Top AI Conferences in 2026 & 2027: In-Person and Virtual Events

Between general AI conferences and more industry-specific events, there are literally hundreds of opportunities to hear from genuine leaders within the field of AI. These events can give you up-to-date tips on how to use AI to gain a real advantage over competitors.

Not only that, but AI conferences present valuable networking opportunities. You might meet a perfect hire for a job opening or hear from someone who is putting AI to work in a way that would be invaluable for your business.

With virtual and in-person events available around the world, there has never been a better time to attend an AI conference.

Here are some of the top events I’m looking out for in 2026.

Upcoming In-Person AI Conferences 2026

AI Engineer

AI Engineer is actually a series of AI conferences, focused on the technical side of AI. It comes to San Francisco from November 10-12.

Sponsored by Google DeepMind, the event is known as the Code Summit. Agentic engineers will be sharing their workflows and innovations.

Speakers are yet to be announced. But there have previously been representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI and Cursor, with the previous conference viewed virtually by 1.5 million people. 

You have to apply to attend. If approved, general admission is currently available for $1,299, with an at-the-door price of $1,499. An additional workshop is available for an extra $299.

AI World Congress

The AI World Congress is packed full of AI industry heavyweights. It will take place in London from November 25-26.

Speakers include Tejas Joshi, the CTO of Data Platform and AI at Oracle, and Akis Papageorgiou, Chief AI Architect at IBM. There will also be representatives from Microsoft, McKinsey, and more.

Keynote topics include AI regulation, capital raising trends in AI, and scaling AI agents for enterprise. There will also be panels, sessions, and networking breaks.

A 2-day pass costs £2,295 (a little over $3,000) at full price. But tickets are available for as little as £495 at Early Bird rates, with a £695 VIP pass.

GEO Conference

Most of the conferences on my list are general AI conferences. But there are also plenty of industry-specific AI events.

If you check out my list of SEO conferences and marketing conferences, the vast majority have AI tracks. But the GEO Conference is an example of a dedicated AI SEO event.

Actually a series of events throughout the year, the GEO Conference comes to New York on December 4. A full-day pass is available for $1,100.

Vishvak Murahari, the Princeton researcher who coined the term GEO (generative engine optimization), is among the former speakers, as is the CISO of Anthropic.

If you’re interested in GEO, then you should also check out the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. This lets you track your visibility, share of voice, perception, and citations across major LLMs like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity.

AI Summit New York

The AI Summit New York will be held from December 9-10. It is taking place at the Javits Center.

Its agenda has been set by an expert chapter of advisers drawn from the likes of IBM, Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Vanguard. Topics include Beyond AI at Scale, AI Cybersecurity, and Data Excellence.

Speakers include the former Acting Chief AI Officer & Acting Chief Data Officer at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and a Senior Manager of Data Science at Walmart. You can currently secure a Delegate pass for $2,399, a $500 discount on the full price. 

This is the second AI Summit flagship event of the year, following a London date in June. It returns to London in June 2027, with a California event scheduled for August 3, 2027 as part of Black Hat USA.

Virtual AI Conferences

SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit

SANS is a leader in cybersecurity, and it's holding a dedicated AI cybersecurity conference from November 2-3. You can attend in-person in Virginia, but it's co-listed as a virtual conference.

The SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit is a must-attend if AI cybersecurity is your area of specialism, especially as it's only $100 to register for online attendance. You'll have access to select talks live, as well as first access to recordings and decks, and an interactive Slack chat.

You can expect highly technical talks looking at practical ways to implement an AI cybersecurity strategy. Speakers include Michael Collins, the Senior Principal Security Engineer at Mastercard, and Morgan Adamski, Principal Cyber, Data, and Tech Risk Leader at PwC.

Nodes 2026

Nodes is a fully online conference dedicated to "engineering better intelligence". It's a completely free 24-hour event set to take place on November 12. 

Live sessions and talks will take place around the clock, so there's something for every time zone. While it's not entirely dedicated to artificial intelligence, AI engineering is high on the agenda, and featured speakers hold roles including AI Product Manager and AI Research Engineer. There will be speakers from Adobe, AWS, Cisco, and more.

To get an idea of what to expect, you can view talks from last year. This one, on Agentic AI for Enterprise Knowledge Graph Management, illustrates just how granular and applied the talks can be, targeted squarely at practitioners.

