Manifest 2026

I met many well known figures that I’ve been reading for years. Where else will you meet multiple people within 24 hours who casually mentioned the short story Funes the Memorious in conversation?

— Scott Sumner

I love Manifest. I paid the full price for the full ticket, sucker I am, and my subsidy provided for these swaying bauble lights, these warm soporific nooks, these flames and corridors, these souls brought to Earth together, eyes lighting up at their electric worlds made real.

— Tomie

Gwern came to my talk and told me at the end “I disagree with everything you said and your entire theory of aesthetics is wrong.” lol

— Pablo

Bess and I went to Manifest, which bills itself as “A festival for forecasting and prediction markets,” a description that may technically be true but fails to capture the spirit; to my eye and experience, it’s maybe more accurately stated as “Substack and Twitter live” or “a mixture of festival-conference-party-Burning-Man for nerds with many interests to show up and enjoy each other’s company.”

— Jake Seliger

The Manifest conference has been a successful experiment: put enough introverts with common interests into a confined space and they’ll spontaneously turn into extroverts.

— Byrne Hobart

For much of my life, I have poured my attention into tough-to-explain solitary pursuits, finding myself often sitting in quiet corners on the fringes of gatherings wondering if they’re worth the effort. Not so last weekend.

— TracingWoodgrains