10 Conferences in California to attend in 2026

See 10 verified conferences in California in 2026, with dates, venues, and who should attend each one. Plan your calendar before seats fill up.
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California’s 2026 conference calendar is concentrated around the Bay Area and Southern California, with major events in Berkeley, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Huntington Beach, Anaheim, and the Redondo Beach area. The lineup spans AI, memory and storage, government technology, APIs, enterprise software, software testing, municipal leadership, higher education research, and Earth and space science.

If you’re tracking conferences in California this year, here are 10 publicly listed events running August through December 2026, verified against organizer or official event pages, in chronological order, with dates, venues, and who each one is built for.

Key Takeaways from Conferences in California

# Conference Date Location
1 Agentic AI Summit August 1-2, 2026 UC Berkeley
2 Future of Memory and Storage August 4-6, 2026 Santa Clara Convention Center
3 State and Local Government AI Summit August 19-20, 2026 Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach
4 API World September 1-3, 2026 Santa Clara Convention Center
5 Dreamforce September 15-17, 2026 Moscone Center, San Francisco
6 STARWEST September 20-25, 2026 Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim
7 League of California Cities Annual Conference & Expo September 23-25, 2026 Anaheim Convention Center
8 GitHub Universe October 28-29, 2026 Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
9 CAIR Conference October 28-30, 2026 Torrance Marriott, Redondo Beach
10 AGU26 Annual Meeting December 7-11, 2026 Moscone Center, San Francisco

1. Agentic AI Summit

Date: August 1-2, 2026

Location: UC Berkeley

Why attend:

  • The largest summit dedicated to Agentic AI, with 5,000+ in-person attendees
  • Sessions spanning foundation models, agent frameworks, and real-world deployment

Best for: AI researchers, engineers, and policymakers working on agentic systems.

2. Future of Memory and Storage

Date: August 4-6, 2026

Location: Santa Clara Convention Center

Why attend:

  • The world's largest independent memory and storage conference, marking its 20th anniversary
  • Sessions on DRAM, CXL, and AI-driven workload architectures

Best for: Hardware engineers, data center architects, and storage industry technologists.

3. State and Local Government AI Summit

Date: August 19-20, 2026

Location: Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach

Why attend:

  • Invitation-only gathering of state and local government CIOs and AI leaders
  • Sessions on building trust, managing risk, and upskilling staff on AI adoption

Best for: Government CIOs and AI leaders (invitation required to attend).

4. API World

Date: September 1-3, 2026

Location: Santa Clara Convention Center

Why attend:

  • The premier conference for APIs, microservices, and AI-driven integration
  • Three days of sessions on API design, security, and platform architecture

Best for: API developers, platform engineers, and integration architects.

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5. Dreamforce

Date: September 15-17, 2026

Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco

Why attend:

  • Salesforce's flagship event, historically drawing well over 100,000 attendees
  • Keynotes and 1,600+ sessions centered on Agentforce and the agentic enterprise

Best for: Salesforce administrators, CRM strategists, and enterprise IT leaders.

6. STARWEST

Date: September 20-25, 2026

Location: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim

Why attend:

  • One of the longest-running software testing and QA conferences in the industry
  • 75+ talks covering testing strategy, automation, and quality leadership

Best for: Software testers, QA engineers, and quality assurance leaders.

7. League of California Cities Annual Conference & Expo

Date: September 23-25, 2026

Location: Anaheim Convention Center

Why attend:

  • The ultimate gathering for California's municipal leaders and city officials
  • Breakout sessions on housing, homelessness, climate resilience, and public safety

Best for: Mayors, council members, city managers, and municipal senior staff.

8. GitHub Universe

Date: October 28-29, 2026

Location: Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

Why attend:

  • GitHub's flagship developer event, returning to its historic waterfront venue
  • Sessions on AI agents, Copilot, DevSecOps, and open source collaboration

Best for: Developers, engineering leads, and open source maintainers.

