A two-day annual conference and exhibition held each autumn at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, gathering data engineers, architects, CDOs, and business leaders around data infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, now run by RX and repositioning toward enterprise decision-makers.
Big Data & AI Paris is an annual two-day trade fair dedicated to data engineering, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, held at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Created in 2012, it is France's largest open-format gathering for data and AI professionals. It combines an exhibition floor with conference tracks, technical sessions, and structured business meetings, drawing a mixed audience of IT decision-makers, data scientists, architects, and business leaders. Since its acquisition by RX (Reed Exhibitions), the 2026 edition is repositioning from a broad open-access show toward a more qualified enterprise-decision-maker audience. It sits within the AI and Data circuit tracked by Events Index.
The 2026 edition of Big Data & AI Paris takes place on 15 and 16 September at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. The organiser projects 15,000 participants, 200 exhibitors and sponsors, 300 speakers, and 350 conferences and workshops. The event announces a deliberate strategic shift for 2026: after a 2025 edition described by the organiser as reaching a broad general audience, the show is refocusing on enterprise decision-makers, with a stated ambition to double the number of qualified visitors from large organisations and to multiply the size of enterprise delegations by two to three. Salon director Émilie Pierre-Desmonde framed the pivot in the organiser's launch communication: "Enterprise AI is entering a new phase: that of execution."
The most concrete signal of this repositioning is a move away from the fully open-access model of prior years. RX has introduced paid visitor access for 2026 as an audience-qualification mechanism, alongside a reinforced matchmaking platform for one-to-one meetings. This positions the 2026 show closer to a curated professional event than the free-entry expo it had been.
Until recently, Big Data & AI Paris was owned and produced by Corp Events, the French organiser behind a portfolio that also included Big Data & AI Toronto, the World AI Cannes Festival, and Quantum Business Europe. RX (Reed Exhibitions), one of the largest events groups globally, acquired Corp Events to expand its technology-sector portfolio, and Big Data & AI Paris now runs under the RX name. The acquisition explains the 2026 repositioning: RX applies its qualification, matchmaking, and delegation-building playbook to what had been a free-entry French trade fair. For attendees tracking the wider circuit, the same ownership change now links Big Data & AI Paris to the World AI Cannes Festival, previously a Corp Events sibling event.
The 2026 edition adds several zones and formats aimed at the enterprise-industrialisation theme:
September is a dense month on the European tech and AI events calendar, with Paris Expo Porte de Versailles acting as a regular anchor for large-format professional gatherings. The 2025 edition ran on 1 and 2 October; the 2026 edition moves earlier, to mid-September, occupying the return-from-summer window when Q4 budget conversations open. For data and AI professionals in France, this timing places the show ahead of the October and November cluster of infrastructure and enterprise-technology events, and roughly nine months after the Cannes and spring fixtures on the same AI and Data circuit.
The programme is organised around three declared editorial tracks:
The 2026 direction is set by an advisory board of enterprise data and AI executives, including Chafika Chettaoui (Chief Data & AI Officer, AXA France), Caroline Chopinaud (CEO, Hub France IA), Isabel Gomez Garcia de Soria (Group Transformation Value Officer, L'Oréal), Claire Mathieu (Director Data & AI, Suez), Frédéric Pascal (Director, Institut DataIA, Université Paris-Saclay), and Aldrick Zappellini (Chief Data & AI Officer, Crédit Agricole Group). Enterprise speakers announced for 2026 include Assyl Louahadj (Airbus), Jean-François Guilmard (Accor), Juliette Mattioli (Thales), Samia Boujatioui (Coface), and Stéphane Allaire (Bouygues Telecom).
For 2026, the organiser projects around 200 exhibitors and sponsors. Named sponsors published on the official site are organised by tier: Safe Software (strategic), then Dremio, Google Cloud, Square Management, and Suadeo (gold), with Progress, Kong, and Popsink among the lower tiers. The exhibition is positioned to bring together major technology groups, data and AI pure players, specialist consultancies, training providers, and startups, with a startup zone reserved for early-stage companies.
Coverage of Big Data & AI Paris concentrates in the French tech and specialist press rather than general-interest business media, and in 2025 split along three angles:
The organiser does not publicly disclose accredited-journalist counts or media-request volumes.
