What Are The Best Conferences To Attend In 2026?

What are the best conferences to attend in 2026? Conferences can be a great return on investment, but they also could be a big waste of time and money. And I don't want that to happen to you. So I'm gonna answer today's q and a Wednesday's question from Lisa about what are the best conferences? What are conferences supposed to do for you, and how do you identify the conferences that actually are gonna move the needle for you and your business? I've gone to the wrong events, and I've met the wrong people there, and I've sat through the wrong talks, and I've come home exactly the same as I did when I left except I was a little bit poorer and I wasted a bunch of time. So instead, I'm gonna tell you exactly which conferences are worth going to in 2026. Every single one of these conferences I've been to, I've attended, and I can give you my honest opinion about it. But more importantly, I'm gonna show you what makes a conference worth attending. So even if the conference that you wanna go to is not on this list, I'll be sharing with you today, you know how to evaluate if this conference is worth your time and your money and your effort. So let's get into it. Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zdenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Let me start by saying that I owe a lot to conferences. Conferences have helped me so much along the way. They've been the catalyst. They've been the trigger for a lot of different inflection points in my career. In fact, I started podcasting because of a conference that I attended in 2012 called New Media Expo. This conference doesn't even exist anymore, but it had the right ingredients to inspire us to go down the podcasting route. So throughout my life, I've gone to dozens and dozens of conferences and events. And what I found is that great conferences consistently do three things well. Number one, they curate the right people. This is the most important factor. A great conference will attract the people that you want in your network, people that are actually doing things, people that are building, people that are operators, people that are serious creators, that are inspiring to actually just meet, that are doing fun and interesting work. If they're always filled with tourists and tire kickers and people …