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Top Music Tech Conferences 2021 – Selected

Music Tech Conferences in September

Malmo Music Conference 2021

September 2-3 – Malmö, Sweden

Malmo Music Conference celebrates the rich and diverse music community of Malmö. Artists, venues, performers and music enthusiasts will come together in a 2 day celebration and exploration of music. The event will be held at Malmö Live with side events and experiences happening all around Malmo.

Reeperbahn Festival 2021

September 22-25 – Hamburg, Germany

Reeperbahn Festival combines a diverse line-up of new, international talents with a program comprising of a wide range of themes in a progressive music marketplace. Next to the festival activities, there is also a conference taking place. The conference provides a business platform for companies and organizations to meet and exchange ideas

Since its debut in 2006, Reeperbahn Festival has become one of the most important meeting places for the world of music and demonstrates how an exuberant music program can be combined with music industry interests and social initiatives.

Tallinn Music Week 2021

September 29 – October 03 – Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn Music Week (TMW) is a music and city culture festival and key networking event for music and creative industry professionals across Europe, held annually in the capital of Estonia Tallinn since 2009. The festival consists of three main program parts: a music festival, conference and city festival.

The music festival presents multi-genre acts from all over Europe and beyond in Tallinn’s best concert venues. TMW’s music program is renowned for its bold mix of unique talent across Europe and beyond with diverse genres from experimental electronica to classical represented.

The conference looks into the impact of arts as an engine for the economy, while offering both inspiration, practical activities and networking opportunities to music professionals, artists, entrepreneurs and policymakers from different areas.

Music Tech Conferences in October

Mondo.NYC 2021

October 12-15 – Hybrid (New York, United States)

Mondo.NYC is a global business festival uniting music and technology. Emerging artists, innovators and industry insiders will connect and collaborate with fans in a mission to advance human creativity in an ever-changing world.

Mondo.NYC 2021 conference and music showcase festival will be presented as an interactive virtual event and livestream around the world. Additionally, a limited number of in-person events will be presented and concurrently attendees will be welcomed to a physical gathering in New York City for business, networking and live music showcases.

MaMA Festival & Convention 2021

October 13-15 – Paris, France

The gateway to to the French music market: 3 days of concerts and international meetings in Paris. With more than 6,400 attending professionals, MaMA is the greatest French gathering of the music industry: French and internationals, independent and major record companies, concert venues, festivals, producers, agents, managers, artists etc.

By day, MaMA suggests a conference program featuring over 450 international speakers and 150 panels, keynotes, workshops and matchmaking sessions. Music industry highlights will be covered such as: finance and values, marketing and communication, innovation and data, entrepreneurship, brands and media, international markets, publishing, cultural policies, synchro, creation and autoproduction.  

ADE 2021

October 13-17 – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) is an upfront, influential and educational gathering for electronic music and its industry. With its conference, festival and educational breeding ground, ADE is able to create not only the biggest yearly industry tent-pole moment, but also a solid foundation for future generations of electronic music professionals. The event attracts a total of more than 1,000 events in nearly 200 locations across its multidisciplinary program; for five days and nights, the city of Amsterdam truly breathes electronic music.

ADE’s conference program is a business and inspiration platform for the global electronic music industry, featuring dedicated programming for music professionals, aspiring DJs/producers and musicians, tech start-ups, brand- and marketing managers and much more.

A3C Festival & Conference 2021

October 22-24 – Atlanta, United States

Since its founding in 2005, Atlanta’s A3C Festival has become one of the most important hip-hop events of the year. During the day, industry professionals mix it up at the A3C conference with panels, live interviews, and special speakers, while at night the three stages at the festival grounds are lit up with talent.

Most Wanted: Music 2021

October 26-28 – Hybrid (Berlin, Germany)

Most Wanted: Music music business conference returns with its sights set firmly on #change. The conference is a hybrid online-offline event.

MW:M21 aims for its attendees to leave with the clarity needed to navigate the newly multifaceted industry. The conference is designed to help everyone understand the new possibilities in today’s music landscape, which changes should be made to leverage them – and how to develop those changes into a sustainable, creative, and satisfying career.

BIME PRO 2021

October 27-29 – Bilbao, Spain

The Bizkaia International Music Experience PRO (BIME PRO) is a Music and New Tech Conference in Spain.

The 9th edition of BIME PRO will be held at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao. This year the congress takes as its inspiration the figure of Apollo, the Greek god of poetry and music that has fed the sensitivity of the human being since the beginning of time, but also of reason and knowledge without which development would be unfeasible, healthy and sustainable culture.

WOMEX 2021

October 27-31 – Porto, Portugal

WOMEX – Worldwide Music Expo – is an international music meeting and conference of the global music scene, featuring a trade fair, talks, films and showcase concerts.

