Markets Group's two-day education forum in London covering secondaries, growth investing, operational excellence, and AI in PE – with complimentary access for qualified LPs and GPs.
The Private Equity Europe Forum is a two-day practitioner conference held annually in London and organised by Markets Group. Now in its ninth edition, the forum brings together fund managers, institutional investors, family offices, and advisory professionals to examine the structural and strategic forces shaping European private equity. Its programme centres on education and peer-to-peer benchmarking rather than formal LP-GP matchmaking.
Markets Group is a US-based conference organiser that runs a dense calendar of investor-focused forums across private equity, real estate, private wealth, and institutional asset management. Its events are positioned as working-level gatherings: moderate in size, content-heavy, and designed to give practitioners structured access to peers and emerging themes. The Private Equity Europe Forum is its flagship European PE event, running since at least 2018.
Against the circuit's larger events, the positioning is deliberate. SuperReturn International draws 4,000 attendees and functions as a fundraising summit where GP-LP relationship management is the primary activity. IPEM Paris operates at a similar scale with a strong deal-flow orientation. The Private Equity Europe Forum sits well below that register: 500-plus delegates, two days, and a programme built around content tracks rather than networking schedules. The education-first angle suits practitioners who want substantive discussion on themes such as secondaries liquidity, growth investing, and AI adoption rather than back-to-back partner meetings.
The choice of London as the permanent host reflects the city's concentration of both the GP community and the LP base, including pension funds, endowments, and family offices with European mandates. Convene at 133 Houndsditch provides a central City-adjacent venue suited to a focused two-day format.
The audience combines several distinct profiles. On the investor side: pension funds, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and wealth managers with private markets allocations. On the manager side: fund managers ranging from mid-market buyout houses to growth equity and secondaries specialists. Advisory and service-provider participants include lawyers, placement agents, fund administrators, and technology vendors active in the European PE market.
The forum explicitly positions qualified LPs and investment and operational GPs as its core audience, offering them complimentary registration. This pricing structure shifts the room composition toward allocators and working-level managers rather than commercial participants, which shapes the quality of peer discussion around operational and investment themes.
The two-day programme runs across thematic tracks that reflect current pressure points in European private equity. Key areas covered at the 2026 edition include:
Sessions are structured as panels and presentations. Specific speaker names and session times are not published in advance on the primary registration page.
Markets Group is a conference organiser headquartered in the United States that runs a portfolio of investor forums across multiple asset classes and geographies. Within private equity alone, the firm runs events in London, Singapore, San Francisco, and other markets. The Private Equity Europe Forum is its primary European PE event. The firm also operates forums in real estate, private wealth, and institutional investing under the same model: complimentary access for qualified investors, revenue generated from asset manager and service-provider participation.
The forum is structured to attract both, with pricing that removes the cost barrier for qualified LPs and GPs. In practice, the room includes a meaningful LP contingent from pension funds, family offices, and endowments, alongside fund managers and operational professionals. The education-first programme design gives it broader appeal than a pure fundraising event, where the GP-to-LP ratio tends to be heavily skewed toward managers.
Scale is the clearest difference: 500-plus delegates versus 3,000-4,000 at SuperReturn International or IPEM. The editorial consequence of that difference is also significant: at Markets Group's forum, the programme is the primary draw, whereas at larger events the formal sessions often serve as backdrop to bilateral meetings arranged in advance. The forum suits practitioners seeking concentrated content exposure and smaller group discussion rather than a week of corridor fundraising conversations.
The forum is less suited to practitioners whose primary objective is GP-LP relationship development at volume. If you are a GP seeking to meet 30 LPs in two days, or an LP running a formal manager review process, a dedicated placement event or larger platform conference will provide better infrastructure for that purpose. The forum is also primarily UK and European in its geographic coverage; practitioners focused exclusively on North American or Asian markets will find limited geographic overlap in the room.
Markets Group runs a global calendar of investor-facing forums spanning private equity, real estate, private wealth, hedge funds, and institutional asset management. Founded and headquartered in the United States, the firm operates on a model common to mid-market conference organisers: investors attend free of charge, while asset managers and service providers pay for participation as a business development channel.
The firm's European output covers London primarily, with additional events in Amsterdam and other cities. The Private Equity Europe Forum is the longest-running and highest-profile of its London PE events. Contact for investor registration is IR@marketsgroup.org; service provider and partner enquiries are handled via Paloma.Lima@marketsgroup.org.
The Private Equity Europe Forum fills a specific gap in the London conference calendar: a compact, content-heavy two-day gathering where the price of entry is zero for qualified LPs and GPs, and the programme is substantive enough to justify the time away from the desk. It will not replace SuperReturn for firms running serious fundraising processes, and the speaker list is not published far in advance, which limits preparation. For mid-level and senior practitioners wanting structured peer exposure to secondaries dynamics, AI adoption, and European market conditions, the format is efficient. The ninth edition's September timing also suits the back-to-school conference window, sitting cleanly before the Q4 rush.
Qualified LPs and investment and operational GPs receive complimentary registration. To register as an investor, contact IR@marketsgroup.org or use the registration link on the official event page. Asset managers wishing to attend as delegates are asked to contact the organiser for pricing. Service providers and firms interested in partnership or sponsorship opportunities should contact Paloma.Lima@marketsgroup.org. Specific delegate fees for asset managers and service providers are not disclosed as of verification.
Yes. Qualified LPs, including institutional investors such as pension funds, endowments, foundations, and family offices, receive complimentary registration. The same applies to qualified investment and operational GPs. This is standard practice for Markets Group events, where investor attendance is subsidised by asset manager and service-provider participation fees.
The 2026 edition is held at Convene, 133 Houndsditch, London. Houndsditch is located in the City of London, close to Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations, making it accessible from across the city and from international rail via St Pancras.
| Official website | https://www.marketsgroup.org/forums/private-equity-europe-forum |
| Register (investors) | IR@marketsgroup.org |
| Service provider enquiries | Paloma.Lima@marketsgroup.org |
| Programme | not disclosed as of verification |
| 9th edition landing page | https://info.marketsgroup.org/9th-private-equity-europe-forum |