Meow Wolf in TIME Magazine's Most Influential Companies of 2026

Meow Wolf has been named a TIME100 Companies Industry Leader in Travel & Tourism. The newly launched list, an expansion of the TIME100 brand, recognizes the companies making an extraordinary impact within their sectors.

The recognition reflects Meow Wolf's trajectory from a group of artists who turned a refrigerator into a portal to another world to a company that has helped define, and in many ways create, the category of large-scale immersive art. The DIY group of artists, known for throwing warehouse parties and scavenging for recycled materials to make their art, have now scaled to five locations across Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, and Houston, with Los Angeles and New York in the works.

“Thirteen million people have stepped through a refrigerator, a grocery store, a radio station, and other impossible portals into places that thrust them into the unknown and closer to each other,” said Matthew Henick, CEO of Meow Wolf. “All of it built and maintained by some of the most magical humans on the planet. And the spaces are just the beginning. There’s more coming.”

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Our exhibitions are not museums, not theme parks, not escape rooms. They are walk-through worlds built by hundreds of artists, designed to be explored rather than consumed. Guests don't observe from a distance; they open doors, crawl through tunnels, pull levers, and stumble into hidden rooms. A refrigerator might be a portal, a convenience store might contain a conspiracy, and a living room might fold into another dimension entirely.

"This recognition belongs to every artist, every team member, and every community that helped build something truly remarkable during a pivotal chapter in Meow Wolf's story," said Rebecca Campbell, Meow Wolf’s board member and interim CEO for the past year.

Central to the company's influence is its artist-led model. Meow Wolf employs 116 in-house artists and has collaborated with more than 1,000 contributing artists across its five exhibitions, including visual artists, video artists, audio contributors, game designers, and writers. Each exhibition is designed to feel unmistakably Meow Wolf and unmistakably of the city where it is built, with artists trusted to develop work in their own voice within a larger shared vision.

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"We trust artists. We build systems that trust artists,” said Han Santana Sayles, Senior Director of Artist Collaboration. “We are creating a space where artists are valued in society by platforming both emerging and established local artists in every city where we build. When artists are trusted to build worlds of their own design, imagination flourishes and audiences are transformed."

The past 12 months have marked a period of significant growth. Meow Wolf has partnered with Niantic Spatial to explore how augmented reality could extend Meow Wolf's universe into the everyday world through location-based AR. We also launched a new tabletop roleplaying game, TAVERS: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game (produced in partnership with Exalted Funeral), which tripled its Kickstarter goal, ranking among the top tabletop campaigns of the year.

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“This recognition is an incredible testament to the brilliance and hard work of our entire team,” said Vince Kadlubek, Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer. “Not only has Meow Wolf been pioneering profound, monumental art and story in an immersive format, but we are also building an entire transmedia universe that audiences have been dreaming about for decades. And in true Meow Wolf fashion, we are psyched to attempt something the world has never seen.”

“Whether you're counting back 5 years 10 years or 18, one of the only constants at Meow Wolf is change,” said Caity Kennedy, Co-Founder at Meow Wolf. “We've found some undeniable truths and some staggering challenges along the way, so we keep adapting as we seek better ways to do the crazy things we do. May we never cease to learn and change! Our challenge to ourselves is to build evermore beautiful things in evermore beautiful ways - together.”

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"Creating wonder turns out to be a serious driver of travel and tourism,” said Christopher Sobecki, Chair of the Board, Meow Wolf. “The experience economy is rewriting the rules, and Meow Wolf has been ahead of that curve since day one. To be named one of the most influential companies in travel and tourism, with Los Angeles and New York on the horizon, is a proud moment for this team."

Meow Wolf has never been easy to explain, and that might be the point. As installation artist Olivia Brown told Fast Company: "I want people to cry when they get close enough and see that someone's hands actually made this." That spirit is at the center of a company that has proven you can scale radical artistic collaboration, draw millions of people into handmade worlds, become a genuine economic engine for cities, and still keep a refrigerator portal at the center of it all.