Your guide to the best data visualization and design conferences in the world
DATA VIZ & DESIGN CONFERENCES
2026 & 2027
Updated August 2026
Where the world’s chart-makers, designers and dashboard people meet
What are the Best Data Visualization
& Design Conferences in 2026 & 2027?
Planning your conference calendar for the year ahead? Here is my verified guide to the best data visualization and design conferences in 2026 and 2027 — exact dates, cities, and who each event is really for. Every date on this page has been checked against the conference’s own site this month.
The calendar splits into two camps. The research conferences — IEEE VIS, EuroVis, PacificVis — are where the field’s new ideas surface first. The practitioner events — Tableau Conference, Outlier — are where working analysts and designers trade techniques. I’ll tell you which is which, because they are very different rooms.
The Datalabs Agency is a Melbourne-based data visualization consultancy founded in 2012 that delivers corporate training workshops (Power BI, Tableau, data storytelling), dashboard design, and BI style guides for clients including Mercedes-Benz, Adidas, and UPS. That is the seat this list is written from — and if a conference is not in the budget this year, an in-house training workshop is how many of our clients close the same skills gap.
Here are my picks for the data visualization conferences of 2026 and 2027. »
My Top 4
What are the Best Data Viz Conferences in the World?
Best Overall
Boston, U.S.A.
Best in Asia-Pacific
Busan, South Korea
Best in Australia
Sydney, Australia
Best Community Feel
Data Visualization Society
SEPTEMBER 2026
1–2 September 2026
Melbourne, Australia
CDAO Melbourne brings 500+ senior data leaders to my home town on 1–2 September.
If you are in Australia and reading this in time: Corinium’s Chief Data & Analytics Officer conference lands in Melbourne with 70+ speakers and 500+ senior data and AI leaders from finance, government, healthcare, retail and energy. It leans executive — strategy and agentic-AI case studies rather than chart craft — but it is the most substantial dated data event on Australian soil this year, and it is co-located with Data & AI Architecture and Enterprise AI events on day two. If your interest is presentation-layer skills rather than leadership networking, see the honest note in the FAQ below about the Australian scene.
27 September – 1 October 2026
Barcelona, Spain (hybrid)
DATA ANALYTICS 2026 runs in Barcelona from 27 September to 1 October, onsite or virtual.
The Fifteenth International Conference on Data Analytics is the academic option on this list — an IARIA conference covering machine learning, big-data analytics and BI, co-located with seven sibling conferences as part of the NexTech 2026 congress. Fair warning from me: IARIA events are volume academic conferences, not industry showcases — you go to read papers and meet researchers, not to see keynote theatrics. The hybrid option (attend virtually) makes it a low-cost way to sample the research end of the field from Australia.
NOVEMBER 2026
9–13 November 2026
Boston, U.S.A. (+ satellites in Paris & Tianjin)
IEEE VIS is the premier visualization conference on Earth — Boston, 9–13 November.
My best-overall pick. IEEE VIS is where the field’s future arrives first — the premier forum for visualization and visual analytics research, run this year from Boston’s Back Bay with satellite venues in Paris and Tianjin for those who cannot cross an ocean. Registration is already open; the keynote is NASA’s Kimberly Arcand, who visualises deep-space data. Practitioners should look at CLUSTER, the practitioners’ summit, and the VIS Arts Program — the two corners of VIS built for people who make charts for a living rather than write papers about them.
10–12 November 2026 (pre-conference 8–9 November)
Miami Beach, USA
Adobe MAX is the largest annual gathering of working creatives on the calendar.
Adobe MAX earns a place on a data list for an unglamorous reason: the final polish on most published data graphics happens in Illustrator or After Effects, and this is where those tools get their annual reveal. Sessions run from typography and illustration through to motion, with hands-on labs alongside the keynotes.
Worth the trip if your reports and dashboards get exported for print or presentation and you want the craft end of that pipeline. There is an online edition on 10–11 November for anyone not travelling from Australia.
14–15 November 2026
Tokyo, Japan
Design Matters is a digital design conference that changes city each year, and 2026 lands in Tokyo.
Design Matters is built around digital product and communication design — two days of talks, workshops and evening sessions rather than a trade floor. The 2026 edition runs at the DMM.com head office in Roppongi.
For our audience the draw is interface and systems thinking: the same decisions that govern a dashboard layout, argued by people designing consumer products at scale. It is a smaller room than Adobe MAX, which makes the hallway conversations more useful.
APRIL 2027
19–22 April 2027
Busan, South Korea
IEEE PacificVis turns 20 in Busan, South Korea, 19–22 April 2027.
The 20th-anniversary edition of the IEEE Pacific Visualization Conference — the research conference built to grow visualization in the Asia-Pacific. For Australian readers this is the practical one: Busan is a nine-hour flight, not a twenty-hour one, and the programme carries the same IEEE rigour as its Boston sibling at a fraction of the travel cost. If you have ever wanted to see where the region’s visualization research is heading — and it is heading somewhere fast — the anniversary year is the year to go.
