Coachella’s mixed reality program began in 2022 through partnerships with Meta Spark and Niantic, exploring how mobile AR could extend the festival experience both on-site and beyond the grounds. From the outset, our role was to lead creative direction and define a world-building framework that allowed these experiences to feel cohesive, intentional, and connected to Coachella’s broader creative identity.

Over three years, the program expanded into an ecosystem of more than 20 custom AR effects, developed in collaboration with over 40 creators. These experiences layered digital interactions onto stages, installations, and music moments, creating new ways for fans to explore the festival in real time. As the program grew, we studied how fans engaged with these tools—iterating on design, interaction, and distribution—resulting in sustained adoption and a 10% year-over-year increase in engagement.

Each activation was guided by the same underlying strategy: treat AR not as a standalone feature, but as a flexible creative system. The result was a set of tools shaped by fan behavior and creative experimentation, reinforcing Coachella’s mixed reality world while continuously adapting to how emerging technology is actually used at scale.