Cultures and traditions around the globe and throughout history share a similar concept of axis mundi, the center of the world.
“To the Maya it was the Ceiba tree, to the Norse Ygdrassil, to the Celts the Crann Bethadh,” Burning Man’s announcement on the theme of the 2026 event reads.
“The ancient Greeks called it the cosmic pillar, and the Slavs knew it as the Great Oak. Siddharta’s Bodhi tree, the sacred cottonwood of the Lakota, and the Iroku of the Yoruba can all be seen as manifestations of the same deeply rooted idea that there is a centerpoint of existence that connects us with powers greater than ourselves.”
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This concept of axis mundi is the official theme for Burning Man 2026, which will happen Aug. 30-Sept. 6 in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada. Drawing tens of thousands of people, the event itself is literally and figuratively centered around its namesake wooden man, which is ultimately burned to the ground each year.
“The Burning Man can be seen as our version of the cosmic tree, a Jacob’s Ladder connecting us to the unseen and unknowable,” reads Burning Man Project’s statement announcing the theme. “It functions as the axis mundi of our far-flung world, around which we all spin at 1,000 miles an hour, clinging to each other to keep from flying off into space. Each summer it rises from the ancient lakebed of the Black Rock Desert, and throughout the year its sibling effigies are planted at regional gatherings around the world.”
Axis mundi joins the long list of themes that have helped define the annual desert gathering since its 1996 edition. Previous themes have included “the wheel of time” in 1999, “vault of heaven” in 2004, “fertility 2.0” in 2012 (the first “fertility” happened in 1997), “metamorphosis” in 2019 and “animalia” in 2023.
These themes are less mandates for how to dress or decorate a camp, but instead, says Burning Man Project Director of the organization’s Philosophical Center, Stuart Mangrum, who designs of each year’s theme, operate on three levels. They provide, Mangrum says, “fertile ground” for artists to take inspiration from for the many art small and large-scale art projects created each year. They must also be a concept that’s accessible to Burners and also somehow reflect or react to the general zeitgeist of the global Burning Man community.
“Recent themes have tended to favor the third leg of that triangle,” Mangrum tells Billboard. “For instance, after COVID we didn’t want a theme that was too cerebral or introspective, so we went for a vibe that was more silly and playful” with “animalia.”
Mangrum is primarily responsible for choosing each year’s theme, having lead this project since 2019 and prior to that collaborating on the task with Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, who died in 2018.
“When Larry Harvey first proposed that the event should have an annual theme back in 1995, I thought he was joking,” Mangrum says. “‘Like the junior prom?’ I said. ‘Like, ‘Romance Under the Sea?’ Now here I am 30 years later, stringing up paper seashells in the gym.”
Mangrum’s theme selection process starts each spring, when he takes time to think about how the prior year’s event went, what’s on the horizon “and where the community vibe seems to be heading,” he says. “I talk to a lot of people about their hopes and dreams for the coming year. Then when I’m out in Black Rock City I start writing, putting up sticky notes all over my trailer and shopping my ideas around to colleagues and participants to see what resonates the most.”
Mangrum came up with most of 2026’s “axis mundi” theme, along with his deeply considered essay on it, while still on site at the 2025 event. But he only figured out how all the ideas worked together in the last week or so.
“In adjoining branches of the multiverse, the 2026 Burning Man theme might be the ‘World Tree,’ the ‘Cosmic Tree,’ ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ or the ‘Tree of Life.’ Or maybe even ‘Stairway to Heaven,” Mangrum continues. “But in any case, the reason [axis mundi] feels right is that in our increasingly divided and divisive world, Burning Man is a powerful unifying force, bringing people together. I wanted a theme that reflects that convening force, and celebrates the ways we are creating a separate reality fueled by values we believe in: creativity, generosity, inclusivity and everything else that’s implicit in our Principles.”
(Burning Man abides by its 10 Principles, which serve as a guide for how to be and take part in the event. These Principles include radical self-reliance, radical inclusion, decommodification and leaving no trace.)
Mangrum’s essay on the theme emphasizes the connection between all living things, noting that “the world tree is also the tree of life, with every species on Earth related to every other species in the tangled bank of evolution’s roots and limbs… And yet, through the magical constructs of social reality, we imagine ourselves as standing apart from the natural world, and increasingly apart from each other as well. Divided by borders, and further fragmented by custom and belief into tribelets of ideology, each suspicious and distrustful of the other. And further still, divided into content feeds in a social network, one human to a screen, connected only by dubious proxy.”
Given this writing, it’s natural to consider the 2026 theme through the lens of not just the challenges Burnign Man 2025 experienced with freak weather events and a homicide that happened during the week, but the the general state of politics, geopolitics and the terrible and relentless violence, division, anger, fear and isolation permeating our culture at large. Mangrum says the political and cultural climate is certainly part of the 2026 theme’s consideration, in that they’re things that Burning Man is designed to help elevate.
“Burning Man is a global community with participants in over 100 countries around the world, some of which are at war with each other, and others seemingly at war with their own citizens,” he says. “Shooting wars, culture wars, the forces of division are everywhere. Burning Man culture is the opposite of that, it brings people together in authentic ways, in real life, to create experiences together.”
But of course the theme is always just a suggestion. Some attendees go all in on it, designing their experiences their experiences around it, and some don’t consider it at all. Mangrum acknowledges that even to him, the theme’s designer, it’s never quite clear even to him how it will manifest out there in the desert.
“Part of the fun of having this job is that I absolutely don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “We just send it out into the world like a little paper boat in a stream and see what people do with it.”
