A total of 5,641 female and male students participated as exhibitors in the eleventh edition of Science Gatherings – Experiment and Have Fun, an initiative of the ‘Get Closer to Science and Innovation’ program of the Canarian Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society (ACIISI), developed in coordination with the Department of Education, Vocational Training, Physical Activity and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands.
During the 2025-2026 academic year, 40 Science Gatherings were held in educational centers in Lanzarote, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, El Hierro, and La Palma, in which students presented 801 science and technology experiments and projects designed and developed in the classroom.
In this edition, 40 educational centers participated: 16 Early Childhood and Primary Education Centers (CEIP), 3 Compulsory Education Centers (CEO), and 21 Secondary Education Institutes (IES), consolidating the growth and implementation of this project in the different educational stages.
The initiative also had the involvement of 501 teachers who accompanied the students throughout the entire process of research, preparation, and dissemination of the scientific projects.
The Mini-Fairs held in the educational centers themselves received the visit of 11,003 people. Of these, 8,746 were visiting students from the same center, while 2,257 were invited students from other centers and family members, turning each Gathering into a meeting space between the educational community and science.
The projects covered numerous STEAM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) and allowed students to become protagonists of scientific dissemination, explaining the fundamentals of their experiments directly to the public through practical and interactive demonstrations.
Each project included an explanatory poster and experimental materials prepared by the students themselves. The essence of the Gatherings lies in active participation: those who visit the fair not only observe, but also experiment, ask questions, and reproduce the activities guided by the students.
Furthermore, the so-called "gathered science" promotes the use of recycled or easily accessible materials, demonstrating that research, innovation, and scientific thinking can be developed from everyday resources through experiences related to physics, chemistry, biology, technology, or mathematics.
With more than five thousand young science communicators, more than eight hundred scientific projects, and the participation of thousands of visitors, the Science Gathering consolidates once again its objective of bringing science and innovation closer to the Canary Islands educational community, awakening scientific vocations from an early age and fostering learning through experimentation.