Make a diary date for 13-14 May 2026, when we will be holding the tenth edition of NXT BLD, incorporating NXT DEV
It’s hard to believe that we have successfully staged no fewer than ten NXT BLD conferences. What began life as a one-day event for 200 attendees in the Foster+Partners-designed Great Court of the British Museum is now a two-day extravaganza that occupies the largest conference space available at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, London.
As always, we are exceptionally grateful to all of those who attend, give talks, exhibit and hang out in the evening, enjoying industry natter in various local inns. We realise our readers have very busy working lives, so every contribution is meaningful. Thanks also to Lenovo and its partners for providing the invaluable support in pulling this off on an annual basis.
The first thing we want to highlight is that NXT BLD 2026 will be held in May (13-14). In other words, it’s a month earlier than usual, due to venue availability.
Second, since it’s our tenth anniversary, we’ll be pulling out all the stops to ensure that this is our best NXT BLD ever – there’ll be more of everything, dialled up to 11, and some surprises along the way.
For NXT BLD 2026, we will occupy the third floor of the QEII, the venue’s premium area, featuring high ceilings and more space. With exhibition and catering facilities located on the same floor, there’ll be less running around and more opportunity for those serendipitous meetings and ad hoc conversations that are such an important part of the event.
As with any professional conference, we recognise that it’s the delegates who bring much of the value and NXT BLD is unique in that it brings together designers, technologists, AEC industry analysts and researchers and a wide cross-section of folks from the tech world, including those from start-ups, established vendors, venture capital (VC) firms and merger and acquisition (M&A) specialists.
In many respects, this is a major gathering of the AEC design industry, all in one place, for two days. Representatives of software firms want to hear what leading AEC firms are doing and VCs are all ears, too. NXT is a platform from which design firms get the chance to speak back to the tech industry and demand the tools and capabilities that they need. After all, it’s through this event that we championed the Future Design Software Shopping List and who could forget our Pricing, Licensing and Business Model discussion?
NXT isn’t just product demos – the sole raison d’etre of far too many BIM events, in our opinion. Nor is it just about startups. It’s about challenging the status quo, because frankly, certain aspects of how the software tools market has evolved deserve challenging.
Themes and variations
As NXT BLD evolved, we added a second day to directly address emerging BIM 2.0 developers and host some hard but necessary discussions that provide feedback to the industry on what needs to change.
We realise that this confuses some people, as we have previously marketed the two as separate events. Since the vast majority of delegates now come for the entire two days, we are calling the conference NXT BLD, but the NXT DEV day remains, with slightly different agendas on each day.
NXT BLD (day 1) offers a blend of practitioner’s workflow advances, interesting projects, technology and workstation hardware. NXT BLD 2026 will also have distinct architecture and construction streams, with some hybrid crossovers.
NXT DEV (day 2), meanwhile, looks further ahead, offering a blend of thought leadership, hard questions and panel discussions on gnarly topics. There’ll be advice on dealing with threats such as EULA metastasis and negotiating with your dealer/ vendor, along with best-practice deployment guidance from every corner of the tech industry.
NXT isn’t just product demos – the sole raison d’etre of far too many BIM events, in our opinion. Nor is it just about startups. It’s about challenging the status quo, because frankly, certain aspects of how the software tools market has evolved deserve challenging
In terms of hot topics for 2026, BIM 2.0 really stands out, especially as startups in this space begin to reach some level of maturity. These firms will be in he room and on hand for questions. Some, such as expert BIM developer HighArc, will be publicly presenting in the UK for the first time.
AI is bound to be another hot topic, as we hear from firms training their own models, incorporating AI into their workflows and using it to write in-house applications on demand. At the same time, we’ll also be addressing the likely cultural impact of AI on the AEC sector and the weaknesses (as well as the strengths) of AI-powered automation.
Now that autodrawing capabilities are starting to be delivered, for example, we’ll be looking at the many tools that are springing up and how they work. The promise here is that if drawing production from BIM can be automated to some degree, firms can save money and concentrate on building better models. But does that mean that the AEC industry can finally escape PDFs? Will pain points such as contracts and planning benefit from digitisation? We want to hear all views.
We believe data is going to be an increasingly big issue as we move forward. It shouldn’t be long before firms can really own their data, free of vendor’s constraints around file formats and APIs. With AI agents and data lake houses, a whole new world may open up, boosting our understanding of project data which, with injected intelligence, will be able to speak for itself.
In case you still need convincing, all past talks from previous NXT BLD and NXT DEV events are available to watch on our dedicated portal. You can browse by year, speaker, theme or discipline, making it easy for you to trace how ideas such as AI-driven design, robotics, digital fabrication, BIM 2.0, simulation and open data have evolved across the decade we have been running these conferences. You can even create your own playlists, revisit standout presentations that have shaped your thinking, share talks with colleagues or clients, and use the catalogue as a research tool when evaluating new technologies or preparing internal strategy decks.
So please save the dates for NXT BLD: 13-14 May 2026. We will be announcing speakers on www.NXTBLD.com as our agenda develops, as well as keeping you informed about ticket availability. We look forward to seeing you there.
Main image: Alfonso Monedero and Pablo Zamorano, Heatherwick Studio, delivering the keynote at NXT BLD 2025
