London — Week of 1 Jun 2026

SXSW brings its iconic festival to Shoreditch for six days of tech, film, music and culture. The 2026 conference covers 15 tracks including AI & The New Human Experience, Frontier Technologies, and Startup Academy — with keynote speakers from across the global tech ecosystem and fringe events across Shoreditch. The highest-density cross-industry networking opportunity of the early summer for anyone working in tech.

Kicks off the SXSW London week on Monday evening — a relaxed networking and elevator-pitch evening for tech founders, investors and innovators in the City. A good landing spot for anyone in town for SXSW looking to plug into the local startup ecosystem before the festival proper begins.

Europe's biggest programmatic and digital media summit returns for 2026, bringing together 600+ senior professionals from brands, agencies, publishers and ad tech companies across two full days at the Royal Lancaster. Free for brands and advertisers, the agenda tackles privacy-compliant solutions, first-party data, contextual advertising, retail media, and the role of AI in campaign creativity — essential territory for any digital or SaaS marketer.

An evening panel at Newspeak House exploring gaps in climate data and how technology, open data and policy can close them. Typical Newspeak format: practitioners in the room, low-key atmosphere, high-quality conversation.

codebar's fortnightly free coding workshop for underrepresented groups in tech — online format with a lightning talk, hands-on paired coding, and mentorship from experienced developers. Open to beginners and those building confidence in Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and more.

Imperial College London's annual health innovation summit connects researchers, founders, investors, and industry leaders for a full day of keynotes, demos and networking. Headlined by Dr Fiona Marshall (President of Biomedical Research, Novartis), with speakers from Danaher, Argenx, and Apollo Therapeutics. A genuinely high-signal room for anyone building at the intersection of life sciences, biotech, and digital health.

Mid-SXSW London week pitch competition in the private-members'-club setting of Home House Studio. London tech founders pitch to angels and VCs across an evening of structured competition and networking. The W1 location and curated room give this a different feel from the East End SXSW core.

Three days of data science, machine learning, and open-source tools at the international PyData conference. Keynotes from Samuel Colvin (founder of Pydantic, backed by Sequoia) and Rachel-Lee Nabors (former W3C and React team), with 44 speakers across tutorials, talks, and lightning sessions. The go-to annual gathering for data engineers, ML practitioners, and Python developers in London.

Friday-night Indian Professionals in London startup pitch + networking — a strong UK-India diaspora room, well-timed to the end of SXSW London week. A variety pick for the founder/operator crowd looking for sector- and community-specific networking alongside the SXSW programming.