The Great Event Correction
Why clarity is becoming the defining factor for events
The events sector is entering a phase of correction. After years of expansion, acceleration, and post-pandemic urgency, the question is no longer how much more events can do, but what they should stop doing. Not as a reaction to a crisis, but as a response to limits of attention, of budgets, and of tolerance for noise.
Over the past few years, motion became the default response. Events expanded to meet pent-up demand, justify investment, and prove relevance quickly. Programmes grew denser. Formats multiplied. Technology was added to demonstrate engagement and value. In that environment, activity made sense. It was visible. It reassured stakeholders. It helped organisations feel back in control. What’s emerging now is not collapse or disruption, but correction.
What follows below is a synthesis and interpretation of the changes already underway, drawn from conversations with senior event leaders in 2025 and my reading and experience of the industry.
The bottom line is consistent: The next phase isn’t about doing more. It’s about being clearer…
TL; DR
The events industry isn’t heading into a new era of endless expansion. It’s entering a phase of correction, rebalancing purpose, effort, and outcomes.
After years of growth and visible activity (dense agendas, new formats, lots of tech), organisations are now asking what they should stop doing, not just what they can add.
Senior event leaders aren’t talking about disruption. They’re talking about clarity, focus and justification, pruning noise rather than piling on more.
It includes considerations about:
Portfolio-level correction
Audience quality over scale
Content (and panels) with consequence
Sponsor specifity
Design function over form
AI and tech embedded as infrastructure
In-person USPs
Events that hold value are those that can clearly answer:
Why does this exist?
Who is it for?
What changes because it happened?
Portfolio-level correction
One of the strongest themes to emerge is restraint at portfolio level. It is not a rush to cancel, but a willingness to question the value. It’s first and foremost not about “how do we grow this?”, but rather about “what job does this still do?”.
Event leaders spoke openly about:
Consolidating event portfolios.
Killing marginal formats.
Resisting the urge to launch simply because an audience exists.
It is not a retreat. It is discipline. It is not about costs. It is about opportunity cost, attention, credibility and focus.
Events that survive are the ones that can clearly articulate their purpose — internally first, externally second and builds a value proposition around clarity.
Audience quality over scale
Another clear shift is away from audience headcount as the primary measure of success. Not because scale no longer matters, but because it explains less than it used to.
In the conversations behind this piece, senior leaders spoke less about growth targets and more about who was actually in the room, and whether those people could productively speak to one another.
Smaller audiences came up repeatedly.
When seniority is too mixed, conversations stay general.
When peer relevance is low, networking becomes superficial.
When decision-makers are thinly spread, conversations and outcomes drift.
Reducing the room isn’t about exclusivity. It’s about increasing the likelihood that discussions move beyond description and into judgment.
I’ve said in the past that content gets people in the room, but the quality of networking brings them back. This backs it up, and it is why we, as That Coalition, play in this space.
Content (and panels) of consequence
There was little appetite for adding more complexity to stages and content. What leaders described instead was pressure to justify each session more clearly — not in terms of interest, but in terms of use.
Does this session help someone decide something?
Does it change how they think or act?
Or is it simply filling time?
It is a rejection of content that exists without consequence. It is a rejection of formats that exist for the sake of it.
In a context where information is abundant and easily accessible elsewhere, in-person sessions are increasingly expected to do a different job: interpretation, prioritisation, sense-making.
Increasingly, value is eroded when stage time is used to manage interests rather than deliver substance — whether that’s by placing brands on stage without a clear story, multiplying panels to keep stakeholders satisfied, or introducing formats that signal creativity but don’t produce insight or action.
You don’t require more. You require sharper intent.
Panels ≠ for decoration
Building on the theme, panels came up often in conversations as a practical concern.
What we’re seeing is that panels are frequently used when there isn’t agreement on what a session needs to achieve. They spread risk, accommodate multiple interests, and feel flexible.
Those qualities make them useful … but also easy to misuse.
From transcript analysis and post-event debriefs, panels were seen to work best when there is:
Focus: A specific problem or decision is being examined, not a broad topic
Debate: Speakers genuinely disagree or hold clearly different positions
Honesty: Speakers are able to speak openly and from direct experience
Panels work poorly when there is/they are:
Appeasement: The session is designed to satisfy interests rather than explore an issue
Superficiality: The conversation is superficial and unfocused
Decorative: The speakers are included mainly to give visibility rather than insight
This isn’t about banning panels, but it is about using them deliberately and sparingly, because clarity matters more than coverage.
