A Dresden conference now in its second year: a debut of 970 people in October 2025 has grown into a September 2026 edition built around four stages, five parallel masterclass rooms and a 100-plus speaker roster, anchored in the Silicon Saxony semiconductor region.
Brains on Silicon is a B2B conference for applied artificial intelligence held in Dresden, Germany, organised by CONFGAMES. The 2026 edition runs 14 to 15 September at the International Congress Centre Dresden (ICD), built around a stage programme, an expo, a startup area and masterclasses, under the stated theme of closing the implementation gap between generative AI's potential and what companies actually deploy. The conference is not a long-running fixture: it debuted in October 2025 and 2026 is only its second edition, held one month earlier in the calendar than the first.
14 to 15 September 2026, two consecutive days (a Monday and a Tuesday). International Congress Centre Dresden (ICD), Ostra-Ufer 2, 01067 Dresden, on the Elbe riverfront in the city centre. As of this verification, three days before the event, the official site, the ticket shop and independent regional coverage all confirm the dates without any notice of postponement or cancellation. The inaugural edition ran 22 to 23 October 2025 at the same venue: the 2026 edition is not annual-by-track-record yet, it is the second time the event has happened, and it moved a month earlier on the calendar.
CONFGAMES GmbH, registered in Dresden at the Amtsgericht Dresden commercial register under HRB35452, address Weißeritzstraße 3, 01067 Dresden, VAT number DE306297876. The imprint names Stefan Queißer as responsible for content; he is quoted in the organiser's own recap of the first edition describing the response as "overwhelming" and stating the event would continue as a permanent platform for the German and European AI community. General enquiries go to event@brainsonsilicon.com; the person named on the imprint is reachable at queisser@brainsonsilicon.com. CONFGAMES runs the event; Silicon Saxony, the regional semiconductor association, appears as one of several partners rather than as a co-organiser of record.
The organiser's own 2026 homepage states 1,500-plus expected participants: a forward target for the second edition, not a count. The only measured audience figure on record is from the October 2025 debut, where the organiser's recap page states 970 attendees, 66.4 percent of them in a decision-making role (founder, owner or CEO 32.8 percent; manager or executive 33.6 percent; specialist 26.7 percent; student or intern 6.9 percent) and about 57 percent with a direct or structural connection to AI in their role. Contemporaneous press coverage of the 2025 edition (Oiger, 31 October 2025) reported roughly 600 attendees (unverifiable information), a lower figure than the organiser's own 970 that this pass could not reconcile. No independently audited attendance figure exists for either edition.
The official site's "Alle bestätigten Speaker:innen" (all confirmed speakers) page lists a published roster matching the homepage's claim of 100-plus speakers; 115 names were readable on the page at the time of this check. Names with role and, where the page states it, employer:
This is a published roster, not a research record: the site labels it "all confirmed speakers." The opening slot on Stage 1 on 14 September is Dirk Panter, Thuy-Ngan Trinh (A11) and Roman Howe (Anthropic), per the published programme. A further small number of named panellists appear only inside individual session descriptions on the programme page (for example Roman R. Rüdiger of Anthropia, or Christoph Schröck of IBM) and are not separately listed on the speakers page; they are not repeated here to avoid double-counting against the page's own total.
Three changes against the October 2025 debut. The calendar slot moves: from 22-23 October 2025 to 14-15 September 2026, a month earlier. Scale roughly doubles on every organiser-published metric: speakers from 65-plus to 100-plus, sessions from 58-plus to a stated 126 programme points, masterclasses from 13-plus to five parallel masterclass rooms running across both days, and the target audience from a measured 970 in 2025 to a stated 1,500-plus target for 2026. The stage count is published as "four stages" for the core conference programme (Hauptbühne, Agentic Workflows, Human + AI Partnership, Learning with AI/Sovereign AI); together with the five masterclass rooms that run in parallel, that is where the homepage's separate claim of nine stages comes from. Corporate weight also changed: the 2026 partner roster adds a Premium Partner tier (Deutsche Telekom, SAP, Infineon) not present as a named tier in the 2025 materials reviewed for this pass.
