Inspired by the World Fairs of today and tomorrow, this pavilion serves as Black Rock City’s global cultural center. “The World Fair of Unity” is a gathering place where citizens from around the world come together to celebrate creativity, diversity, and shared humanity. This pavilion is a hub of expression, a vibrant space for performances, art exhibitions, and the exchange of ideas. Whether you’re here to create, collaborate, or simply connect, “The World Fair of Unity” invites you to contribute to a collective vision for a more united and inspired future.
Tomorrow Today: Burning Man Around the World in 2025
Everywhere Burning Man touched down around the world, astonishing stories of connection and creativity flourished. From art parties to community workshops, multi-day campouts to resilience projects, people in this ever-inventive global cultural movement embodied the 10 Principles in endlessly inspired ways.
Burning Man is a global cultural movement created by YOU, and nurtured by the Burning Man Project nonprofit. Year-round, Burning Man Project brings people together and stimulates creativity by producing the Burning Man event in Black Rock City. While around the world, the nonprofit provides tools, guidance, and inspiration to local communities that find a myriad of creative ways to bring Burning Man to life through art, gatherings, community projects that help humanity and the world thrive.
In 2025 the global community created more than 90 official Regional Events — from AfrikaBurn with 10,500 participants to Melting Man in North Dakota with fewer than 25. In the Bay Area, Decompression relocated to the Loom in Oakland. The Fly Ranch AfterBurn Campout, Fly’s first permitted event since 1997, brought together community members to reflect, rebuild, and regenerate. In Detroit, Brooklyn, and Black Rock City, Rising Sparks brought people together to explore what Burning Man could be for a new generation of changemakers. Burners Without Borders celebrated its 20th anniversary — two decades of grassroots action grown into 35 chapters across six continents.
The awe and wonder that Burning Man art inspires on playa now resonates everywhere. Out of 363 art projects this year, 58 came from outside the US representing 31 countries. Thomas Dambo brought his beloved troll “Rose Wonders” from Denmark. The 2025 Temple, “Temple of the Deep,” was led by Spanish architect Miguel Arraiz. For the first time, artists from Azerbaijan, Moldova, Nicaragua, and Peru brought art to the playa.
Inspired by the theme Tomorrow Today, Black Rock City 2025 served as the nexus and culmination of months of Communal Effort originating in communities from Tokyo to Kyiv, Akron to Calgary. Build a city we did. One that highlighted experimental creativity and whimsical innovation.
Beneath the 2025 Man Pavilion, “The World Fair of Unity” by Mark Rivera featured 15 artists who explored topics around Tomorrow Today. Center Camp lit up around the clock with workshops, dance parties, performance art, and quiet conversations over tea.
Art that rose on the playa traveled far and wide. The 2024 Honoraria piece “Naga & the Captainess” by Cjay Roughgarden, Stephanie Shipman, and Jacquelyn Scott now frolics beneath a waterfall in Golden Gate Park. “BEAM,” the 2022 piece by Benjamin Langholz, now spans a lake in rural Portugal. Follow art journeys in “Art into the World,” a 2025 documentary by Profiles in Dust.
Throughout the city, staff and participants experimented with new ways to power and illuminate their art, camps, and gifts. Built in collaboration with SOLARPUNKS, a new solar station powered two large camps and gifted charging to mutant vehicles and ebikes. Participant-run sustainability projects such as Burner Leadership Achieving Sustainable Theme Camps (BLAST) and Renewables for Artists team (RAT) mentored artists and theme camps, and the Green Corridor brought together 35 camps that offered regenerative knowledge and gifting sustainably-powered services
Resilience was the word of the week. Rain came and high winds knocked out many camps and several art installations, calling on everyone to pull together and rebuild infrastructure tossed by the elements. Art crews embraced immediacy and turned catastrophe into new works of art. “Resilience” by Whitney Webb and James Smith re-salvaged their piece, originally built from Hurricane Helene remnants. “Black Cloud” by the Ukrainians ART Group was repurposed into the defiant phrase “NO FATE.” Artist Mona He reworked “MONA DIE! DIE! DIE!” into a contemplation of impermanence.
And, oh, the fire! “Haven” by Flaming Lotus Girls invited all to share a nest with magical, fiery avian friends. Across the playa, flame effects illuminated 110 mutant vehicles, 17 artworks, and 82 camp projects. Leading up to the release of the Man and Temple, participants gathered for 11 other art Burns, including “What Lies Beneath” by Reno Core Project and “As Above, Ao Cee Lo” by Zachary Caruso.
What began forty years ago as a bonfire among friends has blossomed into a global cultural movement that continues to grow and evolve, bringing in new humans, fresh ideas, and endlessly innovative ways to bring about a more creative, connected world. We can only begin to imagine what is to come in the decades ahead, as a new generation begins to shape this global cultural movement to their hopes and dreams.