9. CAIR Conference

Date: October 28-30, 2026

Location: Torrance Marriott, Redondo Beach

Why attend:

  • Focused on data and institutional research in higher education
  • Pre-conference workshops plus three days of research-focused sessions

Best for: Institutional researchers, higher ed data analysts, and IR directors.

10. AGU26 Annual Meeting

Date: December 7-11, 2026

Location: Moscone Center, San Francisco

Why attend:

  • The largest gathering of Earth and space scientists, drawing 20,000+ attendees
  • Five days of research sessions spanning climate, geoscience, and space science

Best for: Earth and space scientists, researchers, and science policy professionals.

How Rozie Synopsis Helps California Conference Organizers Build Lasting Value

California’s conference calendar creates a common challenge for organizers: high-value session content often gets trapped in recordings, slide decks, and attendee notes after the event ends. Multi-session events like API World, Dreamforce, STARWEST, GitHub Universe, CAIR, and AGU26 all produce technical and strategic insights that can remain useful long after the closing session.

Rozie Synopsis is an event experience platform that addresses that gap directly. It captures live AV feeds from conference sessions, panels, and keynotes in real time and converts spoken content into structured post-event assets, so organizers have organized material to work from rather than raw recordings.

Here is what Rozie Synopsis delivers for California conference organizers:

  • Live session capture: Records spoken content from every panel, breakout, and keynote in real time, with no manual transcription required from the events team
  • Session summaries and key takeaways: Structured documentation ready for attendees, press, and sponsors within hours of the event closing, not days later
  • Track debriefs: Content organized by theme or programming track, giving organizers a clear picture of what sessions resonated and which topics to anchor the next edition around
  • Post Event Knowledge Hub: A centralized, searchable repository where every session, summary, and debrief lives together, so teams aren't digging through scattered files months later
  • AI Knowledge Advisor: A post-event tool that lets attendees query conference content after the event ends, extending engagement and keeping the conversation active between editions
  • AI Knowledge Studio: A dedicated workspace where marketing teams can generate blogs, newsletters, and social posts directly from structured session data

For technical events like Future of Memory and Storage, API World, STARWEST, and GitHub Universe, structured session capture helps preserve specialized terminology, speaker insights, and recurring themes. 

That content can support post-event engagement, sponsor ROI reporting, future programming decisions, and follow-up campaigns. For complex technical sessions, accurate AI transcription helps keep session knowledge usable after the closing session.

To see how Rozie Synopsis can support your California conference strategy, talk to the team.

Conclusion

California's 2026 calendar of conferences in California reflects a genuine concentration around the Bay Area and Anaheim, spanning AI research, hardware, government technology, enterprise software, software testing, municipal governance, developer tools, higher education research, and earth science. 

Whether you're attending, exhibiting, or sponsoring, these 10 events represent the strongest verified opportunities to connect with California's industry leaders this year. Book early, since the September and late-October clusters fill Bay Area and Anaheim hotels fast.

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Amy Portfield
By
Amy Portfield
July 7, 2026
Track session data you can actually use with Rozie Synopsis
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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the biggest conference in California in 2026?

Dreamforce is one of the largest conferences in California, historically drawing well over 100,000 attendees to San Francisco. The AGU26 Annual Meeting also draws over 20,000 Earth and space scientists.

When do most conferences in California take place in 2026?

Most major conferences on this list run between August and December 2026, with September being the busiest month. Two separate events also overlap in late October.

Which California city hosts the most conferences?

San Francisco hosts the most events on this list, including Dreamforce, GitHub Universe, and AGU26. Santa Clara and Anaheim each host two additional events.

How does Rozie Synopsis support attendees at conferences in California?

Rozie Synopsis captures live sessions and converts them into structured summaries attendees can revisit later, especially useful when California conferences overlap. Talk to us to learn more.

Can I attend the State and Local Government AI Summit without an invitation?

No. This event is invitation-only and open to public sector attendees only. Government CIOs and AI leaders can request an invitation directly through the event organizer.