CONF3RENCE returns 15–16 September 2026, Dortmund

Most conference organizers, when facing a crowded market, raise their prices and restrict their guest lists. The team behind CONF3RENCE is doing the opposite.

Germany’s largest emerging tech meets traditional economy event returns for its third edition on 15–16 September 2026 at Kokerei Hansa in Dortmund, and this year it costs nothing to attend. Free across both days. The move is not a gimmick; it sits inside the Festival of Arts, Tech and Taste (FATT) in North Rhine-Westphalia, a broader cultural and industry event designed to bring the region’s public, institutional, and startup ecosystems into the same physical space at the same time.

CONF3RENCE 15–16 September, Dortmund

The previous two editions of CONF3RENCE drew over 4,000 attendees from more than 70 countries. Opening admission removes the last practical barrier between that audience and a significantly larger one.

What the Programme Covers

The event is not trying to be everything. It runs a focused agenda across four core topic areas: AI and enterprise adoption, tokenisation and real-world assets, stablecoins and digital payments, and institutional finance and blockchain infrastructure. These are not aspirational themes. They are the areas where traditional economy decision-makers are actually spending time and budget in 2026, and CONF3RENCE has positioned itself as the event where that conversation happens in Germany specifically.

The format spans a main stage, a dedicated DeepTech stage, masterclasses, an exhibition floor, and networking across the full festival campus. The combination of conference infrastructure and festival setting is deliberate: the Kokerei Hansa site in Dortmund is an industrial heritage venue that does not feel like a hotel ballroom, and the FATT context means the surrounding programme includes considerably more than panel discussions.

Why Dortmund and Why Now

North Rhine-Westphalia is worth understanding as a location choice. It holds the highest university density in Europe. Dortmund sits within 90 minutes of millions of people across one of the continent’s strongest industrial and research regions. The companies that built German manufacturing are based here. So are the research institutions now building what comes next.

CONF3RENCE is organised by the team behind Solv3, a digital asset advisory and tokenisation firm. That background matters because the event’s institutional credibility comes from the same networks. Banks, asset managers, enterprise technology companies, and infrastructure builders are not an aspirational attendee category here; they are the returning audience.

Moving to free admission for 2026 takes a gathering that was already connecting those worlds and removes the one friction point that kept the broader public and earlier-stage founders at a distance.

Registration

Registration is free and open now at conf3rence.com.

This coverage is part of an official media partnership between CONF3RENCE 2026, Irish Tech News, and Belkin Marketing, recognised as International Media Partners for the September 2026 edition. The partnership was brokered by Iaroslav Belkin, founder of Belkin Marketing, a boutique intelligence firm executing strategic media partnerships, international expansion, and executive positioning via VVIP events including Davos WEF.

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