The Best Data Analytics & Data Science Conferences in 2026 & 2027
The Data Analytics & Data Science Conferences Guide 2026/2027 is your one-stop shop for conferences you actually want to go to. The data analytics and data science conference calendar in 2026 is bigger than ever — and more AI-saturated than ever. Every event, from the giant vendor summits to the intimate practitioner gatherings, has AI woven through its agenda. Some of it is sharp and genuinely useful. A lot of it is the same conversation dressed up in different keynotes, but still better than sitting at your desk!
What I find more interesting is the shift in who is attending these conferences. The data scientist of 2026 looks different from the data scientist of 2019. The lines between analytics, engineering, data science, and AI have blurred almost beyond recognition. The conferences that acknowledge this are the ones worth your time.
I’ve structured this guide by month so you can use it as a travel and professional development planner. A mix of the big vendor-backed summits, the serious research conferences, and a few smaller community-driven events that punch above their weight. Use it well.
March 2026
Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2026
March 9–11, 2026 — Orlando, Florida (onsite and virtual)
Additional dates: April 28–29 São Paulo, May 11–13 London, May 19–21 Tokyo, June 16–17 Sydney, September 21–22 Mumbai
Gartner’s Data & Analytics Summit focuses on helping leaders unlock data’s full potential, with sessions covering scaling AI, managing disruption, and data governance. Gartner It’s the conference that takes itself most seriously of any on this list — and it earns that reputation. If you’re a CDAO, head of analytics, or responsible for data strategy at an enterprise level, this is your event. The keynotes are dense with Gartner research. The analyst one-on-one sessions are where the real value is — if you can get time with the right analyst, you’ll get more actionable guidance in 45 minutes than you would from reading a year’s worth of reports.
The Sydney edition in June is the one for Australian attendees. Worth the trip if your organisation is serious about its data strategy. The London edition in May is the European pick.
One note: this is very much a leadership and strategy conference. If you’re a practitioner looking for technical depth, look elsewhere on this list.
April 2026
INFORMS Analytics+ Conference
April 12–14, 2026 — National Harbor, Maryland, USA
INFORMS Analytics+ brings together professionals in advanced analytics with a decision-centric approach, covering topics from ethical AI to supply chain to operations research. INFORMS This one sits closer to the operations research and decision science end of the spectrum than most conferences on this list. Which makes it interesting — the OR mindset applied to analytics is underrepresented in most conferences, which tend to focus on tools and technology rather than decision quality. Worth it if you want to think more rigorously about how analytics actually changes outcomes rather than just produces outputs.
ODSC AI East 2026
April 28–30, 2026 — Boston, Massachusetts (onsite and virtual)
ODSC AI East is a leading technical conference for data scientists, engineers, and strategic leaders, with a strong focus on hands-on AI training covering RAG, LLM orchestration, and agentic AI systems. Eventbrite ODSC has always been more practitioner than theorist, which I appreciate. Less about vendor roadmaps and more about what people are actually building. The Boston edition in April is a solid choice if you want hands-on technical depth rather than strategy keynotes. The speaker list regularly pulls in people from OpenAI, Databricks, and MIT. That’s a strong lineup.
ANA Masters of Data Conference
April 13–15, 2026 — San Diego, California (onsite and virtual)
The ANA Masters of Data Conference brings together senior marketing and data executives to explore how innovation, intelligence, and accountability come together in data-driven decision making. Association of National Advertisers This one is a different beast from the rest of the list — it sits at the intersection of marketing analytics and data strategy rather than pure data science. If your world involves customer analytics, marketing measurement, or brand data, this is the event. San Diego in April is also not a bad place to be.
May 2026
Data Summit 2026
May 6–7, 2026 — Boston, Massachusetts
A high-impact two-day event for data and AI professionals at every level. Compact, focused, and well-regarded in the data engineering and analytics community. Boston seems to be having a moment as a data conference city in 2026 — between this and ODSC, it’s worth considering a combined trip if you’re heading to the US east coast in spring.
