Prestressed membranes represent material-efficient lightweight structures for a wide range of applica-tions. Due to their high slenderness ratios and their inability to withstand compressive stresses, mem-branes are prone to wrinkling. Both numerical and experimental wrinkling analyses of thin membranes are very challenging [1]. The approximation power of smooth splines within isogeometric analysis [2] possesses a high potential for effcient and accurate numerical stability analyses of thin-walled structures, as showcased for pre-buckling of shells [3] and dynamic wrinkling analyses of thin membranes [4] using isogeometric shell formulations. As pointed out in [4], experimental results of thin wrinkled membranes are highly sensitive to the applied prestress states. Thus, carefull experimental setups are required for accurate and verifiable experimental results. This contribution discusses the potential of isogeometric discretizations for numerical wrinkling anal-yses of thin membranes. Numerical results are validated against novel accurate experimental results. The novel experimental setup employs a high-precision hexapod robot enabling well-controlled initial prestress states. Three-dimensional laser measurements in undeformed and deformed states provide valuable insights into sensitivity of the numbers and amplitudes of wrinkles to imperfections.