Vancouver hosts TED for the final time as innovators, thought leaders, and creators gather to tackle AI, technology, and society’s most urgent challenges before the conference moves to San Diego in 2027.
This April, the global technology and ideas community will converge on Vancouver for TED2026, one of the most anticipated technology conferences in Vancouver. Running April 13–17, 2026, this event marks the final TED conference in Vancouver before the annual flagship conference moves to San Diego, California, in 2027. The event will be centered at the San Diego Convention Center and will utilize various venues across the city, returning to its California roots after more than a decade in Vancouver. This closing chapter in Vancouver has helped define the modern ideas economy while challenging the tech world to confront urgent societal challenges head-on.
The 2026 theme, “All of Us,” is more than a slogan — it’s a charge to tackle the accelerating pace of change together. Organizers acknowledge that “the future has never felt more volatile” as political, cultural, and technological forces rewrite the rules shaping society. In the organizers’ own words:
“For over a decade, beautiful Vancouver has been home to TED… TED2026 marks our final year in this iconic setting before we move to California in 2027. This is your last chance to experience TED in a place that has shaped our community and sparked ideas that changed the world.” — TED Conferences
The urgency is grounded in real global trends: AI innovation is reshaping labor, governance, and education; platform power and data ethics are under intense scrutiny; and democratic and cultural systems face stress as digital ecosystems expand.
What makes TED2026 compelling is not just its main stage but the breadth of voices and disciplines represented. The speaker roster includes household names and paradigm-shifting thinkers such as Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, climate writer Bill McKibben, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, and comedian-musician Reggie Watts, each poised to tackle big ideas that span technology, society, and human experience.
Behind the scenes, TED’s nine guest curators bring added depth to the program. Visionaries like Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister known for pioneering participatory tech policy, and Julian Treasure, a champion of listening as a transformative human skill, signal a program that bridges technical insight with human-centered thinking. Contributors like journalist Manoush Zomorodi and solutions journalist Angus Hervey ensure the ideas shared here are not only forward-looking but critically anchored in real-world context.
The TED2026 program promises a vibrant mix of more than 80 live TED Talks, interviews, performances, and deep-dive workshops. Attendees can customize their schedules with Discovery Sessions led by experts such as neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and inventor and content creator Simone Giertz, blending creativity with intellectual exploration across disciplines.
Beyond talks and sessions, TED2026 elevates the in-person experience with curated dinners, immersive exhibits, and purposeful networking opportunities designed to seed collaboration long after the conference ends. In a time of fragmented regulation and global uncertainty, these humanized moments of connection are where insights often translate into action, influence strategy, and forge partnerships that extend far beyond the event itself.
For tech leaders, founders, policymakers, and cultural thinkers, Vancouver this April presents a rare chance to pause the relentless build cycle and ask foundational questions about direction, ethics, and impact in technology. TED2026 is not merely a collection of talks; it’s a turning point in the dialogue about innovation and society, a chance to shape the answers to the dilemmas defining tomorrow before it’s too late.
And fittingly, it will happen one last time in the city that helped build TED into a global force for ideas that matter.
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