A Year In Making: Maker Faire Yearbook 2025

MAKER FAIRE is interesting, innovative, inspiring, and, ALL AROUND THE WORLD. Going to Maker Faire anywhere is just plain fun, but getting to see the broad range of projects, the level of ingenuity and creativity, and the sheer effort that global makers and Maker Faire producers have made ALL IN ONE PLACE is astounding. Since 2023, we have been sharing this collective feat in our annual Yearbook, aiming to bring together the breadth and depth of making that people share at Maker Faires around the world. The Maker Faire Yearbook 2025 also celebrates the effort of Maker Faire producers who work incredibly hard — often outside their day jobs — to create space for all-ages innovation, creativity, and collaboration to flourish in their communities. Explore the Global Maker Faire 2025 year in making, see what inspires you, and share your work at a Maker Faire somewhere in 2026! If you’re new here and still wondering what a Maker Faire is, check out this recap from the mothership…Maker Faire Bay Area.

Creating the yearbook also provides the opportunity to identify the subjects, materials, techniques, and technology that captured the imagination of makers across the year. In 2025, AI and robotics were leading topics with both humanoid robots and AI integration, particularly in IOT, commanding attention. What isn’t captured in the Yearbook is that each of these projects and their makers or collectives are not only sharing individual work, but marinating in the collaborative soup and openness to all stages of design that sets Maker Faire apart from other art and tech events. The Maker Faire experience can really only be felt in person! Keep an eye on the UPCOMING FAIRES page for an event in your region.

To whet your appetite for exploring the 2025 Maker Faire Yearbook, we’ve selected some great projects from the many hundreds that graced the Maker Faire stage over the last year. Note that this is just the tip of the iceberg: Maker Faires host many projects and activations that happen in the spur of the moment and are not traditionally recorded as exhibits, others that can’t be shared due to privacy restrictions, and more that haven’t yet made it into the data base — keep checking in!

This five-meter-tall mechanical ballerina combines fine engineering with artistic expression to deliver a powerful message of female empowerment — a symbol of freedom in motion. “La Danseuse” is an unforgettable fusion of machinery, grace, and social commentary. “This performance of objects in motion is meant to move people and spark reflection on strength, identity, and expression,” explains Spanish maker group Antigua y Barbuda. With an actress as an accomplice, a DJ, and a mechanical wooden ballerina, the show invites the audience to join the party and dance alongside them. Read more about Maker Faire Hannover HERE.

A Hebocon competition is an unconventional robotics contest where participants build simple, rudimentary robots and battle against each other . The focus is not on high-tech or complex robots, but rather on having fun and showcasing creativity. These robots are often prone to errors and clumsiness, leading to unpredictable and entertaining battles. The term “Heboi” comes from Japanese and can be roughly translated as “inferior” or “poorly made.” In Hebocon competitions, precisely these “inferior” or “poorly made” robots are celebrated and rewarded.

Each year Maker Faire Rome presents a huge arsenal of projects across and incredible number of disciplines and areas of interest. Many are highly technical, many others are entrepreneurial, and still others are educationally focused. Some are a combination of these factors. Valerio Spelati is developing interactive “soft pets” to support autistic children, and collect interaction data. The panda uses light, sound, and vibration, kids/teachers can customize colors and sounds etc.  The octopus adds recognition of two people (using a magnet sensor) for turn-taking games. CV glasses worn by the teacher record eye contact = social interaction, and the system records interaction data for study. Read our live blog from Maker Faire Rome HERE and check out all the #MFR25 projects HERE.

Morph, a human-powered, load-bearing exoskeleton designed to reduce strain on the back, neck, and legs during repetitive physical work. It uses no batteries, no motors—just smart engineering. Morph is debuting at Maker Faire Rome, making its first appearance on the global stage. Read more about his journey to create Morph HERE.

Discover how building a brain-controlled exoskeleton for my paralyzed daughter led to a platform revolutionizing learning and opportunities. Explore how maker culture empowers anyone to turn dreams into reality and transform lives on a global scale. Maker Bodo Hoenen says, “My daughter, Lorelei, lost the use of her arm after a rare illness. After learning, there were no treatments we could afford, and only a 2% chance of recovery, we decided to use Open Social Innovation and build our own solution. A year later, leveraging the collective intelligence of experts around the world we built a brain-controlled exoskeleton, 100X cheaper, 10X lighter, and one that enabled Lorelei’s motor neurons to repair themselves! Today she can move, unassisted and has recovered 60% of her strength.” READ MORE.