Two days, four stages, organised loosely around seven themes the organiser calls strategic pillars for 2026: agentic workflows, human and AI partnership, sovereign AI, silicon and AI (the hardware layer), physical AI, learning with AI, and concrete use cases. Day one opens at 09:30 with a keynote slot featuring Saxony's state minister Dirk Panter alongside speakers from A11 and Anthropic, then runs parallel 25 to 45-minute talks across the four stages until an evening event from 18:00 to 22:00, with a reception hosted by the Saxon state ministry for economics (SMWA) around 18:15. Recurring content on day one includes talks from Deutsche Telekom MMS, SAP LeanIX, Otto Group, TU Dresden and Silicon Saxony on topics spanning AI governance, agentic AI in enterprise settings, and applied research. The organiser's own figure for the full programme is 126 programme points; sessions were curated through the closed call for presentations (see below) rather than published as an open schedule until close to the event.
Talks on the four main stages run mostly 25 minutes, with some 30, 45 or even 90-minute sessions and panel discussions. In parallel, five masterclass rooms (Masterclass 1, 2, 3/"Mega Class", 4/"Open AI Class" and a "Masterclass Lab") run hands-on sessions of 60 to 90 minutes, described by the organiser as "practice instead of stage: small groups, dedicated rooms, hands-on." Masterclasses are included in the conference ticket, not sold separately, but seats are limited and booked first-come-first-served inside the event app (LineUpr) from 10:00 on Tuesday 8 September 2026. A Startup Area runs a pitch competition; twelve selected startups each get a one-minute introductory video and a main-stage pitch slot. An expo/exhibition floor runs throughout both days alongside the stage and masterclass programme.
Recorded for 2026: the Startup Area with pitches and prizes for twelve selected startups; a Networking Party on the evening of 14 September, published on the programme grid from 18:00 to 22:00; a reception hosted by the Saxon state ministry for economics (SMWA) around 18:15 on the same evening; and an expo area running throughout both conference days. The organiser also offers a 15 percent discount on rooms at the Maritim Hotel, which is connected to the ICD venue, through a dedicated booking link. No separate matchmaking platform or pre-scheduled one-to-one meeting system is documented.
Published prices, all including 19 percent German VAT, current in the official ticket shop as of this verification. Two-day ticket: EUR 439. Group ticket for five or more people, two days: EUR 329 per person, a discount against the EUR 439 standard rate. Speaker Lounge ticket, two days plus speaker-lounge access, priority masterclass booking, front-row seating and reserved parking: EUR 999, with the shop showing 17 remaining at the time of this check, a live stock figure that will move before the event. Single-day ticket for either 14 or 15 September 2026: EUR 279 per day. All tickets include both stage access and the masterclass programme; there is no separate masterclass ticket. Tickets are delivered as PDF and Apple Wallet (.pkpass) files; a single-day ticket can be upgraded to a two-day ticket by emailing event@brainsonsilicon.com with the booking number. Bank transfer is accepted alongside card payment. No early-bird or "summer special" pricing was found on the current shop; an earlier verification of this fiche recorded a "EUR 100 summer special," which is no longer on the live site and is not repeated here.
Through the call for presentations at sessionize.com/brains-on-silicon, closed for the 2026 edition since 2 September 2026, 23:59 (Western European time). The organiser states a preference for concrete implementation cases and business experience reports over forward-looking or hype-oriented talks, spanning software, manufacturing and public-sector use cases, and covering both technical delivery and the human side of AI adoption (culture, change management, future skills). No published date for a 2027 call was found. A separate, still-documented route is the startup pitch competition: twelve places on the Startup Area stage, selected by the organiser rather than through the general CFP.
There is no published rate card or sponsorship prospectus. The partner page's call to action is "Sichtbar werden auf der BOS26: Sponsoren- und Ausstellerpakete anfordern" (get visible at BOS26: request sponsor and exhibitor packages), linking to a contact section on the homepage rather than to public pricing. General enquiries go to event@brainsonsilicon.com. What is visible from the published roster are the tiers themselves: Premium Partner, exhibitor, media partner, plus a set of in-kind or affiliate categories (conference hotel, mobility partner, recovery partner, network and community partner) that read as relationship or barter arrangements rather than paid packages.
The full published roster, by tier, as of this verification (additional names in several tiers are flagged "coming soon" on the site itself, so this list is not necessarily final).
Premium Partner: Deutsche Telekom, SAP, Infineon.
Exhibitors: Aithoria, Battke Grünberg, clicks digital, Datom, Deutsche Telekom, ExciteLab, fastbreak.one, Fraunhofer IAIS, Fraunhofer IIS, NFON, Otto Group one.O, PDV Systeme Sachsen, plusserver, publizer, queo next, SAB Sachsen, ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig, Sellium AI, Silicon Saxony, SKR (Smarte KI-basierte Robotik), SMWA Sachsen, TIQ Solutions, TÜV TRUST IT, Ujamii.
