Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Calling all creatives, educators, librarians, games and learning practitioners, and education researchers!
Play Make Learn is getting ready to bring you the best in research and practice on educational games, making, arts, playful learning, creative education, and more! The Play Make Learn Conference is a place for collaboration and discovery in the design, research, and practice of playful learning, games for learning and positive social impact, making and makerspaces, STEAM education, and arts in education. PML creates an inspirational space for preK-12 educators, designers, developers, innovators, librarians, museum professionals, makers, and researchers to tinker together, share knowledge, and celebrate one another’s work – each year!
Play Make Learn 2026 will be hosted on July 9-10 (with optional pre-conference activities on July 8) at the beautiful Memorial Union on the historic University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in Madison.
- Registration is open now (until we sell out) — but don’t wait! Register by May 29 to secure the Early-Bird discount. Play Make Learn has sold out for multiple years in a row; don’t miss your chance to attend! We have different pricing options available.
Call for Proposals still open!
- You are invited to submit a proposal to present at the Play Make Learn Conference! Applicants will be asked to select themes that apply to their proposal, including: Playful learning, Games for learning and positive social impact, Making and makerspaces, STEAM education, and Arts in education. There are multiple session “formats” to choose from for your proposal, including: Hands-on Workshop (75 minutes, 1-6 presenters), Organized Panel Presentation (75 minutes, 3-4 presenters), Individual Presentation (15 minutes, 1-2 presenters), Poster, Playful Demo, or a “Break the Mold” session. For more details about session strands and formats, please visit our Call for Proposals webpage.
- In the interest of providing diverse perspectives any individual will be limited to participating in a maximum of two sessions. Posters and Arcade Demos do not count towards this maximum.
- Sessions should focus on new insights, learnings and innovations of broad interest to the PML community and should not be promotional in nature. If you are a for-profit company interested in showcasing your product to the PML audience, please reach out to conferences@education.wisc.edu for sponsorship opportunities.
- We believe that everyone has unique contributions to bring to the conference. PML aspires to foster a learning community that has a diversity of perspectives and practices. Are you a first-time presenter, young person, or practitioner considering submitting for Play Make Learn and need additional support? Reach out to our planning team at: conferences@education.wisc.edu.
This year's conference theme: “Scrappiness”
- Setting out to create something involves both big dreams and many obstacles. We quickly run into time constraints, limited materials, access challenges, administrative rules, and the inertia of how things have always been done. We push against that resistance. We fight to get in and get on with it. We are scrappy. We pull from the bottom of our own buckets of energy. We are outsiders, leftovers, left outs. We are educators who deserve more but make do. We are makers who build with the materials at hand. We are inventors who cobble together rules to turn our surroundings into a game.
- “Scrappiness” means using whatever is around us—the trash, the leftovers, the scraps. We cut construction paper and leave tiny bits behind. We make a meal and compost eggshells and orange peels. Those leftovers become opportunities to make again, to play, and to learn. A cardboard box becomes a rocket ship. Compost becomes soil for a community garden. From scraps, we create beautiful art, meaningful experiences, and community.
Questions? You can email organizers at conferences@education.wisc.edu.
You can also connect with Chris Baker (Public Library Consultant / Games & Learning Consultant, Bureau of Libraries; Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction) at Chris.Baker@dpi.wi.gov.