Alchemy of Craft is the creative workshop of Thomas James, an eclectic maker and skill enthusiast with a restless mind. He uses a variety of techniques from handcrafting to 3D printing to make robots, models, miniatures, costumes, props, and any other wondrous objects his mind can dream up.

Theo also produced a great video pre-event that captures his excitement in bringing his work to Maker Faire Bay Area for the first time.

Maker Faire Bay Area also has one of the most well developed “Dark Rooms” — where projects that show best literally in the dark — of any event, in part a nod to the event’s access and connection with digital and electronic arts, many of which come via Burning Man and the broader aesthetic culture it has spawned. The 2025 Dark Room shared many wonderful projects, including several fascinating interactive pieces from Portland, OR (a city with its own Light Festival) and a truly mesmerizing Tesseract.

Oscillara turns plumbing scraps into a glowing playground of math, code, and light. Each 10-inch PVC tube is backed with a mirror and packed with addressable LEDs, creating the illusion of infinite depth inside a simple pipe. Clusters snap together in triangles and hexagons, forming larger sculptural lattices that seem to ripple and breathe. Powered by two Pixelblaze controllers and eight output expanders, Oscillara runs custom 3D patterns that transform geometry into motion, light into texture, and code into visual magic. It’s part optics experiment, part programming challenge, part upcycled sculpture — a hands-on look at how discarded materials can reveal endless possibilities when combined with a little math, a little tech, and a lot of curiosity.

Dimensional Dreams: Coral Reef is a 4ft wide by 4ft tall shadow box illuminated with over 300 LEDs and controlled with a button inside of a treasure chest. This project is made of 10 laser cut white acrylic layers of coral and rocks and 3 clear laser etched layers with over 10 species of tropical sea creatures. The clear etched layers with fish sit directly on top of the LEDs, creating an illusion that the fish are suspended in the water and the LED animations developed for this project gives the appearance of fish swimming through the reef. The LEDs are programmed with Arduino and the project runs on a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller.

Tesseract is an interactive light installation that explores the enigmatic nature of the fourth dimension. While a tesseract—a 4D hypercube—can be described mathematically, it remains visually elusive. This piece offers a conceptual window into that abstraction through a precise arrangement of specialty mirrors and LEDs housed within a cube. 

Maker Faire Shenzhen delivers on its preeminent position as the center of hardware manufacturing with some incredibly unique projects, nearly all of which employ electronics in creative and novel ways. A particularly fascinating project featured computer keyboards and mice being repurposed into violin-like performance instruments.

How could AI revolutionize music performances and club scenes? Check out the work of Vrch.io. This
Agentic VJ System​ generates visual content in real-time based on live music input and camera capture of the performer and audience, using on device multimodal AI agent.​ LEARN MORE.

Maker More is the Czech team that has been organizing Maker Faire festivals throughout the Czech Republic since 2018. We actively support the creative and technological community, popularizing modern technologies and a creative approach to problem solving. 

World of Energy zone, prepared the ČEZ Group: Have you ever wanted to visit the most guarded areas in the country, where no one normally gets to? Now is your chance to experience a virtual tour of the Temelín and Dukovany nuclear power plants using state-of-the-art VR glasses. This is the world’s first virtual tour of its kind.

OTC is a 3D printer with a rotating head that allows you to use up to four nozzles for different materials without the need to change the tool. Thanks to four independent hotends, there is no need to clean the nozzles between changes, which significantly reduces filament waste and speeds up the printing process. At Maker Faire, I will present an early prototype, show the nozzle change mechanism and design principles.

Josef Průša’s invitation to Maker Faire Prague was accepted by 16 prominent influencers from around the world who not only entertain, but also educate, and most importantly, create fascinating works themselves. You can meet Doctor Fisón, Ivan Miranda, or Pablo Inventos in person this weekend in the Křižík Pavilions of the Prague Exhibition Center.

There’s more! We leave you with a bit of whimsy — from Maker Faire NWA in Fayetteville Arkansas — and a thirst to explore the Maker Faire 2025 Yearbook! Inspired to get involved in a Maker Faire near you? Keep an eye on the UPCOMING FAIRES page for an event in your region or create your own!