive adventure.

Dance of Drauganna

Yaga Studio GmbH, Leipzig

Deadly Delivery

Flat Head Studio, Wien

Deadly Delivery is an online co-op horror game for VR in which you deliver packages into dark, eerie mines. Team up with other delivery goblins and, armed with questionable equipment, sneak, sprint and scream your way through a confusing tunnel system full of dangers…

• Physics-based VR horror
  Built specifically for VR with a physics-based world, spatial audio and proximity voice chat. Carry all kinds of packages, climb on other players or give them an encouraging slap.
• Monsters with personality
  Face terrifying creatures, some of which even look and act like your teammates. Most of the monsters are based on Austrian and European folklore creatures, such as the Krampus or the changeling.
• Procedural generation
  The mountain is dotted with countless mine entrances, and procedural generation turns every tunnel into a new labyrinth.

AR-App für die historische Schausammlung auf Schloss Heidecksburg

KIDS interactive GmbH, Erfurt

KIDS interactive developed an augmented reality app for the visible storage collection of the Thuringian State Museum Heidecksburg Castle that links digital content directly to the real exhibits. Virtual labels are precisely anchored to the objects inside the display cases. With a single tap, visitors can open descriptions, fact sheets, distribution maps and images of the animals in their natural habitats.

As an avatar, Prince Friedrich Carl of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt guides visitors through the natural history collection he founded, which comprises almost 400 exhibits. Across five discovery tours, he explains the special features of individual animals, talks about the history of taxidermy and poses quiz and estimation questions.

The app combines original objects, scientific information, storytelling and gamification. Visitors can explore different tours in parallel and at their own pace, while the historic exhibition space stays free of additional panels and screens.

Virtuelle Leichenschau – Eine Virtual Reality Lernanwendung für das Medizinstudium

Dorothea Erxleben Lernzentrum und der Rechtsmedizin, Halle

An emergency call, an opened apartment, a lifeless person. What happened? In the virtual post-mortem examination, students and physicians take on the role of medical investigators. Using virtual reality, they enter an apartment and search for clues: personal belongings, medications and the surroundings provide insights into the person’s living conditions and possible causes of death.

This is followed by an examination of the body using various tools. All findings are assessed and documented in a virtual death certificate. The application thus fits into existing teaching formats and offers a digital complement to traditional instruction.

The application was developed in a collaboration between the Dorothea Erxleben Learning Center and the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Halle. Its standardizable training scenarios, which can be repeated at any time for teaching, continuing education and further training, are also being evaluated at other medical faculties in the DACH region.

Mary Shelley – The Lost Memory

spec.studio GmbH & Heartucate GmbH, Fürstenfeldbruck

Mary Shelley – The Lost Memory is a collaborative AR escape room for groups from grade 7 upwards. Players take on the role of a team of experts tasked with repairing a faulty AI reconstruction of the writer Mary Shelley. In her digitally reconstructed study, they search for objects, solve puzzles and reactivate language, graphics and database modules. With every puzzle solved, the digital Mary Shelley regains more of her memories, abilities and means of expression. The experience connects literary history with current questions about artificial intelligence, digital identity and responsibility. Up to four people explore the AR space together using smartphones or tablets, sharing information and acting as a team. Accompanying teaching materials make it suitable for use in German, ethics and social studies classes.

MERCURY

Mouseworks, Neu-Ulm

The world’s first VR mecha brawler controlled entirely by hand gestures!

MERCURY for Meta Quest 3/3S does away with controllers completely and relies entirely on hand tracking.

Developed in just two months by six students for the Meta Horizon Start Developer Competition 2025 and as a semester project, the game deliberately pushes the hardware to its absolute limits. The prototype was created under intense time pressure and isn’t fully polished, but it serves as a strong proof of concept for VR and hand tracking.

It impressively shows what’s possible: fast-paced action, complex locomotion, intuitive gesture-based combat systems and native bHaptics support, all achieved purely through gestures. The gameplay is set in a sci-fi scenario in which players either commit sabotage as rebels or, as a corporate unit, fight to regain control of the resource Mercury.

Freilichtfenster Hellerlecht

Thomas Patschke, Detmold

How can history be made tangible and accessible to young and old alike? This question led to one of the first permanent installations based on Gaussian splatting, created at Germany’s largest open-air museum in collaboration with KreativInstitut.OWL (KIO) and the Hellerlecht Open-Air Museum.

