THE INFERNO SUMMIT

The INFERNO Summit is a bi-annual gathering of queer artistry, thought, resistance and community care. Curated by INFERNO founder Lewis G. Burton, the Summit brings together artists, performers, thinkers, activists and nightlife organisers to imagine new futures for queer nightlife and explore the political, cultural and embodied realities of our communities.

Created in 2018 as a daytime counterpart to the INFERNO rave, the Summit serves as a space where thinking meets performance, ritual meets theory and community meets strategy. It integrates panel discussions, workshops, live art, screenings, skill-sharing and collective problem-solving, forming a platform where urgent issues in queer, trans and nightlife culture can be discussed openly and creatively.

Across its editions, the INFERNO Summit has welcomed leading voices including Travis Alabanza, David Hoyle, Kae Tempest, Wu Tsang, Tosh Basco, Mykki Blanco, Wet Mess, Eve Stainton, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Kai-Isaiah Jamal, Sweatmother and Matieres Fecales, alongside emerging artists, cultural workers and community organisers. Speakers and participants come from across performance art, club culture, poetry, protest, visual art, sound, activism and beyond.

The Summit functions as a queer cultural think tank, a community empowerment space and a training ground for new forms of organising. It is where we collectively navigate crisis, imagine safer and more accessible futures and explore how to sustain queer nightlife against political hostility, economic precarity and cultural erasure. Each edition holds space for community learning, collective knowledge-building and the preservation and evolution of queer cultural practice.

Past Summits have taken place at the ICA, with the next edition happening on 22 February 2026. Across every iteration, the goal remains the same: to create a space outside the nightclub where our communities can gather, imagine, analyse, create and prepare for the future.

The INFERNO Summit is open to everyone - artists, performers, students, theorists, nightlife workers, allies and anyone committed to queer cultural survival and transformation.