The event industry generates billions of dollars every year, but most of that value is concentrated at a few dozen gatherings where the right audiences actually converge. In 2026, those moments are already scheduled. In this blog, we have highlighted the major events in 2026 that offer the maximum concentration of capital and decision-makers.
Date: January 6-9, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venues: Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVCC)
Event Overview: CES is the world’s most influential tech event and a defining business conference for companies shaping the future of consumer and enterprise technology. In 2025, it drew 142,465 attendees, including 81,621 industry professionals and 6,582 media representatives, with more than 40 per cent arriving from over 150 countries. The show hosted 4,500 exhibitors and nearly 1,400 startups, making it one of the largest global arenas for AI, digital health and mobility innovation. That mix sets the benchmark for who will attend in 2026.
Best for: Technology executives, product managers, venture capitalists, and retail buyers.
Date: January 11–13, 2026
Location: New York City, New York, U.S.A.
Venue: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center (Javits Center)
Event Overview: NRF 2025 brought nearly 40,000 attendees from 100+ countries, including 16,100 retail professionals representing over 5,000 global brands. The expo floor featured roughly 1,000 exhibitors showcasing advances in AI, supply chain, merchandising and store operations. With this concentration of decision-makers and category leaders, the event set the tone for the industry’s 2025 priorities and signals an equally high-impact audience for 2026.
Best for: Retail C-suite executives, store operations leaders, digital transformation heads, supply chain innovators, merchandising professionals.
Date: January 17–22, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: The Moscone Centre
Event Overview: In 2025, Photonics West 2025 brought 24,000 registered attendees from more than 75 countries, filling the halls with scientists, engineers and deep-tech researchers. The exhibition showcased 1,588 companies, while nearly 5,000 technical presentations ran across BiOS, LASE, OPTO and Quantum West. The scale of research activity and international participation made the 2025 edition a defining moment for the optics and photonics community.
Best for: Scientists, photonics engineers, medical device manufacturers, defence contractors, and quantum computing researchers.
Date: January 21-23, 2026
Location: London, United Kingdom
Venue: ExCeL London
Event Overview: In 2025, Bett UK welcomed more than 35,000 attendees from around the world, drawing educators, policymakers and solution-providers under one roof. Over 600 exhibitors presented their latest EdTech offerings, while thousands of visitors explored tools ranging from AI learning platforms to classroom hardware. The event brought together a diverse global education community, underlining its role as the benchmark convening for teaching technology and innovation.
Best for: Educators, school technology coordinators, IT directors, EdTech companies, higher education leaders, and procurement managers.
Date: February 3–5, 2026
Location: Anaheim, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Anaheim Convention Centre
Event Overview: MD&M West 2025 drew more than 13,800 verified attendees and over 1,700 exhibitors, bringing together engineers, manufacturers and device innovators from 43 countries across a 319,000-square-foot show floor. The scale and technical depth reaffirmed its role as a core gathering for med-device development, and the momentum from 2025 sets strong expectations for an even more significant edition in 2026.
Best for: Medical device engineers, R&D directors, procurement managers, quality assurance specialists, and regulatory compliance officers.
Date: February 10-11
Location: London, United Kingdom
Venue: InterContinental London - The O2
Event Overview: FinovateEurope 2025 in London featured more than 30 live fintech demos and over 75 industry speakers, drawing a senior audience that included more than 600 attendees from banks and financial institutions. The focus on product-first demos and investor engagement reinforced Finovate’s reputation as a concentrated forum for high-level fintech decision-making.
Best for: Senior bankers, fintech founders, VCs, insurance executives, regulators.
Date: March 2-5, 2026
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Venue: Fira Gran Via (in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona)
Event Overview: MWC Barcelona 2025 welcomed 101,000 attendees from 205 countries and territories, supported by more than 2,700 exhibitors, sponsors and partners. The program included over 1,100 speakers covering mobile, connectivity and adjacent technologies. This level of international reach and industry depth reinforced MWC’s position as the leading global stage for mobile innovation heading into 2026.
Best for: Mobile operators, telecom carriers, device manufacturers, network equipment providers, policy makers, and adjacent industry professionals.
Date: March 9–12, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: The Venetian Convention & Expo Centre
Event Overview: HIMSS 2025 brought roughly 28,000 healthcare and digital-health professionals to the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, with around 950 exhibitors and more than 600 educational sessions covering AI, cybersecurity, interoperability and clinical decision support. With this level of engagement, the stage is set for deeper innovation and broader collaboration in 2026.
Best for: CIOs, CTOs, CMIOs, healthcare providers, informaticists, cybersecurity professionals, and digital health investors.