Visitors explore historical sites as photorealistic 3D reconstructions and move freely through them in real time. Built in UE5, the application integrates Gaussian splatting into an interactive installation. To make sure all age groups can take part, I designed an accessible control system that can be operated intuitively with one hand.

The project grew out of two media projects (supervised by Prof. Dr. Alexander Kutter), in which I was responsible for the technical implementation as lead developer. I then continued developing it as a solo developer under a work contract through to the finished installation, making all technical decisions independently.

Magical Girl : what makes me shine?

Mihyun Jo, Halle (Saale)

RE:Constructors

XR Essential GmbH und STRABAG AG, Hamburg

The PC and VR app “RE:Constructors” is a cooperative skill game for trade fairs and job fairs, which STRABAG AG uses successfully for talent recruitment. The setup includes 3D-printed haptic elements, a vibration vest and external monitors for spectators. Due to poor decisions and missed environmental targets, humanity has plunged into a deep crisis, and the task now is to transform the world back into a habitable planet.

D.Stroy, the demolition robot (VR player): Processes elements of the old world into raw materials. He smashes wall sections, saws through wooden parts and cuts steel components.

D.Sign, the skillful construction bot (PC player with controller): Uses these three raw materials to build the world of tomorrow, SimCity style.

Points are awarded for the newly designed world, both for the elements used and for specific combinations. They can only win by working together.

The high scores can be found at www.re-constructors.com.

SkyTrip Explorer

Spherie GmbH, Hamburg

The SkyTrip Explorer transforms a former German Armed Forces truck into a mobile experience world with a striking zebra look. Up to ten passengers share the journey together, each becoming an animal avatar. Haptic feedback and wind make the virtual environment instantly tangible, true to the motto “Experience Reality Virtually.”

Following the success of the first journey to Namibia, a new journey to Kenya was developed in 2025–2026 together with GIZ and the Kenya Tourism Board. Thanks to its mobile outdoor format, the Explorer comes directly to wherever people gather: zoos, city festivals, events and roadshows. Its easy access makes the experience available to a wide range of audiences and conveys species conservation and biodiversity in an emotional, shared way.

Now! A Realities Odyssey

PRESS [ST]ART, Hamburg

“Now! A Realities Odyssey” is a cross-reality escape game that combines model building, VR and AR: a lovingly detailed miniature model of a space shuttle serves as the central game location. Using photogrammetry, it was transferred into virtual reality and expanded into an interactive space that can be explored with a VR headset. One person from the group is sent on this mission, while the others hold a tablet over the model to locate them inside it and follow their interactions from the outside.

To find out what happened on the abandoned shuttle, the players have to solve puzzles together by finding and combining clues across all three playing fields. The ship’s story unfolds as a collaborative game, with communication across the different layers of reality. It thrives on the contrasts between reality and mimesis, materiality and digitality, miniature and life size, and challenges players to switch between perspectives, dimensions and realities.

Carbon Dream$ Land

Pixelcloud GmbH & Co. KG, Ludwigsburg

Carbon Dream$ Land is a satirical co-op VR game for up to four players: a serious game about climate change, set in the most absurd amusement park of the future, complete with oil slides, coal carousels and greenwashing as the main event. As customizable robots, the team fights its way through the fossil-fuel madness, topples gigantic oil towers and recycles their wreckage into wind turbines, all leading up to a showdown with Donnie Dino, a fire-breathing tyrant with a golden tie and his own propaganda TV studio. Instead of dry lecturing, the game relies on irony, environmental storytelling and distinctive Quill art. With this project, Pixelcloud beat hundreds of international submissions and was the only German studio selected for the EU’s EMIL XR funding. Developed over 15 months by around 20 creatives, with support from the Skopos Institute, Aalto University in Helsinki and Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Available for free on the Meta Quest Store and SteamVR.

Si la Soledad lo fuera Todo („Wenn die Einsamkeit alles wäre”)

Gonzalo Orce, Dieburg

An encounter with an embodied AI called Majo. One to five minutes, in VRChat on Quest and Pico. Premiered 15 July 2026, streamed to around 200 people.

I made Majo just the way I like her: Latina, cute, warm, easy to talk to. Well, except for her mind, which runs on servers located in the Northern Hemisphere, and everything you tell her is recorded, turned into a profile, and sold. That contradiction is the work.

