Events · May–December 2026

Where the network shows up this year.

The frontier-AI conferences worth flying for, the smaller summits where hiring actually happens, and the dinners and meetups we host ourselves. Curated each Monday by the OpenTalent network. 38 events confirmed for the rest of 2026.

38 EVENTS confirmed14 CITIES across 4 continents9 HOSTED by OpenTalent4,200+members RSVP'd YTD

// Next up

Two events we're holding seats for.

Our own Frontier Hiring Summit returns to Bengaluru in June, and the AI Engineer World's Fair is the single most useful gathering of the year for senior ICs in the US.

// HOSTED · BENGALURUJUN 19–20SUM

OPENTALENT FRONTIER HIRING SUMMIT 2026·2 DAYS·INVITE-ONLY

The Frontier Hiring Summit returns to Bengaluru, bigger.

Two days, 240 senior AI engineers and 28 frontier-lab hiring leaders, one room. Closed sessions on screening rigour, post-training hiring bars, and the 13-day project. Last year produced 31 confirmed offers in 90 days; we're capping this year at 240 to keep the signal high. Hosted at Taj West End, June 19–20.

JUN 19–20 · TAJ WEST END · BENGALURUREQUEST INVITE →

// CONFERENCE · SFJUN 24–26AIE

AI ENGINEER WORLD'S FAIR·3 DAYS

AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 — San Francisco.

The largest builder-side conference of the year. We're sending a 40-person delegation; six of our portfolio companies are speaking. Group rate available through our network.

JUN 24–26 · MARRIOTT MARQUISJOIN DELEGATION →

// Upcoming

The 2026 calendar.

Filtered to events where senior AI engineers actually show up. Filter by region or type above, or search by city.

Hosted · BengaluruHostedSUM

JUN 19–20·2 DAYS

OpenTalent Frontier Hiring Summit 2026

240 senior AI engineers, 28 frontier-lab leads. Closed sessions on screening, post-training hiring, the 13-day project. Invite-only; current and alumni network members eligible.

HiringScreeningInvite-only

TAJ WEST END · BENGALURUREQUEST INVITE→

Conference · SFAIE

JUN 24–26·3 DAYS

AI Engineer World's Fair 2026

The biggest builder-side gathering of the year. 5,000+ engineers, agents and evals tracks, plus a hiring expo. Our delegation is 40 strong — group rate available through the network.

AgentsEvalsBuilder

MARRIOTT MARQUIS · SF$1,295

Hosted · SFHosted

JUN 25·EVENING

Frontier Lab Dinner — San Francisco

28 senior ICs from Anthropic, OpenAI, GDM, xAI, Meta FAIR, and three quieter labs. Off the record. One topic this round: how the labs actually triage research-engineer applications in 2026.

Off-the-recordSenior IC

SOMA · SFREQUEST SEAT→

Conference · ViennaML

JUL 12–18·7 DAYS

ICML 2026 — Vienna

The annual research conference. We're hosting an OpenTalent-network reception on Day 3 for engineers presenting or moving labs — RSVP separately once you're registered.

ResearchPaperAcademic

MESSE WIEN · VIENNA€850

Summit · SFEVL

JUL 22·1 DAY

Production Evals Summit 2026

A single-day, single-track summit on agent and LLM evals in production. Our angle: this is the bottleneck role of 2026, and the room is mostly the people doing it.

EvalsAgentsReliability

MISSION BAY · SF$595

Hosted · BengaluruHostedM·07

JUL 26·EVENING

Bengaluru Meetup #07 — Post-training in practice

Monthly senior-IC meetup. This month: three engineers from Sarvam, Krutrim, and a stealth lab on what their post-training pipelines actually look like end-to-end.

Post-trainingRLHFMonthly

INDIRANAGAR · BENGALURUFree · RSVP

Conference · NashvilleACL

AUG 03–08·6 DAYS

ACL 2026 — Nashville

The largest NLP / language-modeling conference. Helpful for engineers leaning research, especially on instruction-tuning and long-context work.

