Top AI conferences of 2026.
Our curated ranking of the 32 most important AI conferences happening worldwide this year. Editorial tiers below cover the must-attend academic gatherings, the major industry summits, and the highest-attended upcoming events across our full calendar of 145+ AI events.
Tier 1 Must-attend research conferences
If you publish ML research, ship to production at scale, or recruit world-class talent, these are the eight conferences your calendar revolves around. Acceptance rates hover below 25%, and the proceedings define the state of the art for the following year.
- 1AAAI 2026Open →
The 40th annual conference from the Association for the Advancement of AI, spanning the full breadth of AI research.
January 20-27, 2026 Singapore, Singapore 9,000 · Since 1980Artificial IntelligenceMachine LearningKnowledge RepresentationMulti-Agent Systems - 2ICLR 2026Open →
The International Conference on Learning Representations heads to Rio de Janeiro for its first South American edition.
April 23-27, 2026 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 8,000 · Since 2013Deep LearningRepresentation LearningFoundation ModelsGenerative AI - 3CVPR 2026Open →
The flagship computer vision conference where every major breakthrough in visual AI is unveiled each summer.
June 3-7, 2026 Denver, USA 12,000 · Since 1983Computer VisionPattern Recognition3D ReconstructionGenerative AI - 4ICML 2026Open →
The International Conference on Machine Learning, a tier-one ML research venue that moves to Seoul for its 43rd edition.
July 6-11, 2026 Seoul, South Korea 10,000 · Since 1980Machine LearningDeep LearningReinforcement LearningGenerative AI - 5SIGGRAPH 2026Open →
The 53rd annual ACM computer graphics conference where AI for graphics and visual effects converge in Los Angeles.
July 19-23, 2026 Los Angeles, USA 15,000 · Since 1974Computer GraphicsGenerative AIVisual Effects3D Rendering - 6ACL 2026Open →
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the worlds top NLP research conference.
July 26-31, 2026 Vienna, Austria 5,500 · Since 1962Natural Language ProcessingLarge Language ModelsComputational LinguisticsMachine Translation - 7EMNLP 2026Open →
The Conference on Empirical Methods in NLP, the most prestigious results driven venue for language model research.
November 4-9, 2026 Budapest, Hungary 4,500 · Since 1996Natural Language ProcessingLarge Language ModelsEmpirical MethodsMachine Learning - 8NeurIPS 2026Open →
The worlds most prestigious machine learning research conference, with 40 years of foundational AI breakthroughs.
December 6-12, 2026 Sydney, Australia 16,000 · Since 1987Machine LearningDeep LearningNeural NetworksGenerative AI
Tier 2 Major industry & practitioner summits
Where the AI economy actually transacts. Foundation labs ship product announcements at these, enterprise buyers come hunting, and AI engineers find their next job. Tickets cost more but signal value is high.
- 1NVIDIA GTC 2026Open →
The annual GPU Technology Conference where Jensen Huang sets the global agenda for AI computing and accelerated hardware.
March 16-19, 2026 San Jose, USA 25,000AI HardwareGPU ComputingGenerative AIRobotics - 2AI Engineer World's Fair 2026Open →
The biggest annual conference for AI engineers and builders, curated by swyx and the Latent Space team in San Francisco.
June 29 - July 2, 2026 San Francisco, USA 6,000AI EngineeringLarge Language ModelsAI AgentsRAG - 3OpenAI DevDay 2026Open →
OpenAI flagship developer conference where new APIs, models, and platform capabilities are unveiled to the builder community.
September 29, 2026 San Francisco, USA 2,500OpenAI APILarge Language ModelsAI AgentsGenerative AI - 4Web Summit 2026Open →
Europe largest tech conference brings 70,000+ founders, investors, and AI leaders to Lisbon each November.
November 9-12, 2026 Lisbon, Portugal 70,000AIStartupsVenture CapitalGenerative AI
Tier 3 Notable upcoming events worth your time
High-quality regional summits, specialized vertical conferences (FinAI, HealthAI, Defense AI), and well-curated practitioner gatherings — ranked by expected attendance and date proximity.
- 1World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2026Open →2026-07-22 – 2026-07-24 Shanghai, China · in-personindustry
- 2Open →
- 3Open →
- 4Open →
- 5Open →
- 6SDV & AV Silicon Valley Technology SummitOpen →August 25–26, 2026 Santa Clara, United States · in-personAutomotive AIRobotics
- 7AI Connect ExpoOpen →September 9-10, 2026 Atlanta, USA · in-personData Science & MLDeveloper / AI Engineering
- 8Smart Manufacturing for Automotive SummitOpen →September 10, 2026 Detroit, United States · in-personAutomotive AIRobotics
- 98th Annual Machine Learning in Quantitative FinanceOpen →September 14-16, 2026 New York, USA · in-personAI in FinanceData Science & ML
- 10AI Infra SummitOpen →September 15-17, 2026 Santa Clara, USA · in-personDeveloper / AI EngineeringAI in Energy
- 11Agentic Automation in FinanceOpen →September 15, 2026 Stockholm, Sweden · in-personAgentic AIAI in Finance
- 12Agentic Commerce & Payments SummitOpen →September 15, 2026 Stockholm, Sweden · in-personAgentic AIAI in Finance
- 13Agentic AI for Leaders SummitOpen →September 17, 2026 London, United Kingdom · in-personAgentic AIDeveloper / AI Engineering
- 14CDAO Defense & SecurityOpen →September 23-24, 2026 Washington D.C., USA · in-personAI SecurityData Science & ML
- 15Open →
- 16WeAreDevelopers World Congress North AmericaOpen →September 23-25, 2026 San Jose, USA · in-personDeveloper / AI EngineeringAgentic AI
- 17Open →
- 184th Tech Summit on Artificial Intelligence & RoboticsOpen →September 28-30, 2026 Paris, France · in-personArtificial IntelligenceRobotics
- 192nd Edition Development, Implementation and Management of AI and ML ModelsOpen →September 28-30, 2026 Amsterdam, Netherlands · in-personAI in FinanceData Science & ML
- 20Open →
How we rank
The NeuronFeed AI Conference Ranking is curated by our editorial team, weighted by four signals: (1) academic impact for research conferences (citation density of recent proceedings), (2) industry signal for practitioner summits (product launches, hiring activity, sponsor depth), (3) attendance and global reach, and (4) editorial review by our team based on session quality and speaker lineup. The ranking is updated quarterly. Have we missed an event? Submit it.