Date: March 9–13, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Moscone Centre (Moscone North, South, and West)
Event Overview: In 2025, GDC drew nearly 30,000 registered attendees from around the world and hosted over 400 exhibiting companies across its trade expo. The conference schedule featured more than 750 sessions, panels and workshops, while organizers also introduced the first-ever “GDC Nights” after-hours event. This broad participation from developers, publishers and industry leaders highlights why GDC remains essential for game makers, studios and investors heading into 2026.
Best for: Game developers, programmers, designers, artists, publishers, investors and studio founders.
Date: March 16–19, 2026
Location: San Jose, California, U.S.A.
Venue: San Jose McEnery Convention Centre
Event Overview: GTC 2025 in San Jose drew about 25,000 in-person attendees and reached an estimated 300,000 virtual participants worldwide, with contributions from 900+ organisations spanning AI, HPC, robotics and quantum. The scale of attendance, global participation and cross-industry representation reinforced GTC’s role as a premier forum where researchers, enterprise architects and sector leaders converge to chart AI’s next frontier.
Best for: AI researchers, data scientists, enterprise architects, developers, automotive, healthcare and energy professionals and academics.
Date: March 23-26, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Moscone Centre
Event Overview: RSAC Conference 2025 drew about 44,000 attendees from around the world and featured 730+ speakers, 650 exhibitors, and over 450 sessions across its Moscone Center campus. The breadth of participation spanned CISOs, security engineers, regulators and vendors, reflecting deep interest in agentic AI, identity security and regulation. This momentum sets the tone for an insight-heavy RSA 2026.
Best for: CISOs, IT security professionals, security engineers, enterprise executives, government cybersecurity officials and security startup founders.
Date: March 24–26, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: Mandalay Bay Convention Center
Event Overview: Shoptalk Spring 2025 hosted over 10,000 registered attendees at the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre. The event is notable for its Meetup matchmaking program, which facilitated 40,000 one-on-one meetings across the three days. Additionally, the show featured more than 840 sponsors and included 75 content sessions led by over 200 senior leaders. Key speakers included CEOs from major companies such as Gap Inc., SharkNinja, and Sweetgreen, highlighting the event's high concentration of senior decision-makers.
Best for: Retailers, consumer brand executives, technology providers, early-stage startups, venture capital firms and real estate developers.
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Date: April 15-16, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Moscone Center
Event Overview: TrailblazerDX 2025 in San Francisco, held at the Moscone Center, was the essential, highly technical gathering for Salesforce developers, administrators, architects, and partners. The conference centered on the "AI agent era" with a deep dive into the new Agentforce platform. The event underscored its commitment to technical skill and innovation by hosting the TDX Agentforce Hackathon with an impressive grand prize pool of $100,000.
Best for: Salesforce developers, administrators, architects, IT leaders, community influencers and students.
Date: April 19-22, 2026 (April 19 is Preconference Training)
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: The Venetian Convention and Expo Center
Event Overview: Adobe Summit 2025 in Las Vegas saw over 14,000 in-person attendees and nearly 30,000 virtual registrants from over 140 countries. The conference featured CEOs and senior leaders from global brands like The Coca-Cola Company, JPMorganChase, and Eli Lilly and Company. The event heavily featured innovations in Agentic AI and customer experience orchestration across its 200+ sessions, emphasizing the move toward personalized digital experiences.
Best for: Marketing executives, campaign managers, commerce leaders, content managers, IT developers, agencies and analysts.
Date: May 11-14
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Venue: Vancouver Convention Centre
Event Overview: Web Summit Vancouver, which debuted in May 2025 as the successor to Collision, welcomed 15,727 attendees from 117 countries. The event established a record for any first-year Web Summit event, hosting 1,108 exhibiting startups, with 44% being women-founded. Additionally, it drew 681 investors from major funds and 550 media professionals, confirming its immediate status as a significant global tech hub focused on AI, FinTech, and cleantech.
Best for: Startup founders, VCs, CTOs/CIOs, product leaders, enterprise buyers, government officials.
Date: May 12-14
Location: San Francisco Bay Area, U.S.A.
Venue: San Mateo County Events Centre
Event Overview: SaaStr Annual 2025 attracted over 10,000 SaaS, AI, and Cloud executives, founders, and VCs to the San Francisco Bay Area for the self-proclaimed world's largest SaaS community event. The conference, known for actionable advice, featured 300+ speakers, including the CEOs and CXOs of major companies like Snowflake, HubSpot, and Dropbox. A key element was the extensive networking, with 2,000+ targeted meetings, AMAs, and roundtables facilitated, alongside a dedicated Meet a VC matchmaking program with over 1,000 investors in attendance.
Best for: B2B founders and CEOs, revenue leaders, marketing executives, customer success leaders, cloud investors and CFOs.
