We're Exhibiting at Bett 2026: Join Us in London

I'm thrilled to announce that WhimsyLabs will be returning to Bett UK in January 2026! After our incredible experience at Bett 2025 where we won recognition from the Kids Judge Bett award, we're heading back to ExCel London to showcase what we've been building! This time, we'll be in the Startup Zone at stand FS10 in the South Stand, and I genuinely cannot wait to meet educators, students, and fellow innovators who share our passion for transforming STEM education.

Why Bett 2026 Matters to Us

Bett is the global epicenter of EdTech innovation, bringing together over 30,000 educators and 800 exhibitors from more than 130 countries (Bett Show, 2025). For a small team like ours based in Edinburgh, Bett represents an extraordinary opportunity to connect with educators who are actively seeking solutions to the challenges we've dedicated ourselves to solving.

Last year's Bett was transformative for WhimsyLabs. We met teachers who had been struggling with laboratory access post-pandemic, school leaders trying to balance sustainability commitments with hands-on science education, and students who lit up when they realized they could conduct real experiments in our virtual environment. Those conversations validated everything we've been working toward and inspired us to push our platform even further.

Follow the animated path to find our booth at stand FS10 in the South Stand Startup Zone! We'll have live demos and hands-on experiences ready for you.

What We're Showcasing This Year

Since Bett 2025, we've been relentlessly improving our platform based on feedback from the educators and students we work with. At Bett 2026, you'll be able to experience firsthand what makes WhimsyLabs different from traditional virtual lab simulations. Like last year we've packed a full sandbox environment where genuine discovery happens, but this time we'll be featuring a whole range of different experiments across chemistry, biology, and physics!

Our "Physicality-First" approach means that when you interact with our virtual lab, you're developing the same muscle memory and procedural fluency you'd gain in a physical laboratory. Research consistently demonstrates that embodied learning; where physical actions are integrated with cognitive processes, significantly enhances retention and understanding in science education (Macedonia, 2019). At our booth, you'll understand immediately what this means in practice.

We'll also be demonstrating our cross-platform compatibility. Whether you're using VR headsets, laptops, or Chromebooks, WhimsyLabs delivers a seamless experience optimized for your hardware. This flexibility is crucial for schools with diverse technology ecosystems, ensuring that all students can access high-quality laboratory experiences regardless of the devices available to them. Come try out the desktop/Chromebooks version of the software and see how it transforms your students' learning experience, with no compromise on interactivity or immersion.

Innovations We're Excited to Demonstrate

We'll be showcasing several features that I'm particularly proud of, including our enhanced assessment capabilities. One of the biggest challenges educators face is evaluating practical lab skills in a way that is both authentic and scalable. Traditional lab reports often fail to capture a student's actual proficiency in laboratory techniques. (WhimsyLabs, 2025)

In addition to this issue, scientific examination and coursework has increasingly been affected by AI tools which can generate text-based reports with minimal effort from students. To address this, our platform enables students to use their own unique experimental data they collect from their own actions, enabling personalized assessment questions tied to their individual results. This means no two students get identical questions, eliminating the plagiarism concerns, and issue of students using ChatGPT to generate their lab reports that plague traditional lab reports while providing a more authentic assessment of understanding. By moving away from static "answer keys" found on sites like Chegg, we force students to engage with the data they actually generated, and justify their own steps, denoising their own data, and drawing sensible conclusions making the entire process more authentic and harder to "game" than traditional multiple-choice questions. We've found that students "cheating" are effectively performing the actions a student who didn't cheat would do; by looking up how to perform the experiment, reduce noise and analyze their own data, they end up learning the material anyway!

Our automated grading system has evolved significantly too. Teachers consistently tell us that marking lab reports is one of their most time-consuming responsibilities, with some spending upwards of 4-5 hours weekly on this task alone. Our system evaluates lab technique and experimental approach in real-time, providing immediate feedback to students while saving educators an average of 3.5 hours per week (WhimsyLabs, 2025). That's time teachers can reinvest in teaching rather than administrative tasks.

Because our simulation is built on a physics-based "sandbox" rather than a rigid script, our AI can grade the process rather than the final result. This means we can evaluate nuanced aspects of technique; did the student sterilize the loop correctly? Did they titrate too quickly? The student's actions, problem-solving skills, and unique approach are measured. And, as every scientist will tell you, data is noisy. Our system is built to have background noise and randomness, such as changing humidity, temperature, contamination, light levels, and other factors, making it more realistic and harder to "game" than traditional multiple-choice questions.

Perhaps most exciting is our custom experiment builder launching next year, which now incorporates AI assistance for curriculum alignment. Educators can design bespoke laboratory scenarios that match their specific curriculum requirements, whether they're teaching GCSE Chemistry, IB Biology, or Advanced Placement Physics. The flexibility here is genuinely unprecedented; make sure to drop by and see our video demonstration of this new feature!

