September 2026 Newsletter ☂⚜❣ Active Inference Institute

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Published: September 30, 2026
Format: Newsletter

Read on to learn more, watch these updates in our 3rd Quarterly Roundtable of 2026, and complete the Measurement form yourself to have your research, education, and work updates included in a future newsletter.

Preparations for 2027!

The Active Inference Institute is currently seeking applicants for the 2027/28 Board of Directors! Our board provides formal governance and oversight for the Institute as a non-profit organization, and in doing so serves the accessibility and applicability of Active Inference. In addition, we are a working board for a (mostly) volunteer organization, and require each board member to serve on a committee dedicated to institute development. If you would like to be considered, please complete this form before November 1st, 2026. Additionally, if you know someone who would be perfect for this role, feel free to pass this opportunity along to them. More information: https://bod.activeinference.institute/ . Application form: https://bodform.activeinference.institute/ .
Do you have scientific or technical expertise you’d like to contribute to an open research and education community? The Active Inference Institute is accepting applications for its Scientific Advisory Board, a volunteer role that works alongside the Board of Directors and Officers and focuses on scientific direction and rigor. We welcome applicants from across the fields that Active Inference touches. Details are at http://sab.activeinference.institute/ and the application is at http://sabform.activeinference.institute/
We are also looking for Officers for 2027. This is an exciting, meaningful, operational volunteer role. We especially welcome those with financial, non-profit, and grant administration experience — and a passion for using those skills to help those in our ecosystem Act, Infer, Serve! Email [Contact the Institute](site-contact) to share your interest and learn more.

Updates from the Institute

The 6th Applied Active Inference Symposium will be held November 12-13, 2026. Here is the link to register as a participant (online, free). We are also seeking Presenters (direct link to submit open till end of October) and Sponsors (more information). Contact us with any ideas or questions.
The Institute is launching a Working Groups initiative! A Field Working Group and multiple Domain Working Groups will work to build shared terminology, compare implementations, and assess and roadmap applications across domains. The proposal is set out in the new working paper “Coordinating the Field: The Case for Ecosystem-Level Technology Roadmapping and Community Working Groups in Active Inference”. All interested parties are invited to the Charter Development Session at the Symposium in November. The Call for Working Groups, Charter, Operating Procedures, and more are on GitHub.
The Fundamentals of Active Inference textbook group continues to meet weekly. All details and registration form here, the playlist of all meeting recordings is here, our interactive learning document is here, and all open source code examples are here. The textbook is “Fundamentals of Active Inference: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications of the Free Energy Principle for Engineers” by Sanjeev V. Namjoshi (2026). Great work to Andrew Pashea and Fraser Paterson for their skilled facilitation!

Updates from the Active Inference Ecosystem

Partner-Specific Affective Precision in Social Active Inference project (Andrew Pashea, SAB) and Harshil Shah, Intern) reports a preprint publication: “Partner-Specific Affective Precision in Social Active Inference”, also to be published in the International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI) 2026 conference proceedings. This work was developed over the course of 2026, starting with discussing mutual research interests in multiagent simulations, the role of precision modulation and approaches to affective inference, and the social dynamics of trust and uncertainty.
Inference project (JanaLumi) reports: I made a presentation and some posters about how Active Inference offers something LLM inference and LLM agents don’t. This kind of content can contribute to how people relate to and familiarise with Active Inference, which is still very much a niche topic and on the periphery of the broader discussion around AI — especially relating to the popular discourse around gen AI. Active Inference offers a way to ground LLMs with sensory input, and where that goes depends on the ethics and values we encode it with. See the link to a figjam where people can comment, offer suggestions and link to resources.
Relational Science project (JanaLumi) reports: I have noticed that science is still stuck in a dependency in causal and reductionist thinking. It still lacks sensory and relational approaches. See the link to a figjam to follow the work or make comments.
Artificial Sentience project (Cleber Gomes) reports a neurocomputational formulation of cognitive dissonance grounded in Active Inference and Variational Free Energy (VFE) minimization. Experiments with flexible or clamped adaptation reveal that plasticity is crucial for VFE to decrease, establishing a formal mathematical bridge between synaptic adaptation, unresolved VFE and psychological rigidity. For more information see the full blog post.

Audio-Visual Production.

This month, Arun Niranjan gave ModelStream #011.1 on “IWAI 2026 Introduction to Active Inference“ — a great applied introduction to Active Inference and implementing algorithms in pymdp.
If you would like to help make audio-visual content with the Institute, there are many roles available, for example to help plan livestreams. See this video for more information.

Big thanks to the many of you — Fellows , interns, and others in the ecosystem — who are doing awesome work and submitting updates!

This page gives a 1-page summary of the structure of the Institute — a helpful entry point for those who are new, or learning about our form and functions.

Here is the entry point for 2026, and ways to get involved with the Institute and Ecosystem this year. Donate to the Institute to support our impact and sustainability. Contact us with other philanthropic and grant ideas.

Get in touch if you have general or specific feedback, ideas, or questions for the Institute.