Date: May 19-21
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Venue: Messe Frankfurt
Event Overview: IMEX Frankfurt 2025 achieved its largest edition yet, welcoming over 13,000 global attendees, including 4,466 buyers from 97 countries, of whom 3,489 were Hosted Buyers. The event generated a record-breaking 67,000 pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings between buyers and the 3,100 suppliers/exhibitors present. With 21% of the total buyers commanding budgets exceeding $10 million, the stage is set for an even more business-intensive IMEX Frankfurt in 2026.
Best for: Meeting planners, association executives, corporate event planners, incentive travel buyers and hospitality students.
Date: June 3-4, 2026
Location: Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Venue: McCormick Place West Building
Event Overview: Salesforce Connections 2025 in Chicago welcomed over 8,000 in-person attendees and was simultaneously broadcast free on Salesforce+. The event, the premier gathering for marketers and commerce leaders, focused heavily on Agentforce and the new Agentic Marketing paradigm. It featured 270+ sessions, 50+ product demos, and keynotes from marketing icons like Bozoma Saint John and leaders from Salesforce's Marketing Cloud, all geared toward delivering hyper-personalised customer experiences.
Best for: CMOs, marketing executives, commerce specialists, digital experience professionals and CRM managers.
Date: June 8-12
Location: London, United Kingdom
Main Venue: Olympia London
Event Overview: London Tech Week 2025 attracted over 30,000 attendees from more than 90 countries, making it the UK's largest technology festival. The event hosted 500 speakers and generated over 120 hours of content, heavily focused on AI. A major highlight was the UK Prime Minister announcing a $1 billion investment for the country's AI infrastructure, underscoring the event's high-level political and enterprise influence
Best for: Tech founders, venture capital investors, enterprise leaders, policymakers, innovation directors and fintech, AI and cybersecurity specialists.
Date: August 6-9, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: Las Vegas Convention Center
Event Overview: DEF CON 33 (2025), hosted at the Las Vegas Convention Center, cemented its status as the world’s largest hacker gathering with over 30,000 expected attendees. This scale supported its deep technical focus, highlighted by over twenty specialized villages - including Car Hacking, Biohacking, and the dedicated AI Village. The event's role in advanced security research was further secured by hosting the final stage of the DARPA-backed Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge (AIxCC), which offered a total prize pool of $29.5 million.
Best for: Security researchers, penetration testers, vulnerability specialists, government security professionals, students and hobbyists.
Date: August 1-6, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: Mandalay Bay Convention Centre
Event Overview: Often held alongside or just before DEF CON, Black Hat is the "corporate" side of the cybersecurity world. It focuses on highly technical briefings and massive commercial exhibitions. It is where global enterprises go to purchase security solutions and where researchers reveal the year’s most significant vulnerabilities.
Best for: CISOs, security consultants, government intelligence agencies, and cybersecurity vendors.
Date: September 15-17, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Moscone Center
Event Overview: Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco was positioned as the world's largest AI event, attracting an expected 40,000+ onsite attendees from over 50 countries, with millions more participating virtually via Salesforce+. The summit was deeply focused on the Agentic Enterprise and featured high-profile speakers like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. The event delivered substantial content, including over 1,500 sessions, alongside the renowned Dreamfest concert, which featured Metallica and Benson Boone.
Best for: Admins, developers, consultants, architects, IT leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, CROs, partners and customers.
Date: September 16–18, 2026
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Venue: Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC)
Event Overview: INBOUND attracts a high-value audience of 12,000 to 12,500 onsite attendees, including a significant concentration of CEOs, CMOs, and sales executives who possess clear purchase authority and active project needs. The comprehensive agenda features more than 200 breakout sessions alongside high-profile keynotes, ensuring attendees receive both actionable, practical direction and essential strategic perspective for growth.
Best for: Marketing managers and CMOs, sales executives, customer success professionals, business owners, HubSpot users and agency professionals.
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Date: September 23-24, 2026
Location: Cologne, Germany
Venue: Koelnmesse
Event Overview: DMEXCO is Europe’s leading digital marketing and tech event. It brings together over 40,000 visitors and 800+ speakers to discuss the future of the digital economy. It is a dense environment for decision-makers in the advertising, agency, and marketing technology sectors to set their budgets for the following fiscal year.
Best for: CMOs, digital agency leads, ad-tech founders, data privacy experts, and e-commerce strategists.
Date: October 13–15, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: Mandalay Bay Convention Center
Event Overview: IMEX America 2025 set a new record, welcoming 17,633 total participants, including 6,145 global buyers from 74 countries, of whom 4,729 were Hosted Buyers. The event’s business-driven focus resulted in over 90,000 scheduled meetings with the 3,700 exhibiting companies. Highlighting the audience's purchasing power, 25% of all buyers controlled budgets exceeding $10 million, cementing IMEX America’s status as the industry's highest-ROI trade show.
