Building New Worlds: Skeå Creative Connect Brings the Creative Tech Ecosystem to Skellefteå

A growing meeting place for the industry
Built around the theme “How do we build new worlds?”, the event brought together senior professionals, decision-makers, and international industry representatives alongside students, educators, and researchers. Organisations including ABB, Boliden, Embark Studios, Arrowhead Game Studios, Goodbye Kansas Studios, Rovio, CI Games, and Digic Animation were among those present.

– Skeå Creative Connect has become something genuinely rare, a place where the full creative tech ecosystem comes together in one room. Seeing new educational programmes confirmed and international studios engaging with what we’re building here tells us that Skellefteå is on the map in a way that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago, says Anna Mård, CEO of Skellefteå Science City.

Highlights
Alongside the main programme, the Arctic Game Policy Summit brought together games industry decision-makers and politicians to discuss the future of Sweden’s games industry.

– Our industry needs to get better at measuring its impact locally, and we need stronger alignment between regional and national efforts. A future national games strategy should help regions like Skellefteå create greater value together with the rest of Sweden, says Daniel Wilén, Skellefteå Science City.

On the evening of the first day, over 140 attendees gathered to see 16+ game projects spanning the full development pipeline.

– What excites me most isn’t the numbers, it’s the quality of the conversations. Students, investors, international studios, and researchers all in the same space, making connections in real time. That’s exactly what the event is supposed to be, says Tim Leinert, Skellefteå Science City.

The main event day
The main day featured four themed tracks: Imagination, Collaboration, Tools, and Mythology, led by Håkan Lidbo, Emma Lindahl, Emnet Mulugeta, and Karin Tidbeck, with facilitation by Adam Kline. The afternoon moved into hands-on Creative Jam Sessions across three Skellefteå venues, with participants from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Canada, and beyond.

– Skeå Creative Connect is a perfect example of what happens when you bring different disciplines into the same room. The intersections between traditional industry, tech, and games aren’t just interesting, they’re where innovative ideas emerge, says Pernilla Lindmark, Project Manager at Intersective Game, Skellefteå Science City.

What comes next
The priority for next year is to deepen the event’s connection to the Creative Tech initiative being developed by Skellefteå Science City in collaboration with LTU, building it into an annual platform for applied research, cross-sector innovation, and talent development.