Over 2,500 professionals (including 260 performing artists) come together every October from 90 countries. Its musical spectrum is unparalleled in the international showcase festival scene, ranging from the most traditional to the new global local underground, embracing folk, roots, local and diaspora cultures and urban and electronic sounds from all over the globe as well as all musical juxtapositions of these.

Music Tech Conferences in November

Iceland Airwaves 2021

November 3-6 – Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland Airwaves Festival is the world’s most northerly music showcase and industry festival, situated halfway between North America and Europe. Iceland Airwaves brings together the country’s brightest emerging musical talent and forward-thinking international acts.

Each November for four days and nights, downtown Reykjavík comes alive, filled non-stop with music, with performances hosted everywhere from tiny record stores and art museums, to cool bars and stately churches, to nightclubs and large scale venues

KIKK Festival 2021

November 4-7 – Namur, Wallonia, Belgium

The KIKK Festival is an international festival of digital and creative cultures. Its interest lies in the artistic and economic implications of new technologies. The event gathers people of all backgrounds from all around the world. They are designers, scientists, makers, entrepreneurs, artists, architects, developers or musicians. They come to KIKK to tell their personal anecdotes, to share professional experiences and innovative ideas, to present an artwork, a project or a product.

Cover photo by Jonas Zürcher via Unsplash

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At Sesamers, we’re always looking to be the first to learn about the latest trends in the startup and tech events space. That’s why it feels like a privilege that Sesamers was invited by Olivia Hervy, chief ecosystem officer of VivaTech, to the exclusive kick-off VivaTech 2026, alongside key partners.  As Europe’s largest startup and tech event prepares for its 10th anniversary, scheduled for June 17-20, 2026 in Paris, being part of this circle of industry professionals gives us early insight into what promises to be VivaTech’s most ambitious edition yet, with significant expansions and new experiences that reflect a decade of growth and evolution. Major infrastructure expansions After calling Hall 1 and 2 at Porte de Versailles home for a decade, VivaTech 2026 is relocating to Hall 7, a new three-floor building that the event will occupy fully. The venue now features 30% more exhibition space across three floors; upgraded infrastructure; excellent internet connectivity, and a much larger business center. The building has 12 dedicated restaurant areas, providing ample dining options to better accommodate the growing crowds. The centerpiece is a brand new, 2,200-seat main stage where the event’s most significant announcements and keynotes will be held. Greater business focus Building on 2025’s  success (180,000 attendees, 14,000 startups), VivaTech 2026 introduces several business-focused improvements: Doubled innovation showcase The “Garden of Innovators” concept has been expanded upon, with organizers promising to double startup participation, product announcements, and exhibition surface area compared to previous editions.  Located on the first floor, the welcome area will showcase exemplars of innovation through the centuries to remind attendees of humanity’s continuous drive to invent and create. Germany takes center stage For 2026, Germany has been selected as the “Country of the Year,” and VivaTech will highlight the nation’s contributions to the European tech ecosystem with an eye towards strengthening Franco-German technological cooperation. Thematic villages  VivaTech 2026 introduces a new organizational approach: We have four dedicated thematic arenas, each of which features its own startup village and specialized programming: Each thematic village will feature startups building in those sectors, creating focused ecosystems where attendees can explore innovations that cross-pollinate within a concentrated area. Every theme features its own dedicated stage, which will host talks, panels, and presentations tailored to that sector. An additional Executive Arena will cater specifically to marketing and tech leaders, providing a hub for C-level discussions and strategic content. “Revolutions in Progress” VivaTech2026’s theme emphasizes ongoing technological revolutions, with particular focus on: Special anniversary experiences To mark the event’s 10th anniversary, VivaTech 2026 will feature several special events: Looking forward With its tagline, “VIVA LA REVOLUTION,” VivaTech 2026 positions itself not just as a retrospective celebration, but as the launch pad for the next decade of European tech innovation. The expanded format and new experiences point to how the event is evolving from a showcase into an increasingly sophisticated business platform for the global tech community. VivaTech 2026 builds on last year’s impressive satisfaction metrics (92% of exhibitors satisfied, 82% of attendees planning to return) while substantially expanding capacity and capabilities to serve the growing European tech ecosystem.

