CTO & Engineering Leadership Conferences 2027

Which CTO and engineering leadership conferences are on in 2027?

Here is the full calendar in date order, from November 2026 through 2027. Prices are the published rate on the day I checked, before VAT where the organiser lists it that way; most organisers raise prices in stages, so treat them as a floor.

"TBA" means the organiser has not published that detail yet. The month in brackets is the last edition, which is the best predictor of the next one. CTO Craft also runs smaller Conversations roundtables (New York on 8 December 2026, Berlin in June 2027) that are not listed as conferences above.

Which conferences are built specifically for CTOs?

CTO Craft Con is the only series on this list designed around the CTO and VP Engineering seat. The London edition is deliberately capped at roughly 500 attendees, and the organiser says everyone attending is responsible for engineering strategy, people or delivery. That density is the point: you spend the breaks with people who have your problems, not with vendors or job seekers.

• CTO Craft Con: London, 15–17 March 2027, QEII Centre. The flagship. 2027 is CTO Craft's tenth year. The 15th is a pre-day (programme TBA); the two main days are the 16th and 17th.
• CTO Craft Con: Fintech, 2–3 November 2026, The Minster Building, London. For leaders in regulated finance, where compliance and AI risk dominate the agenda.
• CTO Craft Con: Toronto, May 2027. Exact days and venue not yet announced.

If you are in the first year of the job, pair one of these with the reading in my CTO first 90 days guide. The conference is more useful when you arrive with three specific questions.

Which are best for engineering managers and directors?

LeadDev's events are the default for the layer between team lead and CTO. LDX3 in London (28–29 June 2027) and New York (8–9 September 2027) bill themselves as a festival for modern engineering leadership, and LeadDev Berlin (9–10 November 2026, Estrel Congress Center) is the smaller European sibling. Sending two or three managers here is usually better value than sending one director to a broader event.

DevExec World (9–11 February 2027, Santa Clara Convention Center) is aimed at technical managers and directors and is part of DeveloperWeek. ELC Conference in Prague (April 2027, exact days not yet announced) is a regional option for Central European engineering leaders.

Which conferences go deepest on architecture and AI?

QCon is practitioner-led and technical, which is why I still rate it for CTOs who want to know what their staff engineers will propose next quarter. QCon London runs 13–15 April 2027 at the QEII Centre (£2,390 early bird until 10 November), and QCon San Francisco runs 16–18 November 2026 at the Hyatt Regency ($2,995).

For AI specifically, three options stand out: QCon AI New York (15–16 December 2026, Westin Jersey City Newport) and QCon AI Boston (8–9 July 2027, Boston University's George Sherman Union); the AI Engineer World's Fair (29 June – 1 July 2027, Moscone West, San Francisco), which is more practitioner-heavy and good for hiring; and IT Revolution's Enterprise AI Summits, including Portland on 5–6 May 2027 ($1,600). If your 2027 agenda is AI adoption across the engineering org, my guide to technical debt in the AI era covers what to probe for in those sessions.

How should a CTO choose which conferences to attend?

Pick by the job you need the trip to do, then by geography. Most CTOs I know can justify two events a year: one peer event and one technical or domain event. More than that and the readouts stop happening.

Two practical rules. Book at the first price tier: CTO Craft Con London's pre-launch rate is £549 + VAT, against £2,499 for vendor passes, and the gap between early and late tiers at most events is several hundred pounds or dollars. And decide before you go what you will bring back: a written note to your team within a week turns an expense into something the CFO can see. If the main reason for going is that the job has got lonely, that is legitimate too; my piece on CTO loneliness covers why peer groups matter more than most of us admit.

Is a conference worth it compared to a peer group or newsletter?

For learning content, often not: many organisers, QCon and LeadDev among them, publish talk recordings after the event. For relationships and calibration, yes. The value of a room full of CTOs is hearing what they actually pay for tools, how they staff platform teams, and what they stopped doing. Those conversations don't make it into recordings.

Between events, a weekly newsletter and a small peer group cover most of the ground. The CTAIO newsletter tracks what changes for technology leaders week to week, and the how to become a CTO guide covers the skills and paths into the role if you are not there yet.