December 10, 2025
Customer Experience 2025 Events Roundup, and the Big Shows Coming Your Way in 2026
2025 was a busy year for customer experience events. Analyst firms, vendors, experts and end-user markets all welcomed CXM to listen to the great and good speak, and show off the latest software and technology. And we’re revving up for a hectic 2026 with more content, interviews and stories lined up.
Running the Numbers at the Retail Technology Show
The year started with one of many trips to London Excel for our UK team.
The 2025 edition Retail Technology Show kicked of with insights and practical products for smart store planning, AI store sentiments, and digital on-shelf signage. All rubbing shoulders with the latest software and businesses promoting retail strategies. Celebrating a record attendance of over 14,000 retail professionals,
For the 2026 edition, taking place in April, the focus is on cyber loss prevention and a French retail tech zone. The conference will include detailed discussion on retail media, AI and data. Along with a return to retail growth and building loyalty, improving customer experience and personalisation.
With attendees getting to understand “what the move to agentic AI really means for retail, which AI use-cases have made the biggest retail difference, how the shift to search through AI is impacting the landscape and how you can build a data-driven retail business that will truly drive market share.”
CX Vendors Love To Show Off
Over 2025, most of the CX vendors were in town to some degree, showing off their latest product features, highlighting customer success stories and more.
At Highbury Stadium, Freshworks showed off Freddy Agentic AI , while providing interviews with grounded, traditional, businesses like Hobbycraft to see how they deal with CX.
At the Liferay Customer Summit, there was a strong focus on personalisation for its digital experience platform and announcements like the Camunda partnership to add orchestration features.
Optimizely took over The Barbican in October for Opticon25, while Qualtrics X4 put on a huge show at Tobacco Docks talking about synthetic data and research. Each event highlighting key new features and solid use cases.
As the year came to a close we headed south to Experience KSA in Saudi Arabia to meet Medallia and see how local expertise is driving their success in supporting Vision 2030 through a joined-up citizen experience among the usual B2B efforts.
CX Events Coming to A City Near You in 2026
Every CX, EX and management vendor and their pet hound will be back in 2026, with US, Asian and Middle East events to highlight the fast moving nature of CX software, whether the customers want those features or not. They’ll include:
- Medallia Experience ‘26, February, Las Vegas
- Adobe Summit 2026, Spring, Las Vegas
- Qualtrics X4 (US), March, Seattle
- CX Live Show Middle East 2026, April, Dubai
- Salesforce Connections 2026, June, Chicago
- Customer Contact Week (CCW) 2026, Summer, Las Vegas
- Dreamforce ’26 September, San Francisco
We’ll update the list as more dates are confirmed, and check out the Events Listing page for a broader list of CX events.
The Analysts Speak
If it isn’t the vendors racking up the airmiles, the analyst classes are not far behind with the likes of Forrester (CX North) and CX Summit EMEA in Amsterdam, and Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo taking place during May in London all looking to impress with their takes on how CX should be done.
In short, 2026 will see a record amount of shoe insoles acquired to keep feet comfortable, running from one interview to the next. All while seeing the “wow” factor technology and seeing how it works in reality.
See you on the show floor!