The 2026 edition is structured for enterprise decision-makers at the intersection of data infrastructure and business transformation. CDOs, CIOs, and CTOs are the priority audience, using the reinforced meeting programme for vendor evaluation and peer benchmarking. Data engineers and architects benefit from the Modern Data Architecture track. The exhibition floor suits buyers in active procurement cycles. The breadth of the programme, spanning technical, strategic, and regulatory content, means that attendees with a defined objective (a procurement decision, a benchmark, a speaker platform) tend to extract more value than generalist visitors.
The main change is a deliberate shift away from the free-entry, broad-audience model toward a qualified enterprise audience. RX has introduced paid visitor access as a qualification mechanism, added an advisory board of enterprise data leaders, and set an ambition to double qualified visitors from large organisations and grow enterprise delegations two- to threefold. New zones (Advanced Computing Village, Talent Hub, SME Support Hub) support this industrialisation theme. The event also moved from early October in 2025 to mid-September in 2026.
Five profiles for whom the event is a poor fit:
Both. The Modern Data Architecture track targets engineers and architects with infrastructure-level content. The Data & AI for Business track addresses business leaders and transformation managers. The Governance & Regulation track serves compliance officers, legal teams, and public-sector professionals. Attendees self-select by track; the event does not separate technical and business audiences into different access tiers.
Paris Expo Porte de Versailles is one of the largest exhibition and convention complexes in Europe, located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris near the Boulevard Périphérique. The site hosts trade fairs, consumer shows, and professional congresses throughout the year, with multiple pavilions capable of accommodating exhibitions of tens of thousands of square metres alongside conference halls of varying capacity. The 2025 edition was held in Pavilion 3. For Big Data & AI Paris, the venue supports simultaneous conference tracks, a large exhibition floor, and meeting zones within a single connected site. The Porte de Versailles and Balard metro stations (line 12) provide direct access from central Paris, and the site is reachable by car via the Périphérique.
Big Data & AI Paris is organised by RX (Reed Exhibitions), one of the largest events groups globally and part of RELX. RX acquired Corp Events, the French organiser that created and ran the show since 2012, along with sibling events including Big Data & AI Toronto, the World AI Cannes Festival, and Quantum Business Europe. The salon is directed by Émilie Pierre-Desmonde. RX's involvement brings the group's qualification, matchmaking, and delegation-building methods to an event that had previously operated as a free-entry French trade fair, which is the direct cause of the 2026 repositioning toward enterprise decision-makers.
Big Data & AI Paris is France's largest-format annual gathering for data and AI professionals, and its 2026 edition marks a genuine pivot: under new RX ownership, it is trading open-access scale for qualified enterprise attendance, adding paid entry, an executive advisory board, and delegation-building formats. The open question is whether that qualification holds up in practice or whether the show remains, in effect, a broad national expo with a decision-maker label; either way it is now better read as a vendor-evaluation and benchmarking venue than as the closed, high-density peer exchange senior executives find elsewhere on the AI and Data circuit.
For 2026, Big Data & AI Paris moves to a paid visitor-access model, a change from the free-entry model of prior editions, introduced by RX to qualify the audience. Registration is available through the official website at bigdataparis.com. Specific ticket prices and tier structure were not published on the site as of verification; an Early Bird window is referenced but not priced. The reinforced matchmaking and structured business-access programme involves an application reviewed by the organiser before confirmation. Prospective attendees should consult the official website directly for current pricing.
Not for 2026. RX has introduced paid visitor access as an audience-qualification measure, a change from the free-entry model of earlier editions. The exact price was not published on the official site as of verification. This is one of the clearest markers of the 2026 repositioning toward enterprise decision-makers.
Big Data & AI Paris 2026 takes place at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris, France. The 2025 edition was held in Pavilion 3; the specific pavilion for 2026 was not published as of verification. The address is confirmed against the official event website at bigdataparis.com.
The reinforced matchmaking programme involves pre-scheduling of prioritised meetings, and applications are reviewed by the organiser. No specific deadline for meeting-programme applications was published for the 2026 edition. An Early Bird window is referenced, indicating that registration opens well ahead of the September dates.
As of 7 July 2026, the organiser has announced around 300 speakers and confirmed an advisory board plus an initial set of enterprise speakers, including figures from Airbus, Accor, Thales, Coface, and Bouygues Telecom. The full session-level programme, specific stage allocations, and complete speaker roster were not yet fully published as of verification.
| Official website | https://www.bigdataparis.com/ |
| Register | https://www.bigdataparis.com/ |
| Speakers page | https://www.bigdataparis.com/fr-fr/programme/les-speakers.html |
| AI and Data circuit (Events Index) | /ai-circuit.html |
| Upcoming EMEA events (Events Index) | /upcoming.html |