The IT channel conference run by Canalys, now part of Omdia, whose 19th EMEA edition took place on 6 to 8 October 2026 at the W Barcelona under the theme "Inflection Point", with 1,000+ executives reported by the trade press; no later edition is announced.
Canalys Forums EMEA is the annual channel conference where technology vendors, distributors, resellers, managed service providers and integrators meet. Canalys, the analyst firm behind it, is now part of Omdia within Informa. Dutch IT Channel calls it the "Davos of the IT channel". The 2026 edition was the 19th European one. It is analyst-led and independent, with no large exhibition floor, and its centre is pre-scheduled one-to-one meetings. For the Sales Stack it is the reference room for partner relationship management, even though the conference does not sell the software.
The 2026 edition ran from 6 to 8 October 2026 (Dutch IT Channel event listing; the opening-day report is dated 7 October 2026). No 2027 EMEA date was found. It was held at the W Barcelona hotel in Barcelona, Spain, per Dutch IT Channel.
Canalys, which is now part of Omdia within Informa (organiser listing). The EMEA contact named in 2025 materials was Kelly Wheeler; no 2026 contact was captured.
Dutch IT Channel reported more than 1,000 senior executives from EMEA, including leaders of managed service providers, resellers, system integrators, ISVs, distributors and channel heads. An earlier organiser listing recorded in the index claims 2,500+ senior channel executives (unverifiable information), and a third-party listing gives about 500 delegates; the figures conflict.
The 2026 theme is "Inflection Point". Dutch IT Channel lists the key themes as managed service provider transformation including AI agents taking over routine management, data sovereignty in EMEA under European regulation, and sustainable IT and lowering the carbon footprint of data-centre infrastructure. AI adoption and cybersecurity also feature in the coverage.
The programme combined market forecasts and vendor strategy sessions, independent analyst content, and one-to-one meetings arranged through the Canalys Event App. Omdia analysts named in the coverage are Rachel Lashford (opening speaker), Alastair Edwards, Jay McBain, Rachel Brindley, Ben Caddy, Matthew Ball and Robin Ody. Senior figures from Google Cloud, Microsoft and TD SYNNEX also spoke.
Formats on record: analyst keynotes and sessions, vendor and distributor strategy talks, and pre-scheduled one-to-one meetings. There is no large exhibition floor.
None found in the sources checked. The wider Canalys tour continued in Scottsdale for the United States and ends in Bali in December for Asia Pacific (Dutch IT Channel).
Not publicly disclosed. The organiser's pages could not be read directly, and the third-party listings checked give no price.
Not publicly disclosed. Content is programmed by Canalys and Omdia analysts and invited vendor and distributor executives.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources reached. Sponsors at past editions were vendors at keynote and partner level (a 2016 announcement named Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP and Lenovo, which is too old to describe 2026).
Not publicly disclosed. No 2026 sponsor list was found; the coverage names speakers from Google Cloud, Microsoft and TD SYNNEX but not their sponsor status.
Managed service providers, resellers, system integrators, ISVs, distributors and international channel heads, per Dutch IT Channel. No share by company type is published.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources reached.
Dutch IT Channel reported on site from Barcelona (articles of 7 and 8 October 2026 and an event listing of 27 February 2026), and Computer Weekly and ChannelPartner have covered Canalys analyses and earlier editions. Dutch IT Channel is a trade outlet; it is not recorded as a media partner of this event.
The Dutch IT Channel reports are independent on-site accounts but carry few figures. The organiser's own attendance claim conflicts with the 1,000+ they report, and the third-party listing gives about 500.
Buyers of CRM and sales software who are not in the IT channel will find a partner-business agenda. Vendors without channel partners get little from the one-to-one format, and there is no vendor floor to compare tools.
It is the channel entry of the October cluster, after Forrester's B2B Forum EMEA (28 and 29 September) and before TechSolutions and Salesforce's London stop in mid-October. It is the reference room for partner relationship management, which has no EMEA event of its own.
The EMEA forum has moved between Barcelona and Berlin: Barcelona in 2023, 2025 and 2026, Berlin in 2024 (trade press listings). Canalys also runs forums in the United States (Scottsdale) and Asia Pacific (Bali).
English, per the English-language coverage. The organiser does not state the language on the pages reached.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources reached.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources reached.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources reached.
The 2026 forum was held at the W Barcelona hotel. No transport details were captured, and the next venue is not announced.
It matters because it is where the vendor, distributor and reseller network that partner software manages meets once a year. Jay McBain of Omdia says the point is that executives can meet the core of their market in one trip and lock in deals for the coming year, which makes the one-to-one meetings, not the stage, the product.
The attendance range is wide: the organiser's earlier 2,500+, the trade press's 1,000+ and a listing's 500 cannot all be right, and none is audited. A reader should use 1,000 as the working figure and ask the organiser for the badge count.
Official page: https://omdia.tech.informa.com/summits-and-conferences/canalys-forums (could not be fetched directly on 31 October 2026). Trade coverage: https://www.dutchitchannel.nl/.