Media partners, carrying the label at every mention in this page: Knitterfisch (media partner), Wirtschaft in Sachsen (media partner), Die Sachsen News (media partner), TAG24 (media partner).
Conference hotel: Maritim Hotel & Internationales Congress Center Dresden.
Mobility partner: Porsche Zentrum Dresden.
Recovery partners: BLACKROLL, VIMODROM.
Network and community partners: Black Mountain, Silicon Saxony, Jonas Greif, ostec, KI Netzwerk Dresden, The Saxonz, brähler, GlobalFoundries, LineUpr, elevait, imaos, Cloud & Heat Technologies.
This is substantially larger than the five-name sponsor list previously on record for this fiche (KI Netzwerk Dresden, ostec, Cloud & Heat, elevait, Silicon Saxony), which covered only the network and community partner tier and missed the Premium Partners, the exhibitors, the media partners and the hotel, mobility and recovery categories entirely.
Not published for the 2026 edition specifically. The only audience breakdown the organiser has released is from the October 2025 debut, on the recap page: of 970 attendees, 32.8 percent founders, owners or CEOs, 33.6 percent managers or executives, 26.7 percent specialists and 6.9 percent students or interns, with industry coverage described as spanning software, manufacturing, healthcare, public administration, startups and research. That figure describes the debut audience, not a confirmed 2026 composition, and it is self-reported by the organiser rather than independently surveyed. What can additionally be observed from the 2026 sponsor and speaker rosters is a concentration of Saxony public-sector and regional-network organisations (the state ministries for economics and for science, TU Dresden, Silicon Saxony, KI Netzwerk Dresden) alongside national and international corporates (Deutsche Telekom, SAP, Infineon, Vodafone, Otto Group) and AI vendors (OpenAI, Anthropic represented through go-to-market staff rather than research staff).
Through the accreditation form at brainsonsilicon.com/presse-akkreditierung, which accepts up to three people per request and asks for name, email, company or outlet, and role (photographer, editor or videographer). The organiser states review takes under one working day; approved applicants receive tickets for both conference days by email. No named press contact person is given on that page; general enquiries go to event@brainsonsilicon.com. A press kit is published at brainsonsilicon.com/press-kit; its contents were not reviewed in detail for this pass.
No coverage from a national outlet with a named byline was found for either edition. What exists is regional technology press and listings: two pieces on the Dresden technology site Oiger (15 and 31 October 2025, covering the announcement and a wrap-up of the 2025 debut), an announcement article on IT-BOLTWISE, an independent agency recap on zebra.de written from an attendee's perspective, a personal recap on zoellner-office.de, and a review-style listing on campixx.de. Regional economic-development bodies (Wirtschaftsförderung Sachsen / standort-sachsen.de, business-saxony.com) and Silicon Saxony's own events page also list the conference. Among the organiser's own media partners, coverage carrying the label at every mention would be Knitterfisch (media partner), Wirtschaft in Sachsen (media partner), Die Sachsen News (media partner) and TAG24 (media partner), though this pass did not locate a specific published article from each of the four for the 2026 edition.
Sorted into the four usual levels. Placed coverage: anything from Knitterfisch (media partner), Wirtschaft in Sachsen (media partner), Die Sachsen News (media partner) or TAG24 (media partner) is a partnership arrangement, not independent editorial judgement. Independent but promotional: the Oiger pieces and the IT-BOLTWISE announcement are third-party regional tech press that corroborate dates, venue and theme, largely restating organiser material rather than reporting independently. Predictable and unconfirmed: the zebra.de and zoellner-office.de recaps are written by people with a commercial or professional interest in AI marketing and design, describing their own attendance rather than reporting as journalists. Organiser-claimed without proof: the 2025 attendance figure of 970, the 2026 target of 1,500-plus, and the speaker and programme-point counts (100-plus, 126) all come from the organiser's own site with no independent audit found; the 2025 figure is additionally contradicted by a lower press estimate of roughly 600, which this pass could not resolve either way.
Readers looking for a large, internationally established AI conference with a multi-year track record: this is a second edition, with 970 measured attendees at its 2025 debut against a 1,500-plus target that has not yet been tested. Non-German speakers uncomfortable in a majority-German-language room: most published session titles and speaker bios are in German, and no interpretation service is documented. Anyone needing a confirmed programme far in advance: the call for presentations only closed on 2 September 2026, less than two weeks before the event, so the final published schedule was locked late. Researchers looking for foundational AI research content: the organiser's own framing, "closing the implementation gap," and its curated CFP criteria favour business and deployment case studies over research-stage work.
