WHERE CULTURE IS HEADING IN 2026

By the time you read this, the second quarter of the 21st century will already feel fully

underway. An age introduced by geopolitical waywardness that is slicing the world into multipolar pieces without coordination. Election fever flaring across continents. Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of the things we value faster than we can name them. The economy of care and hospitality is eroding. Climate anxiety lingers in the air. Powerful nations are investing more in defence and war than in education and joy.

And in the middle of all this, culture workers are still expected to keep things moving—to entertain, to lubricate soft power, to service corporate marketing, to attract tourists, to create content for the attention economy, but if you listen closely, something deeper is shifting. Culture is no longer content with being decoration. It wants to be infrastructure—an operating system that engages the spirit, the mind, and the human body. A survival mechanism for uncertain times.

From where I stand, as Chief Visioner of the J. Randle Centre for Yorùbá Culture & History in Lagos, I see at least five clear signals shaping where culture is heading in 2026—and how we are responding to them.

1. From Institutions to Ecosystems

Cultural authority once lived inside imposing buildings and heavy catalogues. One “genius”—usually masculine—armed with the legitimacy of a Western museum, theatre, biennial, mainstream media house, or university would declare, this is important, and everyone else was expected to comply. That era is fading.

Gen Z and Millennials—the current tastemakers—no longer trust institutions by default; they trust networks: friends, scenes, grassroots communities, and online/offline circles that help them make sense of the world. Influence now lives in the ecosystems that institutions are able—or willing—to nurture.

In 2026, successful cultural institutions will behave less like fortresses and more like circulation systems: connecting people, redistributing power, and curating relationships across class, generation, and geography.

At the J. Randle Centre, this is foundational to how we see our work. We are not a quiet museum with objects behind glass. 

We are a living ecosystem where artists and elders misbehave, schoolchildren and researchers co-learn, tourists and influencers, community members and market women, tech gurus, priests, and party-goers all collide in one space as culture workers. Our authority as Lagos' Premier Cultural Centre does not come from the size of our landmark or budget. It comes from relationships—and from our willingness to let the “outside” disrupt, stretch, and refine our practice.

2. The Human-Centric Turn

As AI accelerates its creative reach, 2026 will bring a cultural counter-trend: a renewed appetite for human craft, imperfection, and emotional resonance. Audiences are growing weary of polished digital excess. Algorithmic aesthetics are losing their spell. What people crave now are experiences that are tactile, honest, and felt in the body. Long-form storytelling to real-life cultural moments thatcounter digital fatigue.

AI-driven digital platforms may build reach, but artists are increasingly prioritising live touring, embodied gatherings, and slow encounters. Lagos in December has become a critical hub on this global tour map. The rapid rise of Detty December is a direct response to digital fatigue: large-scale concerts, raves, beach parties, pop-ups. There is joy here—but it is often too fast, too exclusive, and too expensive. And, as post-Covid led to an oversupply of shows and festivals, saturation again returning.

In 2026, cultural consumers will be far more selective. They will travel, but not for just any event. They will spend, but only on experiences that feel intentional, intimate, and meaningful. They will seek spaces that offer more than “vibes.” 

With Àríyá Village, we tested an alternative. What happens when festive energy is immersed in Yorùbá philosophy, community, and indigenous spatial design? For thirteen days (Dec 23, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026), the Centre became a parallel world—one designed for those who value depth over speed, presence over spectacle. They are the ones driving this shift.

3. From Content to Archives

The past decade has been an endless scroll—memes, clips, hot takes, trends that burn out in 48 hours. What is emerging now is a hunger for continuity, for re/membering, for lineage. The pandemic locked us to screens. What followed was a deluge of content, ads, subscriptions, influencers, and algorithmic noise. 

It is therefore not surprising that people no longer want to be treated as content consumers, but as co-creators of meaning.  They are realising that what really holds value over time is not the campaign, but the archive—the ability to trace how past aspirations matured into present realities.

Think, for example, of how a Fela Kuti is not just a musician, but a root system—branching into a Burna Boy, a Wizkid, a Davido and an entire forest of Afrobeats. And making that connection obvious is a valuable content for 2026.

For us, as a Yorùbá Cultural Centre, this impulse is ancestral. Our people have always been archivists: through orature, drums, names, dances, proverbs, masks, textiles, rituals, and also books. In 2026, we are deliberately transforming the J. Randle Centre into a living archive—of movement, sound, visual art, literature, classics, and everyday Lagos life. Not as nostalgia, but to drive cultural literacy, sustain momentum, and diversify our audience across platforms. An archive that functions as intellectual and spiritual capital for future generations.

