United XR Merges Two Immersive Conferences In Brussels

UnitedXR Europe arrives in Brussels next month, the result of a merger of two long-running European immersive tech gatherings, Stereopsia and AWE Europe. The combined show brings their constituencies under one banner for the first time, a response to an ecosystem that has grown in size but remains split across countries, cultures, and industries. Stereopsia was founded by Alexandra Gerard and Henri Envar. AWE Europe was a spin off of the much larger US Expo, cofounded by Ori Inbar in 2010. Gerard and Inbar joined forces this year to consolidate their events inside a single European platform with a new name, XR United Europe.

Gerard says the split made no sense anymore, given the strength of the European ecosystem. She points to policymakers, academic researchers, cultural institutions, builders, and a thick startup pipeline that rarely meet in the same place. UnitedXR Europe will feature three days of talks, networking, and community events, with days two and three showcasing expo hall exhibits. Organizers say they have two thousand registrations, more than two hundred speakers, one hundred fifty exhibitors, a startup competition and awards gala. The event also folds the AIXR Awards and the traditional European XR Awards. Gerard calls the approach cross-pollination, a program designed to mix the industry’s tribes inside one venue instead of scattering them across the continent.

One of the companies exhibiting is Gracia AI, a London based startup building infrastructure for 4D Gaussian splatting, also known as 4DGS. The format produces photoreal volumetric video that can be viewed from any angle. CEO Georgii Vysotskii says earlier volumetric approaches relied on meshes that struggled with motion, detail, and human reconstruction. A few could reach commercial quality, and most file formats were too large to be practical. Gracia converts footage into compressed splat-based sequences inside its cloud pipeline, and has built lightweight editing tools and integrations for Unity and Unreal. Vysotskii says the goal is to make volumetric video a viable format for XR and for the broader entertainment business. The company has raised two funding rounds and has projects underway with theme parks, fashion designers, artists, and large tech clients. One of its public deployments is an upcoming attraction at PortAventura World in Spain.

VirtualiSurg, headquartered in France with teams in Brazil, Canada, and Paris, will showcase surgical and medical training systems built around haptic feedback. Executive vice president Seana Martin says the company’s hardware integrates real surgical instruments and robotic force feedback to recreate the sensation of cutting tissue or bone. Their simulators are used to train ophthalmologists and other specialists on rare but critical procedures. VirtualiSurg also builds multiplayer simulation environments for high-fidelity clinical training scenarios. The company was founded in 2017 and works with hospitals, medtech firms, and academic research centers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will present several VR training programs created for its global field teams and partners. Senior tech diplomacy delegate Philippe Stoll says VR is used by the organization to prepare staff for detention site visits, urban combat zones, large-scale explosions, triage scenarios, and even humanitarian negotiations. The ICRC, which creates all its virtual environments in-house, has also worked with game studios to build outreach simulations, including a Laws of War mod inside Arma 3. At the Brussels event the organization will demo its 360-degree “immersion dome,” an installation that transports audiences into field locations from Afghanistan to Lebanon.

Scentient, co-founded by biomedical scientist Anastasia Georgievskaya and mechanical engineer Ivan Novikov, is launching its new wearable scent interface at the show. The device uses magnetically attached pods that release precise, controlled bursts of smell that can be synchronized with events inside a VR or AR experience. Georgievskaya says smell is tied to memory and emotional processing, and is essential for realistic simulations. The company works with firefighters, wellness creators, and fragrance brands. It is grant funded and operates with a small internal team supported by outside agencies.

United XR Europe will take place in Brussels from December 8 to 10. It is the first attempt to consolidate the continent’s immersive tech community at scale, and will test whether a unified event can capture the full spectrum of Europe’s XR efforts.