NLPResearch

OPRYLAND · NASHVILLE$720

Hosted · NYCHostedCHR

AUG 14·HALF-DAY

Cohire Roadshow — New York

For founders and heads of eng hiring full AI-native pods, not single engineers. Walkthroughs from three teams that hired together through Cohire in the last 6 months.

CohireFoundersTeam move

SOHO · NEW YORKREQUEST INVITE→

Summit · LondonLDN

SEP 09–10·2 DAYS

London Frontier Hiring Summit 2026

The European edition. 160 senior engineers, hosted at the Royal Society. Heavier on UK frontier labs and university spinouts than the Bengaluru programme.

UK labsSpinoutsHiring

ROYAL SOCIETY · LONDONREQUEST INVITE→

Summit · GenevaSAF

SEP 22–23·2 DAYS

AI Safety & Governance Forum

Where alignment, safety, and policy engineers actually meet the people writing the rules. Smaller than the AI Action Summit but a higher density of frontier-lab safety teams.

SafetyAlignmentPolicy

CICG · GENEVACHF 950

Hosted · DelhiHostedDEL

SEP 30·1 DAY

Cohire Roadshow — Delhi NCR

Applied-AI focused; mostly founders building agent products on top of frontier models. Two case studies on hiring research-leaning engineers without an open evals function.

Applied AIAgentsFounders

AEROCITY · DELHI NCRREQUEST INVITE→

Conference · BostonCLM

OCT 06–09·4 DAYS

COLM 2026 — Conference on Language Modeling

The newer venue that's grown into the most useful research conference if you care specifically about language-model behaviour. We're hosting an alumni-only breakfast on the second morning.

ResearchLMs

MIT · CAMBRIDGE, MA$680

Summit · SFRL

OCT 21·1 DAY

Reinforce — RL & Post-training Summit

A single-day, RL-heavy programme. Most interesting if you're early in a post-training role and want a forced-pace catch-up. Recordings always go up two weeks late.

RLPost-trainingRLHF

PRESIDIO · SF$495

Hosted · NYCHosted

NOV 04·EVENING

Frontier Lab Dinner — New York

The East Coast counterpart. 22 seats, off the record, one prepared question. This round: how lab leadership decides which open problems are worth a new team versus a hire onto an existing one.

Off-the-recordLab leads

WEST VILLAGE · NYCREQUEST SEAT→

Conference · San DiegoNRP

DEC 07–13·7 DAYS

NeurIPS 2026 — San Diego

The year-end research conference. Hiring activity around the workshops is real and underrated. Our annual NeurIPS reception is the Wednesday evening — invite goes out to the network in October.

ResearchWorkshopsHiring

CONVENTION CTR · SAN DIEGO$915

Hosted · BengaluruHostedYE

DEC 18·EVENING

Year-End Network Dinner — Bengaluru

The annual closer. Network members and their +1s. No talks, no agenda — the room is the product. We send the year's comp report to attendees the morning after.

NetworkAlumniAnnual

UB CITY · BENGALURURSVP IN NOV→

Summit · MumbaiIND

NOV 12–13·2 DAYS

India AI Conclave 2026 — Mumbai

The applied-AI conference for the Indian startup ecosystem. Heavier on agents, RAG-in-production, and BFSI use cases than the Bengaluru research scene. Useful if you're hiring in Mumbai or Pune.

AppliedAgentsBFSI

JIO WORLD · BKC, MUMBAI₹18,500

Hosting an AI engineering event? We'll bring the room.

If you're putting on a senior-IC dinner, an agentic-systems workshop, or a research salon and want a curated audience, we co-host with three to five partners a year. The bar is high: senior ICs, a specific topic, no recruiting in the room without disclosure.

Pitch a co-host See partners

// USUAL RESPONSE TIME: 3 WORKING DAYS

Want the calendar in your inbox?

One email on the first Monday of every month with the next 60 days of events the network is actually attending. No promotional events; no sponsored placements.

// ONE EMAIL/MONTH · UNSUBSCRIBE LINK IN EVERY ONE

Where the network shows up this year.

38 EVENTS confirmed14 CITIES across 4 continents9 HOSTED by OpenTalent4,200+members RSVP'd YTD