4. Culture as Operating System, Not Decoration

Corporations, policymakers, urban planners, even tech companies are waking up to a truth that African artists have always known: culture is not an add-on; it is the operating system. In an overstimulated world, people are no longer impressed by glossy surfaces alone. They want places that feel like somewhere: spaces with memory, flavour, and moral texture.

Situated at the crossroads of tourism, urban renewal, and creative renaissance, the J. Randle Centre is uniquely placed at the centre of Lagos to model this shift. Our work in 2026 is to demonstrate that culture—rooted in Yorùbá worldview—is not spectaclealone, but infrastructure. Culture shapes how we govern, create, care, heal, and coexist. It shapes how a city organises its joy: how festivals unfold, how waterfronts are designed, how night economies breathe, how ancestral rituals can generate value without erasing its soul.

Before policies are written, before capital is committed, before institutions rise—people must first imagine together. Culture is no longer the entertainment break after serious talk. Culture is the serious talk: a space where ideas are tested, futures are rehearsed, and responsibility is negotiated across generations.

5. Rooted Futures: Beyond Imported Modernity

For a long time, “modernity” meant becoming more like somewhere else. What we are now witnessing—especially among young people—is a quiet refusal of that script. There is a return to the familiar—not as nostalgia, but as raw material for invention.

At the J. Randle Centre, we see it daily. The same Gen Z audience wearing aṣọ-òkè streetwear and listening to EDM is asking rigorous questions about Ifá, Yorùbá mythology, and Lagos Island history. They are not seeking regression or on a hedonistic quest for religious revival; they are asking—without apology—what practices shaped their ancestral inheritance, what inspired the creatives of the past, and how that knowledge can be carried forward into new visual thinking; gaming, fashion, cinema, music, architecture, dance, and AI.

This is why our work is not just about “preserving tradition.” It is about engineering futures from Yorùbá cosmology and language technologies. Our exhibitions and programs like Àríyá Village, our amphitheater with its multidisciplinary performances, the Eyo monument, our gift shop, our film screenings, and symposia on culture, history and philosophy, are all future-making laboratories—experiments in what we call Yorùbá Futures, which opens a shared field of possibility, spaces where thinking, feeling, disagreement, rehearsal, and design coexist.

Conclusion: Survival Strategies for Culture Workers

Despite our privileged position as an agile and young institution that is generously supported by Lagos State Government, a harder reality persists globally: culture workers are in survival mode. Funding is shrinking. Extreme right wing politics is rising. Climate pressures are mounting. AI threatens entire industries.

So what are the emergent strategies I see among culture workers—ourselves included?

• Ownership is Currency. Whoever controls the platform controls the future. If you don’t have Silicon Valley behind you, don’t surrender everything to the cloud. Insist on in-person experiences, and guard your archives the old-school way.

• Collaborate or Die. Pool resources instead of competing for them. Form alliances, cooperatives, and networks capable of absorbing shocks. Treat collaboration as infrastructure, not charity: Co-found, co-create, co-own.

• Hybrid and Antidisciplinary Practice. The dancer as researcher, the musician as organiser, the curator as producer, the filmmaker as archivist. The future will not favour mono-functional creatives. Antidisciplinary collaboration is where the next breakthroughs will come from.

• Work outlives the worker. In a culture that runs on burnout and endless output, rest and care are not indulgences; they are strategy. Value people before projects—pay creatives fairly, remember that no show, festival, or deadline is worth a broken body or spirit. 

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Culture in 2026 will be shaped by places where people can meet, feel, inquire, and imagine together. The J. Randle Centre will continue to function as a “third-space” laboratory for this new cultural logic, resisting the colonial museum form while shaping a Yorùbá Imaginarium. 

Our team is a pod of young culture workers; agile enough to pivot, experiment, and take risks. That agility is not accidental—it is a design choice. 

May 2026 be kind to those who move with both speed and depth; who know when to leap, when to listen, and how to stay playful and rooted. May we never stand as lone stars, but as bright nodes in a wider, decentralised constellation of culture workers— locally, nationally, and across the world. 

As we wish you all the best for the new year, may the road be rough.

Àṣẹ

Qudus Onikeku

CEO/ Centre Director

J. Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History