Event trends 2026: what speakers can learn from the PCMA survey

Among the event trends 2026, the PCMA EMEA Engagement Survey 2026 puts human connection first: of 272 event industry professionals surveyed, 39 per cent named human connection as one of their organisation's three top priorities, 6 percentage points more than the year before, as Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), reported on 4 March 2026. AI follows with 27 per cent in third place among the priorities and ranks first among the skills respondents want. For speakers, this means that organisers are planning programmes in which exchange counts, and a talk with room for conversation and with expertise on AI in your own field fits these expectations.

The event trends 2026 according to the PCMA EMEA Engagement Survey

An event trend is a noticeable change in what organisers and attendees expect from conferences. One current source is the article Human Connection Is the Glue by Michelle Russell, editor in chief of Convene, of 4 March 2026. It evaluates the PCMA EMEA Engagement Survey 2026, in which 272 professionals took part. The survey ran in January and early February 2026, and according to the article 72 per cent of respondents are from Europe and 16 per cent from North America. The largest groups by role are managers at 38 per cent, directors at 24 per cent and owners or chief executives at 18 per cent, and average professional experience is 17 years.

Respondents were asked for the three most important priorities of their own organisation. Converting the percentages into numbers of respondents gives this picture:

The column with the numbers of people is our conversion and not a value from the survey. Respondents could choose three priorities, which is why the percentages do not add up to 100.

The author sees a contrast in this: the more digital tools and AI become available, the more important relationships between people and trust become in her reading. As the biggest obstacles for the industry, respondents name lack of time and workload according to the article, as solutions first more time and then AI along with training, and exchange among professionals is again seen as the key.

What the event trends 2026 mean for you as a speaker

The respondents work at organisers, hotels, associations and service providers, that is, on the side of the industry that plans events. This is our reading: their priorities say nothing about any single conference, but they indicate a direction in which programmes are built. Two consequences for speakers suggest themselves.

First, the priority of human connection suits a talk that starts conversations, in which the audience tries something, asks questions or discusses with a neighbour, and which gives people a reason to talk to you at the edge of the stage afterwards. How a specialist audience listens and what it expects from speakers is described in the article Who sits in the audience at an industry conference, and how do they listen?.

Second, the top ranking of AI among the skills respondents want shows that the industry itself wants to learn to work with AI tools. Speakers who master AI in their own field and can show it with examples therefore meet an audience for whom this topic matters. The survey names skills and not talk topics, so this is a pointer and not a requirement for your abstract. Which topics dominate business events overall is shown by the analysis of 2,415 conferences in the article Which topics dominate business events and conferences.

The limits of the survey belong here too. It rests on 272 responses, and the article reports the origin of respondents only by region. For organisers in German-speaking Europe, the weighting of priorities may therefore look different from the overall picture across Europe and North America, and a look at the call of the conference you want to submit to remains necessary.

A calculation: what encounters at a conference are worth to speakers

Suppose you give six talks a year and hold three personal conversations after each with people who care about your topic. That makes 18 conversations a year from which follow-up contacts, enquiries or recommendations can arise. These figures are a worked example, and how many enquiries result depends on your offer.

How closely a talk and business are linked is described by Stage Starter in the article Why the industry conference works so well as a sales channel. Marin Niehues, the founder, has received more than 100 invitations on six continents and was named Most Active Speaker by Sessionize in 2024 and 2025.

How to use the event trends 2026 for your abstract and your talk

1. Plan conversations into the talk: build in a question to the audience or a short exercise and say at the close where people can find you afterwards.
2. Reserve time around the stage: arrive before your slot and stay afterwards, because the conversations happen in the room and in the foyer.
3. Formulate the benefit of the exchange: write in the abstract which questions the audience can clarify after the talk and what they take away from a conversation.
4. Show AI in your own field: if your subject touches AI, give one concrete example from your work in which you used a tool, and what it changed.
5. Get in touch after the conference: write within a few days to the people you spoke with and refer to your conversation.

Whether conferences take place in person, hybrid or online influences how you carry out these steps, and how formats are distributed is shown in the article In person, hybrid or online: how conference formats are distributed today.