The question I keep asking myself: when comfort, attention, and intimacy are manufactured and extracted, what is left that is truly ours, and who pays for that warmth? The screens and the map surrounding this bar trace only part of the real chain behind her and others like her: cobalt, water, moderators, “chatters”… the people of the Global South (and beyond) who finance the closeness that is handed over to the hands of a few in the upper echelons of power.

Majo is going to be nice to you. That’s the point. Look at how much it costs.

DER SCHLAGBAUM

INVR.SPACE GmbH, Berlin

In a ruined and forgotten landscape, two border outposts are separated by a creaking gate. After countless years of loneliness, the old and nihilistic watchman HUGO is taken by surprise by the arrival of the young and disciplined DIDOT on the other side of the border. Will the dark past repeat itself?
Inspired by German expressionistic silent films of the 1920’s, DER SCHLAGBAUM is a narrative VR experience about humanity and friendship beyond borders and prejudice.

Stylme

Meghna Sonie, England

StylMe is an AI styling and shopping assistant, built glasses-native on Snap Spectacles with a companion web app. It turns your wardrobe into hands-free outfit ideas and a personal storefront.
How it works: snap your clothes to build a digital wardrobe, ask by voice or a pinch, and StylMe styles three looks from pieces you already own, rendered in seconds. It gives real-time mirror feedback and turns anything you spot into buyable listings. Faces are blurred on-device before any photo leaves the glasses.
Built with Snap Spectacles and Lens Studio, Google Gemini for styling and image generation, on-device face blur (YuNet), and a Next.js app on Cloudflare.
The opportunity: half the clothes we own go unworn, a 500 billion dollar problem, inside a 1.84 trillion dollar apparel market. StylMe monetizes through subscriptions and affiliate revenue on in-experience shopping, at the convergence of AI, wearables, and conscious consumption. A working product today, built solo over two years.

Alfa5 XR Sports

Alfa5 XR Sports, Spain

ALFA5 XR Sports is Europe’s first immersive XR entertainment center, where visitors can enjoy more than nine unique adventures in a single location. By combining movement, gamification and cutting-edge extended reality technology, ALFA5 turns physical activity into unforgettable shared experiences and creates new ways for people to connect, play and discover immersive worlds.

ECHOES OF THE JORDAN

Roy Kimhi, Tel Aviv-Yafo

Set against the backdrop of climate change, this interactive 360 VR documentary follows the Jordan River, one of the world’s most sacred waterways, now on the front lines of both environmental and human conflict.
Participants find themselves in an underground aquifer, where a soft blue glow, the twenty-million-year-old memory of a single drop of water, guides them past seismic upheavals, through lush prehistoric wetlands, and into the bustling crossroads once roamed by animals from Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Racing toward the present, participants confront the river’s stark new reality and a choice that will shape its course. ECHOES OF THE JORDAN immerses participants in a story of revival, where every ripple echoes the river’s wild past and its possible future.

Hot Floor

2Sync GmbH, Potsdam

Tinker Dungeon – An Ectraction Dungeon Crawler (Proof of Concept)

Brainbite Studios, München

“Tinker Dungeon” is a multiplayer extraction dungeon crawler with a creative, physically built cardboard look. Players explore dungeons to save an enchanted kingdom, crafting and upgrading inventive tools such as hot glue guns and paperclip bows from collected materials like cardboard, scrap metal and electronics. Depending on play style, the experience can be cooperative or competitive.

Home Automation

Krunal MB Gediya, Mumbai

This started as a personal prototype exploring the increasingly blurred boundary between the physical & virtual worlds. I wanted to explore a simple question: what if our physical surroundings themselves became the interface?
I built a spatial smart-home experience where real devices are mapped to their physical locations and can be controlled simply by looking at them and using hand gestures. Instead of opening an app, navigating menus or relying on voice commands, interaction happens directly in the space around you.
The prototype connects Spectacles with real IoT hardware through Lens Studio, hand tracking, WebSockets and a custom backend, turning virtual interactions into immediate physical actions.
It was later submitted to Spectacles Community Challenge after the Snap team reached out & encouraged me to participate.
Ultimately, it explores a future where digital interfaces no longer need to live on screens. They can exist contextually around the physical objects they control.