OMR Festival 2027: What over 800 speakers mean for your chances

On 27 October 2026 OMR presented further speakers for OMR Festival 2027 in OMR Daily, among them actor Matthias Schweighöfer, "Die Höhle der Löwen" judge Janna Ensthaler and Lionel Souque, CEO of the Rewe Group. The festival runs from 3 to 5 May 2027 in Hamburg, and OMR announces over 800 speakers as well as more than 1,000 exhibitors and partners. omr.com shows no open call for speakers through which you could apply as a subject expert for one of the big stages. For subject experts the routes to the festival therefore lead through masterclasses, which OMR offers as a partner format, and through side events or exhibitors' stages, with specialist conferences that run an open call alongside. This article works out what 800 speakers mean for the chances of an individual and shows how to plan your year up to May 2027.

OMR Festival 2027: what OMR announced on 27 October

In OMR Daily of 27 October 2026 Torben Lux, who leads festival programming at OMR, presents the next speakers. According to the article all three will share their insights "on the big stages", and further names are to follow in the coming weeks and months. In total OMR names over 800 speakers and more than 1,000 exhibitors and partners, and on top of that there are masterclasses and guided tours as well as side events. The Festival Pass is available at an early bird price of 539 instead of 649 euros.

The festival page adds the schedule. The festival at Hamburg Messe lasts three days, and the first day is devoted entirely to further education, with only masterclasses and side events on the programme. For 2026 the same page gives 70,000 visitors. For you as a speaker this first day is the most important news in the announcement, because it hosts exactly the formats a subject expert without television fame is most likely to get into.

Call for speakers at OMR Festival: what omr.com shows

Anyone who wants to speak at a large festival looks for a call for speakers first, the public announcement with which an organiser collects talk proposals. We did not find one on omr.com. The festival page and the speaker page offer no form for submitting a talk, and the article of 27 October describes no application route for speakers either.

The word application does appear at OMR, with a different meaning. In the application phase for visitors, visitors with a valid ticket apply for a seat in a session. For the 2026 festival it ran from 18 March to 16 April, and OMR spoke of over 300 masterclasses and 200 guided tours at the time. This phase is meant for attendees and still shows you how large the programme is beside the main stages.

Masterclasses and side events: the routes beside the main stage

OMR has a dedicated page for companies that want to host a masterclass. It addresses masterclass partners and describes a workshop of 60 to 90 minutes in a room of its own with a capacity of up to 200 participants, set up by OMR. Contact runs through a partner form. On the page for exhibitors the masterclass is listed as a standalone measure or in combination with a stand. For you this means that a company books the masterclass and chooses who speaks at the front of the room.

That leaves two routes through companies. If you work for a software vendor, an agency or a service provider exhibiting in Hamburg, put yourself forward there for the masterclass or the stage at the stand. If you are self-employed, the route leads through clients and partners who plan the festival into their marketing anyway and need a specialist talk for their room that you can deliver. The list of exhibitors and partners on omr.com is the first place to research this.

For side events omr.com shows neither a call for speakers nor a form for organisers. Anyone who wants to speak there contacts the hosts once the side events are published and offers a topic that suits their audience.

800 speakers at one festival: a calculation for the individual

Over 800 speakers sounds like plenty of free slots, so a calculation with open assumptions is worthwhile. Assume roughly as many people come in 2027 as in 2026, then 70,000 visitors face over 800 speakers, and on paper there are just under 90 visitors per speaker. About one in 90 people at the venue is therefore speaking. OMR does not say how the 800 are split between the main stages and the other formats. The three names in the announcement come from film and television and from the top of a retail group, so for the big stages OMR relies on well-known personalities.

The second assumption concerns your own year. Assume you want to give six talks by May 2027, one of them around the festival and five at specialist conferences with an open call. For five acceptances you need around 250 submissions at an acceptance rate of 2 per cent and only 50 at 10 per cent. My own rate has risen from below 2 per cent when I started to around 10 per cent today. If you spread 50 submissions over the roughly 17 weeks from November to the end of February, that is just under three a week, whereas 250 submissions would demand almost 15 a week.

What lifts the rate from 2 to 10 per cent is craft: a topic that suits the audience of the particular conference, and an abstract that you tailor afresh for every call. What a call for papers asks for and how it works is covered in the article What is a call for papers?.

Speaker plan for the year to May 2027: what to do when

Plan backwards from May. Between a submission and the talk there are usually two to six months, so submissions up to the end of February lead to stages in spring and summer 2027. In November and December you sharpen your topic, decide which clients you want to reach and write one talk with several abstract variants. During this time you also review the exhibitors on omr.com and mark the companies you already work with or have worked with.

From December to February you hold the conversations with these companies about a masterclass or a talk at their stand, and at the same time you submit to specialist conferences whose audience matches your ideal clients. How to find these conferences is described in the article How do I find the conferences that suit my topic?. In March and April you review the published side events and approach their hosts. If you travel to Hamburg as a visitor yourself, also use the application phase for masterclasses, which began in mid-March in 2026. In May you are in Hamburg, whether with a talk of your own or as a visitor with a clear list, and afterwards you follow up with every contact.

A single festival appearance is harder to plan for winning clients than a series of talks at specialist conferences where your ideal clients sit in the room. Why these stages are often the better choice for B2B experts is shown in the article The industry conference as a sales channel. The festival in May can then be the visible high point of a year in which you have already been on stage several times.