a wall of amplifiers
Events 2 days ago

Europe recorded €108 billion from exhibitions and events in 2024, according to UFI’s latest data. The continent welcomed 102 million visitors to over 2,000 certified exhibitions across 17 countries; Web Summit Lisbon set a record with 71,528 attendees in November 2024, making it the largest edition to date; and Stockholm’s Techarena secured just over €1 million from VC firm BackingMinds to expand internationally. By any reasonable measure, Europe’s events space has absolutely crushed the events game. End of story. Fin. However, from where I’m sitting, the elephant is still lurking quite comfortably in the room. At the risk of being ostracized, I’ll go ahead and ask the question: Why are some of the most innovative companies on the planet still schlepping to Austin for SXSW to make their biggest announcements (Salt Lick and Stubbs BBQ’s aside)? The room vs. the world Looking at the numbers: Europe’s events spark more meaningful connections per square meter than anywhere else on Earth. In 2025, VivaTech set records with 180,000 visitors, a 10% increase from a year earlier. MWC Barcelona authoritatively anchors a circuit stretching from Kigali to Las Vegas. The continent plays host to an estimated 32,000 exhibitions annually, generating 4.3 million full-time equivalent jobs. These are numbers you cannot take lightly. But walk into any European tech conference and you’ll witness something that should make every one of us reach for the Advil: major announcements received by something akin to a boisterous golf clap from 500 or so people. And that’s it. Those announcements then usually disintegrate into the digital ether, seemingly never to be heard of again. Meanwhile, across the pond, a throwaway tweet about the same topic has the potential to garner upwards of 50,000 shares and three podcast invitations faster than you can drink your morning coffee. But data and numbers don’t lie, and when it comes to events, they’re frankly embarrassing. Europe’s events sector processes roughly €108 billion, and is  extraordinarily efficient in bringing decision makers together in the same space.  European startups consistently struggle with what should be the easier bit: translating those promising conversations into sustained media coverage, investor attention and market validation. The great muppet caper Picture this scene playing out roughly 847 times per week across Europe: Monday: A Finnish startup leveraging AI presents a true breakthrough in supply chain management/optimization/operations to 200 logistics executives at a specialized track. The demo is genuinely impressive. The potential is genuinely massive. The audience is the very definition of target market. All the right pieces are in all the right places. Tuesday: Three tech publications publish brief summaries, perhaps even covering the entire conference, and not just the logistics breakthrough. The fledgling company’s LinkedIn post gets 47 likes (including the founders’ mothers, university mates, and the intern). A single podcast interview is scheduled for three weeks later. It may or may not happen. Wednesday: The story is now less alive than disco was on July 13, 1979. Look that one up, kids. Now let’s compare the same actions to the American playbook, which, if I’m honest, makes me simultaneously impressed and nauseous. The same company makes the announcement at a Bay Area-based event (yep, you know it as well as I do). It generates immediate response across a variety of channels from some  truly influential voices and some noise makers, but enough to garner the attention of major media (print, podcast, and pulp) outlets within 48 hours. It then spawns derivative content, and creates a sustained conversation that drives real, true, business development for the startup for weeks. The difference here isn’t the quality of the innovation; it’s how the messaging was amplified. Folks, you can hate me for saying this, but this is where Europe is getting schooled. There is no stopping in the Red Zone Take one look at today’s media landscape, and you’ll leave with a rather morbid impression. The problem isn’t structural fragmentation; it’s an endemic contraction. Leon may be growing, but European tech media is shrinking,  at precisely the wrong moment. A brief reminder: TechCrunch, long the go-to outlet for European startup coverage, quietly shut down its entire European operation in 2025 when private equity firm Regent LP acquired the publication.  Digital Frontier, the London-based tech publication that launched in early 2024 with a team of 20, “paused” operations just a few months ago, making all 16 staff members redundant.  Business Insider cut 21% of its staff in 2025, citing “extreme traffic drops” and AI disruption. Just days ago, we all found out that The Next Web, once one of Europe’s flagship tech conferences and media brands, was shutting down its events and media operations after nearly 20 years. The Financial Times, which bought TNW in 2019, confirmed it was winding down the business by the end of September following a “strategic review.” Conference attendance had dropped to 4,500 in 2025, less than half of pre-pandemic levels. The failure to capture content The folks at Black Unicorn PR earlier this year put together a guide that reveals something anyone working in European tech media already knows but pretends isn’t true: “Unlike the U.S., which has a few dominant tech media outlets and an emerging class of star indie writers, Europe hasn’t yet consolidated its practitioners’ knowledge in one place.” Stop and think about what that really means for a second. Sure, we’ve got strong regional players, and I salute Sifted, EU-Startups, and Tech.eu doing the do. But the lack of a unified amplification machinery, by definition, puts Europe at a disadvantage over Silicon Valley stories that are destined to be heard in Phuket faster than you can finish reading this sentence. To put it bluntly, European tech events suffer from content capture failure. The most valuable insights surface within conversations, at roundtable discussions, and networking sessions that generate no permanent content.  Unlike American events, which increasingly operate as content factories designed for social media amplification, European conferences optimize to create value in the room rather than post-event content distribution. All that

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