2027 AI Conferences to Watch

By this point in the year, some great AI conferences have already been and gone. So here's a selection of some of the AI events that I'm looking out for again in 2027:

NVIDIA GTC

NVIDIA's annual GTC conference is always one of the highlights of the AI events calendar. It's coming to San Jose from March 15-18.

Speakers are still TBC. Last year, there were talks from Aman Sanger (CTO of Cursor), Jeff Dean (Google DeepMind/Google Research), and Mira Murati (CEO of Thinking Machines Lab). 

Registration isn't open yet, but you can sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale. You can also watch NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's 2026 keynote address on demand.

AI Con

AI Con will take place from June 6-11 in Seattle. The overall conference title will be Advancing the Era of Applied AI.

The speakers and the exact agenda are still to be confirmed. However, a list of topics has been published, including AI Transformation, Agentic AI, Ethical AI, and AI Leadership.

In 2026, there were more than 50 talks, with a mix of keynotes, sessions, and tutorials. The program of speakers featured representatives from Microsoft, Google, and GM. 

Registration for 2027 is not yet open. But you can join the mailing list to be the first to get ticketing information (or you can keep checking back in here).

Databricks Data + AI Summit

The Databricks Data + AI Summit will be held from June 21-24, returning to San Francisco. Talks will cover the full data intelligence spectrum, including plenty of AI content.

The agenda and speakers will be released closer to the time. Last year, a strong speaker line-up included a keynote from Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder at OpenAI.

The Databricks conferences are usually also set up for virtual attendance, making it a great flexible option. You can watch the 2026 edition on demand. 

DBT Summit

You may see the DBT Summit referred to elsewhere as Coalesce. But it underwent a rebrand in 2026, with the first new-look event taking place in September.

Dedicated to AI and data analytics, the conference will return from September 13-16, back in Las Vegas. Tickets aren't technically available yet, but the waitlist is open, and filling out the form gives you access to a pre Early Bird price of $495 once registration goes live.

Previous speakers include Ashley Kramer, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI (and you can view her keynote on YouTube). You can also watch the full 2026 conference on-demand.

World Summit AI

World Summit AI held its 10th edition in 2026. The long-standing AI conference will take place again in Amsterdam from October 6-7, 2027.

More than 10,000 attendees are expected, along with 300+ speakers and 100+ exhibitors. The conference caters for just about anyone with a professional interest in AI. The last edition was split into 10 tracks, including Adopt AI, Build AI, AI Labs, and AI Media.

Speakers included Zico Kolter from Carnegie Mellon University, who is on the board of OpenAI. There were also talks from C-suite employees of Tencent, AMD, Isomorphic Labs, Sony, and more.

The agenda for 2027 remains TBC. But you can already buy tickets, which are currently available at a heavily-discounted rate: you'll pay just €349 plus tax for an Expo & Content pass, down from a full price of €1,699.

MAICON

The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference, or MAICON, will be held in Cleveland from October 4-7. As the name suggests, it is dedicated to AI in marketing.

Last year, there were speakers from Google, Motorola, Zapier, and the New York Times, among many others. One-time presidential hopeful Andrew Yang also gave a talk. 

Standard tickets are available at an Early Registration rate of $1,199 (full price: $2,099). There's also an AI for CMOs tier designed for senior leaders, which includes an additional conference day, available for $2,099 (rising to $2,999). Additionally, you can buy on-demand access to last year's conference.

Get Ahead of the Game with AI Conferences

AI is changing the way we work. Just about every industry is feeling the impact of this transformative technology, which continues to innovate and improve at a rapid rate.

Original Exploding Topics research found that 83% of AI users are now using AI tools at work. That’s despite the fact that only 42.7% of workplaces are actively encouraging AI.

In fact, more than 1 in 4 workplace AI users are funding their own tools. If you are a business decision maker, your workers are already adopting AI.

The only question is whether your organization is going to facilitate and support that usage in order to maximize efficiency gains.

It can be difficult to stay on the cutting edge of such a fast-moving topic. That’s where AI conferences can be hugely valuable, whether you’re a business leader, researcher, or simply an enthusiast.

Be sure to check back in, because I keep this page updated regularly. So this is the best place to find the latest events, prices, and ticket availability for the best conferences over the next 12 months.

And remember, pairing AI conferences with Semrush’s powerful AI toolkit is the best way to get ahead.