[5] Unlike the 1951 Festival of Britain, which despite having events and exhibitions across the country was focused on a main site in London, Unboxed comprised ten projects "shaped across science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics" and is spread across multiple venues in the four countries of the UK, and accessible in person free of charge, on TV, on radio and online.

[8] In early 2020 it was announced that Martin Green, who previously organised the opening and closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics and Hull UK City of Culture 2017, had been selected to head the initiative.

[11] In June 2021 the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport announced details of a Tourism Recovery Plan to return tourism levels to pre-pandemic levels, highlighting the festival as a major part of this plan, along with other major national events such as the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

From this call, thirty teams were to be shortlisted and awarded £100,000 each to further develop their ideas, with a final ten large-scale projects then selected and commissioned.

[30] Other projects include Galwad, a multimedia event hosted by the National Theatre Wales in Welsh and English discussing the future of the country; See Monster, an art installation in Weston-super-Mare converting a decommissioned North Sea offshore rig into a public viewing platform; StoryTrails, which will use technology from Pokémon Go developer Niantic to tell the story of 15 towns and cities across the UK.

[14] The ten major projects were:[33] At the beginning of September 2022, it was suggested in Parliament's The House magazine that 238,000 visitors had attended so far, 0.36% of the 66 million target.

[36] In October 2022, the National Audit Office (NAO) was asked to examine the delivery and value for money of the Unboxed festival by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

"[36] The NAO report found that from data so far available, the 18.1 million audience as a whole was close to targets set in early 2022 but lower than that modelled in the 2021 business case by the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport.

[47] Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian argued that "My hunch is that as a nation we’re going to be rubbishing the festival right up until the day it opens, and will then surprise ourselves by grudgingly quite enjoying it".

[49] Some Brexit-supporting politicians, including Craig Mackinlay and Marcus Fysh, have expressed dismay at the removal of any mention of Brexit from the festival.

[51][52] Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain group, said the festival was "the perfect metaphor for how Brexit itself has turned out – hugely expensive and deeply unpopular with no one really getting what they wanted".

Dame Vikki Heywood, the Festival Chair wrote: “Beyond the debate and the rhetoric, the value of Unboxed must be judged in much richer terms than numbers alone: from the blueprint for innovative models of cross-sector commissioning to the skills it enhanced; from the creative businesses it transformed and the new partnerships that live on to the curriculum-based learning activities delivered across education systems.” Raymond Gubbay, producer and impresario, wrote: “A total and irresponsible waste”.