Edinburgh — Week of 11 May 2026

Approval-only working lunch for Scottish founders and C-suite planning US expansion in the next 6-12 months. Daniel Glazer (Wilson Sonsini) leads a session on US incorporation, raising from US VCs, hiring and legal setup, followed by peer networking. High-signal room.

Half-day healthtech networking at the Usher Institute bringing clinicians, academics and industry around stroke-recovery research.

The monthly Blockchain Scotland Meetup returns to the Bayes Centre for an evening of talks, demos and networking around blockchain, Web3 and digital assets. Hosted in the ground-floor Bayes Theorem room — a credible venue for one of Edinburgh's most active distributed-tech communities.

Hendrik Ebbers, Director of Open Source for the Hiero project, walks through deploying and operating Hiero — the open-source, vendor-neutral DLT stack powering the Hedera network. Short technical demo for developers curious about running decentralized networks.

Edinburgh's engineering-leadership community gathers at Skyscanner HQ for an evening of talks and networking aimed at engineering managers, tech leads and senior individual contributors. A reliable room for anyone leading or scaling a tech team in Scotland.

The sixth edition of JAlba — Edinburgh's boutique Java/JVM unconference — returns to the Old Town for three days of open-space conversations about Java, the JVM ecosystem and where technology is heading. Around 30 practitioners, no set agenda, just the sessions the room decides to run. £180 all-in includes lunches and outings. A hidden gem for serious JVM engineers.

Scotland's flagship govtech demo day — 12 startups pitching solutions to public-sector challenges at Assembly Roxy.

Scotland MLOps Community returns to Skyscanner with Rachel Willmer on the practical realities of self-hosting modern AI — what works, what doesn't, and what the build vs buy decision actually looks like for engineers shipping AI products. Strong fit for ML engineers, platform teams and AI builders.

Lunchtime guided tour of Sarah Calmus's Right to Roam immersive installation, led by the artist. Short, accessible and free — a lightweight creative-tech break for anyone curious about sensory media and environmental storytelling.

Joint Venture Café x Creative Tech Scotland gathering — interdisciplinary night for designers, XR and immersive-media makers in Edinburgh.

The Marketing Meetup brings Shaira Gatdula (Founder, Dear Girls Club) to Leith for an honest session on building communities that actually show up — not just metrics. Useful for marketers, community managers and founders thinking about audience. Donation tickets, average pay £11.

Weekly Friday co-working and community session for tech founders hosted by ScotlandIS and the Bayes Centre at the University of Edinburgh. Drop in for focused work time, informal roundtables and peer support with other early-stage and scaling founders.

DNS-OARC's two-day global research workshop lands at the EICC — a rare Edinburgh appearance for one of the internet's foundational infrastructure communities.