What IT events to visit in 2026 – top managers of Ukrainian IT advise

At the end of 2025, we conducted a year-end survey among top managers of Ukrainian IT. In particular, we asked what events they plan to attend in 2026.Below is a list of conferences where you can meet Epam, Genesis, Sombra, and Kiss My Apps. These events discuss practical cases on AI, product scaling, and engineering, and the speakers include CEOs of Ukrainian companies and representatives of Google, AWS, Meta, and other global players.DOU DayWho advises: Epam and GenesisDOU's annual tech conference held in Kyiv in the spring. It was first held in 2024, but thanks to the community, in 2025 it became one of the largest IT events for Ukrainian IT professionals.This year, DOU Day was two days long and gathered over 3700 participants. The conference included six large stages where innovations in coding, AI application cases, and QA trends were discussed, three small stages, and additional locations such as a gamedev-corner. Among the speakers were Mikhail Fedorov and Oleg Gorokhovsky, as well as top management of Intellias, Jooble, MacPaw, Kyivstar, etc.The date of DOU Day 2026 is not yet known, although pitches from speakers are already being accepted.IT ArenaWho advises: GenesisThe largest tech event in Eastern Europe, organized annually since 2014 by the Lviv IT Cluster. It takes place in the fall in Lviv and usually gathers more than 6000 participants. IT Arena 2026 will take place on September 25-27. Ticket sales have not yet started, but they can already be booked.IT Arena speakers include many business representatives. Deftech is also represented: Brave1 CEO Andriy Hrytseniuk spoke in 2025. In total, the conference has five stages where they talk about strategic outsourcing, product launches, and the future of defense innovation.The arena's strong point is speakers from abroad: for example, the director of the Sunrise Science and Technology Park in Vilnius, Laima Balčiūnė, and the CEO of the French fintech company Bpifrance, Nicolas Dufourcq.FwdaysWho advises: Epam and GenesisFwdays is not a single conference, but various technical events that have been held since 2010. These can be both general IT events (such as Fwdays IT Summit, where they talk about scaling service companies, building products in deftech, and selling in IT) and meetings for specific communities, such as CTO, PHP, React, etc. The conferences are held in Kyiv, but you can buy a ticket for online attendance.The next known event from Fwdays, DevOps fwdays'26, will take place on February 28 in Kyiv. The organization usually holds conferences every month. In addition, they organize meetups for different IT specializations in different cities of Ukraine. In 2025, 11 conferences and five meetups were held.Networking is a strong point of all three events."In Ukraine, the most useful events were those that brought together a strong community, such as IT Arena, DOU Day, and Fwdays," Genesis says.LEAP Tech ConferenceWho advises: SombraThe LEAP tech conference is held annually in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. This huge event hosts more than 201,000 attendees and 1000+ speakers, including representatives of TikTok, Qualcomm, Meta, IBM, and other big tech companies. It covers various topics, including DeepFest, a separate AI stream.In 2026, LEAP will take place on April 13-16. Tickets range from free (for early birds) to $3500, depending on access. The most expensive ones include entrance to the rooms where networking between the tops takes place."It is there that a platform for large-scale technological partnerships and strategic innovations is formed," Yuriy Nakonechny, CTO at Sombra, says about the importance of LEAP.AI DevSummitWho advises: EpamAI DevSummit is an annual conference on artificial intelligence organized by DevNetwork, a global network that also holds other conferences for IT professionals. It takes place in San Francisco. It covers both AI management and AI engineering: AI Strategy, ML, AI Ops/Management, Data &amp; Integration, AI Ethics, etc.The event hosts 750+ attendees, and although the scale is somewhat more modest, the speakers are well-known: Google, Slack, Deloitte, Airbnb, IBM.AI DevSummit 2026 will take place on May 27-28.Web SummitWho advises: Kiss My AppsThe largest tech event in Western Europe, held annually in Lisbon. This year it will take place on November 9-12.More than 71,000 visitors come to Web Summit. Topics include AI, SaaS, govtech, fintech, and others. There are 20 tracks in total. Speakers include: Apple, Cloudfare, Boston Dynamics. In addition to speeches, the web summit includes meetups, startup programs, and meetings with investors.Since 2024, the Web Summit organizers have also been holding this conference in Qatar.The advantage of tech events is not that you get to see technology—you can look up any new product on the Internet in a couple of minutes. You go to events to meet specific people and communicate informally. With digitalization and AI, the importance of personal communication is growing," says Dmytro Lola, CEO and founder of Kiss My Apps.The AI ConferenceWho advises: EpamWe close the selection with another AI conference in San Francisco. The AI Conference 2026 will take place from September 30 to October 1 and will include speeches by top management of AWS, Google DeepMind, and HuggingFace. There are 75+ speakers and three tracks in total. Topics include technological approaches to AI development, as well as ethical and practical aspects.