Sponsor specificity
When it came to sponsorships, “selectivity” was a dominant theme. Sponsors are asking more directly:
Who is this room actually for?
What conversations will happen here?
What changes because we are involved?
It’s not about sponsorship becoming harder; it’s about it becoming more specific.
Aligning with the earlier points about justification and size, events that are clear about purpose are easier to align with. Events that try to accommodate everyone struggle to explain their value to anyone.
It is a correction rather rather than disruption.
Design function over form
Conference design follows a similar pattern. There is no rejection of high production values, but there was a growing sensitivity to when design adds complexity rather than clarity.
More screens, motion, and effects don’t automatically improve understanding. In some cases, they compete with the conversation they’re meant to support.
Design decisions are increasingly assessed against simple questions:
Does this help people follow what’s happening?
Does it support attention and flow?
Does it reinforce the purpose of the session?
If the answer isn’t clear, the design is doing the wrong job.
Technology to remove friction
Technology is not necessarily discussed as a differentiator in its own right, but as something that quietly extends what organisers and participants can realistically expect and do.
Tools are increasingly judged on whether they:
Reduce manual effort
Improve decision-making
Remove friction for speakers, organisers, and attendees
Leaders spoke less about adding tools for showcasing innovation and more about using fewer tools better. In practical terms, that meant:
Simplifying tech stacks
Removing overlapping platforms
Avoiding systems that require explanation to be usable
AI integration everywhere
AI came up frequently in conversations, not as an experiment or a feature, but as something already reshaping how serious event businesses operate.
What stood out for me was not the front-of-house use cases per se, but depth of integration and how AI is being used internally to redesign how work happens.
For example, Informa has built a proprietary assistant trained on its own data and extended it with agent-building capabilities. This allows teams across the organisation to create tools that remove friction from sales, operations, product, and marketing workflows. (Note: most event organisers don’t have the scale of Informa, but there are several vendors in the space that can help smaller operators with custom agents.)
The significance here isn’t speed alone. It’s that intelligence is being embedded directly into day-to-day decision-making, and innovation becomes distributed rather than centralised.
On the product side, AI is materially changing the value proposition of events. Lead intelligence and matchmaking are no longer treated as add-ons, but as core components of what exhibitors are buying. By combining behavioural, media, and event data, AI improves follow-up quality, pricing power, and long-term defensibility.
In this context, AI is not supporting the event. AI is becoming part of the product itself.
As in other sectors, AI is reshaping discovery. Rather than resisting AI-driven search and recommendation, Informa is structuring content and environments to work with AI. It uses AI as a routing mechanism that drives users into deeper engagement across media, data, and events.
Overall, a common thread from conversations is that AI is not being treated as a moment or a message. It is being embedded as infrastructure.
Its value lies less in visibility and more in how it improves internal efficiency, product economics, customer insight, and post-event follow-through.
In that sense, AI increases the return on in-person events by making what happens before, during, and after the room more usable and more valuable.
Clarity in the in-person USP
As mentioned earlier, in-person events are no longer primarily about access to information. That you can do online. Events’ value now lies in things that are harder to replicate digitally:
Judgment: The ability to weigh options, trade-offs, and risks in conversation with peers who have comparable responsibility
Context: Understanding not just what is happening, but why it matters in a specific organisational or market setting
Shared interpretation: Reaching a common understanding of what information actually means, rather than consuming it individually
Real-time testing of thinking: Stress-testing ideas with peers, challenging assumptions, and refining positions in the moment
Commercial exchange: Meeting the right people, progressing relationships, and doing business in ways that rely on trust and immediacy
These outcomes don’t scale easily, and they don’t benefit from volume or excess. They depend on clarity about who needs to be in the room, and what those people need to work through together.
What 2026 looks like
Taken together, these shifts don’t point to reinvention. They point to correction and clarity.
Events are being stripped back to what they can do uniquely well, and relieved of tasks they were never well suited to carry.
That doesn’t mean fewer ambitions. It means clearer ones.
The events that will hold their value in 2026 are likely to be those that can answer, plainly and early:
Why does this exist?
Who is it for?
What changes because it happened?
Those aren’t creative questions. They’re strategic ones with direct operational consequences. That clarity matters.