Best for: Meeting planners, event agency executives, corporate travel managers, association executives, and procurement directors.
Date: October 13–15, 2026
Location: San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Venue: Moscone Center
Event Overview: TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 hosted over 10,000 delegates, effectively connecting founders directly with Venture Capital and tech leaders. The event actively showcased the Startup Battlefield 200, where 200 hand-picked startups competed for the $100,000 equity-free prize (logistics company Glid won). This high-stakes, deal-making environment delivered critical investor exposure and will drive the continued focus on groundbreaking early-stage innovation at Disrupt 2026.
Best for: Early-stage founders, VCs, angel investors, enterprise technology leaders, developers, corporate innovation leads.
Date: October 18–21, 2026
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Venue: The Venetian Resort Las Vegas
Event Overview: Money20/20 USA 2025 attracted 11,000+ senior attendees from 85 countries, consolidating its position as the global financial technology ecosystem gathering. The audience featured a high concentration of decision-makers, with one in three attendees holding a C-Suite position. The conference offered a major scale, hosting more than 630 speakers across over 300 sessions. Western Union notably used the stage to announce its U.S. Dollar Payment Token stablecoin launch, showcasing the event's influence on breaking industry news
Best for: Banks, acquirers, processors, card networks, VCs, lending institutions, blockchain companies, CEOs, CTOs, CFOs and regulators.
Date: November 9–12
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Venue: Altice Arena
Event Overview: Web Summit Lisbon 2025 attracted 70,000+ attendees from 153 countries, reinforcing its status as the world’s largest tech conference. The audience included 2,638 startups, 1,200 investors, and 2,198 journalists, ensuring deep global market representation and media exposure. The event's thought leadership was defined by 1,154 speakers across 17 different tracks focused on the implications of Generative AI and the future of machine learning on global business.
Best for: CEOs, startup founders across ALPHA, BETA and GROWTH programs, VCs, media professionals, government officials and Fortune 500 executives.
Date: November 18-19
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Venue: Messukeskus Helsinki Expo & Convention Centre
Event Overview: SLUSH 2025 maintained its highly curated investment focus, attracting 13,000+ attendees to Helsinki. 6,000+ startups secured access to 3,500+ investors wielding an estimated $4 trillion in assets under management. This dense concentration of capital drove over 20,000 targeted one-on-one meetings in two days, solidifying SLUSH's benchmark for efficient deal flow and setting the stage for even greater investment momentum in 2026.
Best For: Early-stage founders from pre-seed to Series A, VCs, LPs including endowments and family offices, and tech journalists.
Dates: 30 Nov - 4 Dec
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Venues: The Venetian Convention Center
Event Overview: AWS re: Invent 2025 cemented its role as the cloud industry’s flagship event, attracting an estimated 60,000 in-person attendees and offering more than 2,000 technical and learning sessions. The central theme was Agentic AI, with over 600 sessions dedicated to the topic. Keynotes, delivered by leaders like AWS CEO Matt Garman and Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels, featured major announcements like the launch of the Trainium4 chip, AWS AI Factories, and new Frontier Agents, strongly signalling the strategic roadmap for cloud innovation in 2026.
Best For: Cloud architects, DevOps teams, CIOs, software developers, data scientists, ML engineers, security operations teams and AWS partners.
That's a long list - and honestly, no one's attending all 30+ events.The point isn't to be everywhere. It's to be strategic about which professional events your team shows up at, where your budget goes, and which moments truly align with your goals. Use the attendance figures, audience profiles, and themes to narrow down what matters for your organisation. Because the right three events will do more for your business than showing up at ten average ones.
Plan early, choose deliberately, and make 2026 the year your event strategy finally matches your business priorities.
1. How should teams decide which professional events to attend each year?
Teams should start by clarifying what they need to achieve in the year ahead. From there, they can identify events where those outcomes are most likely, based on attendee profiles, themes, and decision-maker presence. This approach keeps event participation intentional and effective.
2. Are international professional events worth the additional investment in travel?
Yes, international professional events are worth the investment when they provide access to global decision-makers or markets that cannot be reached locally.
3. Are large global events always better than niche conferences?
No, large global events are not always better than niche conferences. While global events offer scale and visibility, niche conferences often create stronger engagement through focused audiences. For many teams, smaller events deliver more meaningful conversations and clearer outcome.
4. What’s the best way to capture and reuse insights from large professional events?
The most effective approach is capturing sessions in real time and structuring insights immediately. Platforms like Rozie Synopsis help organisers turn live talks into summaries, reports, and searchable content hubs, making valuable insights accessible and reusable long after the event ends.
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