Why the Startup Zone Is Cozy for Us

We specifically chose to exhibit in the Startup Zone because it represents what we are: an innovative, agile team committed to solving real problems in creative ways. It's where educators come to discover the future of education technology, not just incremental improvements to existing solutions. It also has space for us to set up our VR equipment and have more interactive demos than we could in a larger, busier booth.

Being in the Startup Zone also means we can have more meaningful, in-depth conversations. We're not trying to make thousands of quick sales, we want to understand your specific challenges, demonstrate how WhimsyLabs addresses them, and explore whether we're the right fit for your institution. The Startup Zone's more intimate atmosphere facilitates exactly these kinds of substantive discussions. It allows us to foster stronger connections with educators who are as passionate about improving STEM education as we are, so that as we launch our platform publicly, our first users are ones who we've built relationships with and understand their needs deeply.

Accessibility and Inclusivity at the Core

One aspect of WhimsyLabs that I'm passionate about discussing at Bett 2026 is our commitment to accessibility. We've built SEND compatibility and multisensory learning aids directly into our platform from the beginning, not as afterthoughts. Research shows that up to 15% of students in mainstream education have special educational needs (Department for Education, 2024), and traditional laboratories often present significant barriers to these learners.

Our virtual environment allows for customizable pacing, adjustable sensory inputs, and flexible interaction modes that adapt to individual student needs. Students who might struggle with the sensory overwhelm of a physical laboratory, such as the chemical smells, the noise, the social pressures, or the potential hazards, can learn at their own pace in an environment they control. This isn't about lowering standards; it's about removing unnecessary barriers to learning while maintaining scientific rigor.

Sustainability: More Than Just a Buzzword

We've written extensively about the environmental benefits of virtual laboratories, and this will be a major focus at our Bett 2026 booth. Traditional science labs consume enormous resources; up to 5 times more energy and water than typical office space, and generate substantial plastic waste through single-use consumables (Urbinati et al., 2024).

As schools worldwide commit to carbon neutrality targets, many are grappling with how to maintain quality STEM education while reducing their environmental impact. WhimsyLabs offers a concrete solution: unlimited experimentation with zero physical waste, 98% reduction in energy consumption compared to traditional labs, and no ongoing costs for consumables or hazardous waste disposal. At Bett, we'll have detailed impact calculations available so you can see exactly how WhimsyLabs could contribute to your institution's sustainability goals.

What You Can Expect at Stand FS10

When you visit our booth, you won't find a polished sales pitch or a carefully rehearsed demonstration. What you'll find is me and my team, genuinely excited to show you what we've built and honestly discuss whether it fits your needs. We'll have both devices set up; VR headsets and a laptop, so you can experience our platform across different modalities and see how it performs on whatever hardware your school uses. Given that we don't limit VR or desktop access, you can experience the platform in the way that best suits your needs, in the exact same way that your students will.

You'll be able to conduct actual experiments, not just watch someone else do them. Mix chemicals and observe realistic reactions. Set up physics experiments and manipulate variables in real-time. Dissect virtual specimens with proper technique. The goal is for you to understand viscerally what makes our approach different; why our students report that WhimsyLabs feels like a real lab in ways that other virtual platforms don't, and why we're the one winning the student choice awards for a fun and educational platform.

Why You Should Visit Us

If you're struggling with laboratory access, whether due to budget constraints, facility limitations, or safety concerns, you should visit us. If you're looking for ways to make STEM education more inclusive and accessible to diverse learners, you should visit us. If you're trying to balance teaching/administrative commitments with hands-on science teaching, you should visit us.

But even if none of those specific challenges apply to you, I'd still love to meet you. Perhaps you're simply curious about where EdTech is heading, or you want to understand how virtual reality is being applied in education beyond gaming and entertainment. Maybe you're a student or educator with ideas about what virtual labs should do that they currently don't. Every conversation is valuable to us; they help us understand where to focus our development efforts and ensure we're solving real problems, not imagined ones.

Beyond the Exhibition Floor

Bett is about more than just what happens in the exhibition halls. It's about the conversations during coffee breaks, the connections made while waiting in line for demonstrations, the ideas that emerge when educators from different contexts share their experiences. I'm hoping to have many of these informal discussions throughout the event.

If you'd like to schedule a specific time to meet with us, or if you have particular questions you'd like us to prepare for, please reach out in advance. We're happy to set aside time for more in-depth discussions about implementation, curriculum integration, technical requirements, or anything else that's important to your decision-making process. You can contact us at [email protected]

Hope to see you at stand FS10 for 21st - 23rd January 2026. Bring your curiosity, your questions, and your passion for STEM education. We'll bring ours, along with some really exciting technology that I think you'll love.

Related Articles

• A Brief History of WhimsyLabs: From Humble Start to BETT 2025 Winner
• The Physicality Breakthrough: How We Made Virtual Labs Feel Real
• Green Labs, Greener Future: Virtual Labs and Sustainability
• How AI-Powered Virtual Labs Are Solving the Global Science Education Crisis