It is a regional, Saxony-anchored fixture rather than a pan-European one: both editions to date have run in Dresden, built around the Silicon Saxony semiconductor and microelectronics network (Infineon, GlobalFoundries and Silicon Saxony's 700-plus member companies are all named as partners or exhibitors for 2026). That distinguishes it from larger developer- and software-first AI conferences that draw an international circuit audience: this event's roster and sponsor list lean toward German corporates, regional public bodies and Saxony research institutes, with international names such as OpenAI, Anthropic and You.com present through individual speakers rather than as anchor exhibitors. Events Index tracks it in the edge and developer AI circuit because its 2026 pillars (silicon and AI, physical AI, agentic workflows) sit at the hardware and implementation layer, but a reader coming from a large international AI trade show should expect a smaller, more regionally concentrated room.
No. Both editions on record, the October 2025 debut and the September 2026 edition, have run at the same venue, the International Congress Centre Dresden. No other city, an online-only edition, or a spin-off event under the Brains on Silicon name was found.
Primarily German. Most published 2026 session titles, speaker bios and the site itself are in German, but a share of talks, particularly those led by international speakers such as Anthropic's Roman Howe or OpenAI's Sarah Kemether, are titled and appear to run in English. No page states an interpretation service, and no page sets out which individual sessions run in which language. Not publicly disclosed beyond that.
No. No livestream, remote-attendance option or session recording has been announced for the 2026 edition; the FAQ, the ticket shop and the programme page describe an in-person-only event. The 2025 recap page offers a short highlight video of the debut, published after the fact, but this is promotional material, not a replay of sessions.
Not publicly disclosed. No refund, cancellation or transfer policy text was found on the official site, the FAQ or the ticket shop's visible pages during this pass. The shop does surface a generic "Vertrag widerrufen" (withdraw contract) link behind a session-specific redirect, consistent with standard German e-commerce checkout software, but under German law tickets for a dated leisure event are typically exempt from the statutory 14-day withdrawal right, so the presence of that link does not by itself establish a refund entitlement. The FAQ documents only a ticket upgrade path (single-day to two-day, by emailing event@brainsonsilicon.com with the booking number), not a cancellation or refund process.
Not publicly disclosed. No accessibility statement was found on the official Brains on Silicon site, and this pass could not locate a working accessibility page on the ICD venue's own site to check step-free access, accessible toilets or parking separately from the organiser.
Ostra-Ufer 2, 01067 Dresden, on the Elbe riverfront in the city centre. By long-distance rail, the organiser's FAQ points to Dresden Neustadt station. By local transit, tram line 11 reaches the "Kongresszentrum/Haus der Presse" stop (about 6 minutes' walk) or "Bahnhof Mitte" (about 11 minutes' walk). Parking is available at the ICD and Maritim Hotel car park (EUR 20 per day, about 3 minutes' walk) or at the Ostrastraße Elbe car park (EUR 5 per day, about 6 minutes' walk).
The clearest reason is that Brains on Silicon has almost no track record to lean on yet. A conference that had run five or ten times could publish a forward target and a reader could sanity-check it against history; here the only prior data point is a single debut in October 2025, itself reported inconsistently between the organiser's own 970 and a lower press estimate of around 600. Scaling every other published number by roughly the same factor, speakers from 65-plus to 100-plus, sessions from 58-plus to 126, masterclasses from 13-plus to five parallel rooms, reads less like measured growth and more like a single, coordinated round of marketing claims for a second edition. None of that makes the 2026 figures false; it means a reader should treat them as a target, not a count, until the event has actually happened.
Official site: https://brainsonsilicon.com/. Tickets: https://shop.brainsonsilicon.com/. Programme: https://brainsonsilicon.com/programm. Masterclasses: https://brainsonsilicon.com/masterclasses. Speakers: https://brainsonsilicon.com/speakers. Partners and exhibitors: https://brainsonsilicon.com/partner. 2025 recap: https://brainsonsilicon.com/recap2025. Call for presentations (closed for 2026): https://sessionize.com/brains-on-silicon/. Press accreditation: https://brainsonsilicon.com/presse-akkreditierung. Press kit: https://brainsonsilicon.com/press-kit. General contact: event@brainsonsilicon.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brainsonsilicon/. Instagram: @brainsonsilicon. X: @SiliconSaxony. Hashtag: #BrainsonSilicon.