Tech events in Birmingham this week: Birmingham Tech Week takes the city (16-22 October 2026)

If you have Tuesday blocked from 08:30 for CyberVerse, take the hour back. Our row stores an 08:30 start and it is an hour early: the organiser's own page runs 09:30 to 16:00, registration from 09:00. Nothing in our pipeline accepts a start-time fix, so the row still reads 08:30 - use this instead. It matters more than usual: the Birmingham tech events calendar has gone from fifteen rooms to thirty-two in a week. Birmingham Tech Week is here.

The Big One: Birmingham Tech Week, 19-25 October

Birmingham Tech Week 2026 - from Mon 19 Oct, 08:00, free, run by TechWM.

Five days, 35+ events, and no single venue on our row - right, here, rather than missing: it moves between Birmingham Repertory Theatre, The Eastside Rooms, The ICC and The Exchange. One week a year the West Midlands keeps its tech conversation at home, and twenty-eight of our thirty-two rooms are free.

First, Friday: AmafestUK 2026 - Amazon Sellers Conference, 09:00, The Birmingham Conference & Events Centre, GBP 70.80, the UK's main independent Amazon-seller conference.

Monday: breakfast to last orders

Exclusive Leadership Breakfast opens at 08:30, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, free, for C-suite, founders, investors and policymakers. The sharpest hour is Millions on the Technology. Almost Nothing on the People - 11:00, NatWest Accelerator Birmingham, free - on why big technology programmes fail on adoption, not engineering. Then three at once, free: Future Leaders (13:00, The REP), Microsoft & CyberQ Group: Executing Zero Trust (13:00, Alpha Works) and Leading inclusive change in the era of AI (13:45, The Exchange).

It ends at Opening Tech Social, 18:00, BOX Brindleyplace, free. The organiser confirms the address - 1-2 The Waters Edge, Brindley Place, B1 2HL - and runs it 18:00 to 23:30, where our row stores only the 18:00 door. No talks, no agenda, the whole scene in one bar.

Tuesday: cyber day, and the hour you get back

CyberVerse - 09:30-16:00, doors 09:00, The Eastside Rooms, Woodcock Street B7 4BL, free. The line-up is on the organiser's agenda, not in our row: Andy Hague of TechWM, Dave Palmer of Ten Eleven Ventures, Darktrace co-founder and its former CPO, Rod Latham, DCMS director for cyber security and digital identity, and Neil Howells of the West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit.

Same building from 08:30: Tech For All, free, on widening access to tech careers. Also free: Data Centre Transformation Conference 2026 (10:00, IET Birmingham: Austin Court) on power, cooling and the AI buildout, and The Big Debate - should AI agents have legal personhood (12:00, Trowers & Hamlins). The evening runs three deep, all free: International Networking Reception (17:30, Eighteen), Raising Smarter (18:00, X+Why, Barclays Eagle Labs) and Collaboration or chaos: The rise of agentic teams (18:00, Aston Business School). Tuesday's two paid tickets: Africa Curious? (15:00, Lloyds, GBP 10) and the MAINSTREAM Summit UK 2026 (07:15, Millennium Point, GBP 840).

Wednesday: the AI day

AI Symposium - 09:00, The ICC, free. Tech Week's flagship AI day, on what implementation looks like past the experiment stage, and Tom Loosemore of Public Digital, co-founder of GOV.UK, is keynoting. Not in our row either. The best reason to take a Wednesday off this year.

Also Wednesday, free: Frontiers Day takes the deep-tech end at the ICC, Global Village the international strand at The Exchange Assembly Rooms, 09:00, and How to get investment ready brings Beech Tree Private Equity to The Ivy, 13:00. The evening is busiest: ProductTank Birmingham (18:30, x+why Foundry, free) on AI breaking product strategy, Public Open Night at fizzPOP Makerspace (18:30, free), the Universities, Innovation & Investment Dinner (18:30, Council House, free) and Network One: AI & Machine Learning Networking (19:00, The Cocktail Club, GBP 30 - caveat below).

Hidden gem: a $650M exit, and no address on the page

Meet the Founder Behind a $650M AI Exit and Build an AI Agent Together - Wed 21 Oct, 15:00-17:30, free, address shared on registration.

Husayn Kassai, co-founder and CEO of Onfido, is the named speaker; the "other leaders" on the billing are unnamed, so we will not invent any. Thirty minutes of panel on building an AI-capable workforce, then ollo runs a live agent build; you leave with access to the agent the room built. The empty venue field is deliberate: an approval-gated room, address to registrants. And host Isa Mutlib asks registrants to confirm by reply so she can shape the sessions around who turns up. Register and say nothing, and you are not counted.

Thursday: scale-ups, and the last word

ScaleUp Summit - 10:00, The Studio, free - is for teams past the startup stage: hiring, rounds, systems. The Scale-Up Playbook follows at 16:00, The Colmore Building, free, Mercia Ventures on what changes between seed and scale. Also free: Medilink Midlands Innovation Day Roadshow (09:00, STEAMhouse), "They Don't Hack In, They Log In" (10:00, Alpha Tower) on identity as the attack surface, Four Pillars for Information Security Management (14:00, address on registration) and the October Birmingham Digital & DevOps Meetup (doors 17:30, address on registration).

Last week, briefly

Women in Tech Communities and Cyber Security event ran Monday at Alpha Tower and the move finally stuck - our listing beat the Eventbrite page it links to for six straight days, while Eventbrite's own header kept printing Millennium Point. Carry that into this week: if a confirmation and our listing disagree, ask us.

Who should go where

Founders - Wednesday is yours: investment readiness at The Ivy, the $650M fringe at 15:00, the universities dinner at 18:30. Thursday adds the ScaleUp Summit and the Mercia panel. All free. Skip the GBP 840 industrial summit unless maintenance is your product.

Investors - your best week of the year here. Tuesday's international reception, Wednesday's universities dinner, Thursday's ScaleUp Summit and Mercia panel. Four rooms, no tickets.

Builders - CyberVerse on Tuesday, the AI Symposium and Frontiers Day on Wednesday, fizzPOP that night, the identity talk at Alpha Tower on Thursday. For depth, favour the fringe rooms.

Sales and marketing - Friday's AmafestUK if you sell on marketplaces, Tuesday's reception if you sell abroad.

Worth knowing

CyberVerse's listed time is wrong and we cannot patch it. 09:30-16:00, doors 09:00. No time field in our pipeline is editable, so the fix is a delete and resubmit.
The Scale-Up Playbook was on our page twice. A near-identical Mercia Ventures row carried the same 22 Oct 16:00 and registration link, differing only in dash style. One row now.
Wednesday's Network One evening argues with itself. Our row prices it at GBP 30 while its own description calls it free. Treat it as paid.
Coming up, now corrected: the Engineering & Developer Conference, Fri 23 Oct, The ICC, 8 Centenary Square B1 2EA. We had it as free; it is paid, and the organiser's own figures disagree - GBP 25 + VAT on the registration page, GBP 20 or GBP 18 via a partner link. Keynotes Steve Wade and Akash Joshi.

Before you go

Thirty-two rooms, twenty-eight free, one week. The full programme is on the Birmingham listings page. Running a fringe event we have missed, or holding a confirmation that contradicts us? Send it over - every correction here came from someone telling us.