The Data Science Conference
May 28–29, 2026 — Chicago, Illinois
Vendor-free, sponsor-free, recruiter-free — and celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2026. That combination is rare and worth acknowledging. When there’s no vendor money in the room, the conversations are different. The talks are about what practitioners are actually doing rather than what they’re being sold. Chicago in late May is a good bet weather-wise too.
June 2026
Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026
June 15–18, 2026 — Moscone Center, San Francisco, California
The Databricks Data + AI Summit brings together thousands of data leaders, engineers, scientists, and architects across 800+ sessions spanning data engineering, warehousing, governance, analytics, and AI. Databricks This is the biggest purely technical conference on this list. If Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, or the Lakehouse architecture are part of your world, this is non-negotiable. San Francisco in June, Moscone Center — it’s a serious production. The scale is almost overwhelming: 800+ sessions, thousands of attendees, keynotes from people building the actual infrastructure the industry runs on. Worth going for the hallway conversations alone.
Even if you’re not a Databricks user, this conference gives you a clear read on where data engineering and AI infrastructure is heading. That context matters regardless of your stack.
September 2026
Disney Data & Analytics Conference (DDAC) 2026
September 14–16, 2026 — Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, Orlando, Florida
DDAC brings together over 2,500 executives, managers, and analysts from more than 250 organisations, covering revenue management, pricing, forecasting, marketing analytics, CRM, finance, and decision science — with a touch that is uniquely Disney. Disneydataconference I’ll admit the Disney branding makes this sound lighter than it is. It isn’t. DDAC is a genuinely serious analytics conference that happens to be held at a Disney resort. The attendee mix is impressive — cross-industry, executive-level, and practitioner-heavy at the same time. The keynote speaker this year is Matt Parker, Australian mathematician and author, which is an interesting pick. If you want a conference that’s warm and approachable without sacrificing intellectual rigour, DDAC delivers. It’s one of the more enjoyable conferences on the circuit.
DATA ANALYTICS 2026
September 27 – October 1, 2026 — Barcelona, Spain (onsite and virtual)
The fifteenth International Conference on Data Analytics covers tools and frameworks for data analytics, in-database analytics, analytics visualization, big data processing and management, and knowledge discovery. Iaria Barcelona in late September is genuinely appealing. This is a more academic conference than most on this list — think papers, peer review, and technical rigour rather than keynotes and product announcements. Worth it if you want to see where analytics methodology is heading before it reaches the mainstream tools.
November 2026
Big Data Conference Europe 2026
November 24–27, 2026 — Vilnius, Lithuania (onsite and virtual)
Big Data Conference Europe is a four-day event focused on Big Data and analytics, data science, machine learning, and AI, featuring keynote sessions and hands-on workshops for developers, IT professionals, and practitioners. DataCamp Vilnius is an unexpected conference city — and that’s exactly what I like about it. This conference draws a serious European technical crowd without the corporate gloss of the larger vendor summits. If you’re in Europe in late November and want hands-on technical content at a human scale, this one is worth a look.
Year-round
MeasureCamp
Various dates and cities throughout 2026 — 21 events globally
The unconference format means no pre-booked speakers — any attendee can give a talk. It sounds chaotic. In practice it produces some of the most honest and immediately applicable conversations on the analytics circuit. Twenty-one events around the world in 2026 means there’s likely one near you. Low cost, high value, worth knowing about.
The Best Data Analytics & Data Science Conferences of the Year
The 2026 data analytics and data science conference landscape has one dominant theme running through all of it: AI is no longer a session track. It’s the whole conversation. Every conference on this list has reorganised itself around AI — governance, scaling, agentic systems, GenAI applications. The question every attendee is really asking is the same one: how do we make this actually work inside our organisation?
The conferences that answer that question with practical guidance rather than vendor promises are the ones worth your money.
My picks for 2026: ODSC East if you want hands-on technical depth, Databricks Data + AI Summit if you’re in the engineering or data science world, Gartner Sydney if you’re an Australian data leader making strategic decisions. And the Data Science Conference in Chicago if you want vendor-free honesty.
Missing a conference? Get in touch and I’ll add it to the list. And if any of these take you to Australia — or if you’re looking to build your team’s analytics and data storytelling capability before or after attending — let’s talk.
