Optica's two-day executive summit, 16-17 June 2026 at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, held for the first time alongside the Optica Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition. The fifth edition brought quantum computing and quantum photonics companies together with the component suppliers and investors they depend on, and reported over 150 registered delegates including 17 CEOs and 10 CTOs.
The Optica Quantum Industry Summit is a two-day, executive-focused business meeting organised by Optica, the professional society for optics and photonics formerly known as OSA. Its purpose is to connect quantum computing and quantum photonics companies with the supply-chain firms whose parts they depend on (lasers, optics, photonic integrated circuits, detectors and cryogenic hardware) and with the investors funding the sector. The fifth edition ran 16-17 June 2026 at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow and was, for the first time, co-located with Optica's Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition. Optica reported over 150 registered delegates, among them 17 chief executives and 10 chief technology officers. Dates and host city for a sixth edition had not been published as of last verification.
Most quantum industry events are organised around computing modalities: superconducting versus trapped ion versus photonic, and which of them will reach fault tolerance first. This Summit is organised around the far less glamorous problem of what those machines are actually built from. Optica's framing is that quantum hardware companies are now hitting manufacturing constraints rather than physics constraints, and that the firms which make narrow-linewidth lasers, single-photon detectors, cryogenic feedthroughs and photonic integrated circuits are the bottleneck. The Summit is designed as the room where those two populations negotiate, with investors present as a third party.
That focus explains the size. At roughly 150 delegates it is one of the smallest fixtures on the European quantum calendar, and deliberately so: the format assumes a delegate arrives with a specific procurement, partnership or fundraising question rather than a general interest in the field.
The headline change in 2026 was structural. Optica ran the Summit alongside its own Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition at the same Glasgow venue, the first time the two have shared a location. Quantum 2.0 is the technical, research-facing side of Optica's quantum activity and carries an exhibition floor; the Summit is the commercial, executive side. Pairing them lets a supplier meet the engineers specifying components and the executives approving the purchase order on the same trip, which is the practical argument for the move.
| Quantum Industry Summit | Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition | |
|---|---|---|
| Character | Executive summit, business format | Technical conference with an exhibition floor |
| Dates in 2026 | 16-17 June 2026, 2 days | Not disclosed in the organiser material reviewed |
| Venue | Scottish Event Campus, Glasgow | Scottish Event Campus, Glasgow (co-located) |
| Priced access published | No per-delegate registration fee found | Exhibit space USD 2,925 (corporate member) to USD 3,400 (non-member) |
| Primary draw | Supply-chain and investment conversations | Research programme plus vendor exhibits |
| Reported segment | Fifth edition figure |
|---|---|
| Total registered delegates | Over 150 |
| Chief executives (CEO) | 17 |
| Chief technology officers (CTO) | 10 |
| Remaining delegate mix | Not broken out by the organiser |
The seniority ratio is the number worth noting. Twenty-seven C-level attendees in a room of roughly 150 is a materially higher concentration than a general quantum conference produces, and it is the clearest indicator of what the Summit is optimised for. Optica did not publish a breakdown of the remaining delegates by function or by company type.
| Category | Organisations represented |
|---|---|
| Quantum computing hardware | IonQ, Xanadu, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, planqc, ORCA Computing, QuiX Quantum, Nu Quantum |
| Quantum communications and security | Toshiba Europe, ID Quantique, QuSide |
| Research institutes and agencies | European Space Agency, Fraunhofer HHI |
| End users and adopters | HSBC, Boeing |
The roster spans both the photonic and non-photonic sides of quantum computing, which is consistent with a supply-chain agenda rather than a partisan one: a trapped-ion or neutral-atom machine needs precision lasers and optics just as much as a photonic processor does. The presence of HSBC and Boeing on the same programme as component makers is the adoption signal, and the European Space Agency's participation reflects quantum communications and sensing work rather than computing.
Six threads ran through the fifth edition:
The European quantum circuit has settled into recognisable roles, and this Summit occupies the narrowest and most industrial of them. EQTC, the Quantum Flagship's annual conference, is the policy and research assembly at roughly 1,100 delegates, seven times the size. Commercialising Quantum Global, also held in the UK, addresses enterprise adoption and dealmaking across the whole field. Q2B Copenhagen shares the hardware and commercial orientation but casts a wider net. Munich Quantum Software Forum is the software-side counterpart to what this event does for hardware and photonics. Anyone selling optical components into quantum systems, or buying them, has a stronger case for Glasgow than for any of the others; anyone tracking the field broadly has a weaker one.
Executives from quantum computing and quantum photonics companies, suppliers of the underlying hardware (lasers, optics, photonic integrated circuits, detectors, cryogenic equipment), and investors. Optica reported 17 CEOs and 10 CTOs among over 150 registered delegates at the fifth edition, so the room skews substantially more senior than a typical technical conference.
A business meeting. Technical content sits on the co-located Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition; the Summit itself is built around commercialisation, supply-chain partnership and investment. Delegates seeking peer-reviewed research results are attending the wrong half of the pairing.
Quantum 2.0 is Optica's research-facing conference and carries the exhibition floor, with published exhibit-space pricing. The Summit is the executive track with no published per-delegate fee and no exhibition of its own. In 2026 the two shared the Scottish Event Campus for the first time, which is why suppliers could reasonably plan a single trip covering both audiences.
The SEC sits on the north bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow, a campus combining the main exhibition halls, the SEC Armadillo auditorium and the OVO Hydro arena. Exhibition Centre railway station is on site with direct services to Glasgow Central, and Glasgow Airport is roughly fifteen minutes away by road. The campus routinely hosts events an order of magnitude larger than a 150-delegate summit, so capacity is not a constraint; the practical consideration is that the Summit occupies a small part of a large site and signage matters on arrival.
Optica is the professional society for optics and photonics, founded in 1916 as the Optical Society of America and renamed Optica in 2021. Its activity spans journals, technical conferences and industry programmes, and the quantum portfolio includes both the research-oriented Quantum 2.0 Conference and this commercially-oriented Summit. Running both gives Optica an unusual position: it convenes the researchers publishing on quantum photonics and the companies trying to manufacture it, and the 2026 co-location is the first attempt to put them under one roof on the same dates.
A small room by design: the one quantum meeting where the operative question is not how many qubits you have but who can supply the lasers, detectors and photonic chips to build them at volume.
Registration for the fifth edition closed with the event on 17 June 2026. Optica published no per-delegate registration fee for the Summit itself in the material reviewed, which is consistent with an executive format where attendance is arranged rather than sold openly; prospective delegates should approach Optica directly through the event page. Companies wanting a commercial presence in Glasgow bought exhibit space at the co-located Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition instead, priced at USD 2,925 for corporate members and USD 3,400 for non-members. No sixth-edition dates, venue or pricing had been announced as of last verification.
No public per-delegate registration fee was found for the Summit. The only published price point attached to the 2026 pairing is exhibit space at the co-located Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition: USD 2,925 for corporate members, USD 3,400 for non-members.
Not at the Summit itself, which has no exhibition floor. Exhibiting is done through the co-located Quantum 2.0 Conference and Exhibition, which is why suppliers targeting this audience should budget for exhibit space rather than for delegate badges.
Not disclosed. The fifth edition ran 16-17 June 2026 in Glasgow; Optica had not published dates or a host city for a sixth edition as of 18 August 2026.
| Official website | https://www.optica.org/events/industry_events/2026/optica_2026_quantum_industry_summit/ |
| Organiser | https://www.optica.org |
| Registration | not disclosed |
| Programme | not disclosed |
| not disclosed |