The Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines is excited to announce the Psychedelic Culture 2026 conference –The Bay Area’s Annual Spring Conference on Plant Medicines & Psychedelic Science. This three-day conference will be held at the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts in San Francisco, CA, April 17-19, 2026.

The call for abstracts is now open for submissions. Details for submissions below.

About the conference

Psychedelic Culture 2026 will explore cutting-edge themes that are largely absent from the mainstream psychedelic conversation, all related to our main initiatives: Indigenous Reciprocity & Decolonial Dialogues, Psychedelic Justice, Protection of Sacred Plants & Cultural Traditions, and Voices from the Global South. 

At this three-day in-person conference, with 3 simultaneous tracks, Chacruna will convene comprehensive panels and experiential opportunities including music, dance, art circles, workshops, and meet-up sessions. Chacruna’s interdisciplinary conferences are well known for bringing diverse voices together, combining intellectual vision and rigor, community, activism, heart and soul. Amid the so-called psychedelic renaissance, it is more important than ever to foster dialogue between scientists and the communities who have long stewarded these medicines, ensuring their respectful and responsible use.

Submission guidelines

To support our mission of advancing psychedelic justice through curating critical conversations and uplifting the voices of women, queer people, Indigenous peoples, people of color, and the Global South in the field of psychedelics, we welcome abstracts from folks from diverse fields, backgrounds, and career stages. We are looking for submissions related to: 

• Inclusion and Diversity

• Music, Arts and Technology

• Historical and Cultural Issues

• Scientific Research and Intercultural Dialogues

• Indigenous Voices and Reciprocity

• Protection of Sacred Plants and Cultural Traditions

• Law and Policy

• Media and Storytelling

• Advances in Psychedelic Science and Clinical Practice

• Grassroots and Community-based Initiatives

• Youth, Elders and Intergenerational Dialogues

• Ethics in Psychedelic Therapy

• Risks and Harm Reduction

• Environment, Nature and Ecology

• Spirituality and Psychedelics

• Consciousness and Psychedelics

• Embodiment and Somatics

• Other relevant projects at the intersection of psychedelics 

We encourage BIPOC, LQBTQIA+, folks from the Global South, those working with underrepresented communities and traditions, and folks from other communities who have been historically underserved. We are able to provide translation for abstracts/presentations in Spanish or Portuguese.

Abstracts should be between 150-250 words. Abstracts should be one paragraph only. They should summarize your proposal and why it is relevant to this conference and the current psychedelic field. We welcome submissions for talks, workshops, storytelling, performance, roundtables, community dialogues, or multimedia. We accept co-authorships, and will give priority to one article per person. Please note that our conference is primarily composed of panels, and we prefer panels with no PowerPoint presentations. If your submission falls outside of a panel format, we may switch things around to accommodate a panel format. Chacruna also has limited resources and venue constraints and may not have the capacity to carry out certain projects that involve larger installations or specific elements. 

Submissions are accepted through this form. 

Important dates

• Submission Deadline: November 1st, 2025 at 11:59 pm PST 

• Notification of Acceptance: December 1st, 2025  

• Conference Date: April 17-19, 2026*

*If your submission is selected for the conference, we recommend that you be in the Bay Area between April 16th-20th to attend the speakers' and sponsors' dinner and all conference days and afterparty.

Other requirements

If chosen, you must be physically present at the conference to present. We cannot accommodate presentations over video calls.

Funding

If selected, we are unable to offer you an honorarium, travel, or lodging at this time. However, we do offer all speakers:

• free access to the conference, with 3 tracks and over 80 speakers

• free invitation to the speakers and sponsors dinner on Thursday night (April 16th)

• photo and bio published on our site (our platform has 55.9k followers on Instagram, 49k followers on Facebook, and the site has around 30k views per month), which we hope can be supportive to your professional development and outreach

• right to share your promotional materials in a collective table at the conference

• Tracks 1 and 2 will be filmed

• after 3-6 months all materials will go online for free, for posterity, with continued exposure