JUNE 2027
Announced for 7–8 June 2027
ICC Sydney, Australia
Gartner’s Sydney summit is announced for 7–8 June 2027 at ICC Sydney.
My best-in-Australia pick for 2027. Gartner’s APAC Data & Analytics Summit returns to the International Convention Centre Sydney, aimed at data and analytics leaders — strategy, governance, AI and the BI tooling landscape. It is a suits-and-lanyards event rather than a designers’ gathering, but it is where Australian data teams’ budgets and roadmaps get set, and the tooling floor is the best place in the country to compare BI platforms side by side in one afternoon. Dates are as announced at the time of writing — check Gartner’s page before booking.
2027 — DATES COMING
TC27 — dates to be announced
U.S.A. (TC26 was San Diego)
Tableau Conference is the biggest event in the Tableau world — TC27 is not yet dated.
The one my Tableau training clients always ask about. TC26 came and went in San Diego this May, so the next edition is TC27 — Salesforce has a sign-up list open but no dates or city yet. When it lands, expect what TC always delivers: the largest gathering in the Tableau ecosystem, from first-dashboard beginners to the product team itself, heavy on hands-on sessions and famously heavy on community. Join the waitlist and watch this page — I’ll update it the day dates appear.
2027 — dates to be announced
Stuttgart, Germany
EuroVis 2027 moves to Stuttgart, Germany — dates still to be announced.
Europe’s premier visualization research conference changes address: after Nottingham in 2026, the 29th EuroVis will be hosted by the Visualization Research Center (VISUS) at the University of Stuttgart. The Eurographics/IEEE VGTC pedigree makes this the continent’s answer to IEEE VIS — smaller, more walkable, and with a strong tradition of state-of-the-art reports that are genuinely readable by practitioners. If Europe 2027 is on your travel map, pencil it in and watch the official site for dates.
2027 — planning underway
Format to be announced (2026 was virtual)
Outlier is the Data Visualization Society’s own conference — 2027 planning is underway.
My best-community pick. Outlier is the conference the Data Visualization Society runs for itself — artists, journalists, BI developers and academics in one (often virtual) room, talking data design, storytelling and ethics. The 2026 edition ran online in June; organisers have said planning for 2027 is underway but nothing is dated yet. Two things make it special: the talks end up free on the DVS YouTube channel, and it is the rare conference where a hobbyist and a New York Times graphics editor genuinely mix.
Biennial — 2027 edition not yet confirmed
Location to be announced (2025 was Boston)
Information+ is the design-research crowd’s biennial gathering — a 2027 edition would fit the cadence.
Information+ is the most design-minded event on this list: a biennial, interdisciplinary conference where information designers, educators and researchers meet in one place — less algorithms, more typography, colour and communication. The last edition ran in Boston in late 2025, and the two-year rhythm points to 2027, though the organisers have confirmed nothing yet. I include it because readers of this page who care about the design half of data visualization will find their people here more than anywhere else on the calendar.
What Other Data Viz Conferences Are Worth Watching?
A few honest notes from the verification pass behind this update. Some once-loved events are dormant: Tapestry has not run since the late 2010s, and Malofiej — the infographics world’s Pulitzers — has been paused since 2021. Eyeo Festival has third-party listings claiming a 2026 revival that its own site does not confirm, so it stays off this list until it does. And one listing from the previous version of this page has been removed entirely after it turned out to be a conference-mill advertisement rather than a real event — a reminder of why every date here is checked at the source.
Know a conference I have missed — especially an Australian one? Contact me and I’ll verify it and add it. Planning your data year? See the sibling guide to data analytics conferences, or bring the conference to your team with a data visualization workshop.
Questions & Answers
Data Viz Conferences
2027 edition — dates to be announced
San Francisco, USA
Config is Figma’s own conference and the main gathering for design systems work.
Config is where design system practice gets argued in public, which makes it directly relevant if you maintain a BI style guide. Component libraries, tokens, documentation and governance are the recurring themes, and the same problems turn up in Power BI and Tableau templates.
The 2026 edition ran 23–25 June at Moscone Center, with in-person tickets sold out and free virtual access. Dates for 2027 have not been published. The online stream is the low-risk way to watch from here.
2027 edition — dates to be announced
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne Design Week is the largest design festival in Australia and it happens on our doorstep.
Melbourne Design Week is a city-wide programme rather than a single conference: talks, exhibitions and studio openings across ten days, curated by the NGV and funded through Creative Victoria. The 2026 edition ran 14–24 May.
We list it because it is the one event here most of our clients can attend without a flight, and because the programme regularly includes information design and data-driven work alongside furniture and architecture. Dates for 2027 have not been announced.
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