--- type: verticale slug: quantum-tech title: "Quantum Tech" canonical_url: "https://eventsindex.org/quantum-tech.html" description: "The EMEA quantum computing and quantum technology circuit for 2026: twenty events tracked in detail, from the EU Quantum Flagship's policy conference in Dublin to national showcases in the UK, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, investor matchmaking in Berlin and Leuven, and the post-quantum cryptography migration conferences in Amsterdam and Paris." hero_tagline: "Twelve countries, four constituencies (research, industry, investors, policy) and no single flagship: the EU's own conference is a fraction of the size of the private events it sits beside." events: - slug: quantum-networks-summit - slug: q-expo-2026 - slug: quantum-meets-2026 - slug: commercialising-quantum-global-2026 - slug: optica-quantum-industry-summit-2026 - slug: france-quantum-2026 - slug: qubits-europe-2026 - slug: iqt-nordics-2026 - slug: q2b-copenhagen-2026 - slug: aidaq-2026 - slug: quantum-infra-summit-eu-2026 - slug: tech-tour-quantum-and-defence-2026 - slug: ai-hpc-quantum-rome-2026 - slug: quantum-industry-day-switzerland-2026 - slug: munich-quantum-software-forum-2026 - slug: qbc-summit-2026 - slug: uk-national-quantum-technologies-showcase-2026 - slug: world-quantum-cannes-festival-2026 - slug: eqtc-2026 - slug: pqc-conference-amsterdam-2026 in_menu: false last_verified: "2026-08-26" language: "en" schema_version: "v6.0" --- # Quantum Tech: the 2026 EMEA circuit Quantum computing spent a decade as a research topic with an events calendar to match: academic conferences, funding-body symposia, the occasional industry panel bolted onto a physics meeting. That calendar has split apart. Twenty events now cover the EMEA quantum circuit for 2026, and the split is not by country or by hardware modality, it is by constituency. The EU's own flagship conference, EQTC, expects roughly 1,100 delegates in Dublin. Bitkom's AIDAQ expects 2,500 in Berlin, for an event where quantum is one pillar among three. The UK's National Quantum Technologies Showcase expects 2,500 as well, for free, in a single day. None of the three is trying to be the others' competitor: they serve different rooms. That fragmentation is the fact this page is built around. There is no KubeCon-style anchor event for European quantum technology, the way there increasingly is for platform engineering or space tech. Instead there is a policy conference, a cluster of national industry showcases, a set of investor-matchmaking programmes, a parallel post-quantum cryptography migration circuit, and a scatter of vendor and software-community events, all coexisting on overlapping dates because none of them is large enough, yet, to force the others to move. ## Who is in the room **The policy and research flagship.** EQTC, the EU Quantum Flagship's annual conference, is the one fixture that exists specifically to bring the European Commission, national quantum programmes and the Flagship's funded research consortia into the same room. It rotates host city every year (Dublin in 2026) and in 2026 adds a fourth day, Quantum Vertical Exchanges, aimed at pulling in commercial end-users who have historically skipped it. QBC Summit, run by the European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC), is the closest sibling: a members-only gathering, roughly a third EQTC's likely size, that has visited Paris, Padova and CERN in its first three years before returning to the Paris region in 2026. **The national industry showcases.** Four countries run their own flagship: the UK's National Quantum Technologies Showcase (London, free, one day, organiser-claimed largest of its kind), France Quantum (Paris, Station F, paid, drew 1,500+ attendees at its fifth edition), Quantum Meets (Amsterdam and four other Dutch quantum hubs, run by Quantum Delta NL), and Quantum Industry Day in Switzerland (Zurich, now in its seventh year, part of the broader Swiss Quantum Week). Each is explicitly framed around its national quantum programme and its own cluster of university spinouts, rather than positioning as a pan-European draw. **The investor and dealmaking layer.** Tech Tour Quantum & Defence in Berlin and the Quantum Infra Summit EU at imec's Leuven headquarters are both built around one-to-one meetings between investors and hardware or dual-use start-ups rather than public programming. Q2B Copenhagen and Qubits Europe (D-Wave's first European user conference, sold out at launch) sit closer to the commercial-vendor end of the same spectrum: real product roadmaps, enterprise case studies, and startup pitch competitions judged by named venture funds. **The post-quantum cryptography migration circuit.** Three events run in parallel to the quantum-computing calendar proper: the Post-Quantum Cryptography Conference in Amsterdam (free, hybrid, organised by the non-profit PKI Consortium, its fifth global edition), the Quantum Networks Summit in Paris (telecom-infrastructure-focused, covering EuroQCI and quantum-safe networking), and a PQC track inside the Quantum Infra Summit EU. Their audience, CISOs, risk officers, network architects, barely overlaps with the hardware and research crowd at EQTC or Q-Expo, even though the underlying physics is the same. **The vendor and software-community events.** Munich Quantum Software Forum is a practitioner gathering built around roughly 50 rapid software pitches rather than keynotes. Optica Quantum Industry Summit, co-located with a photonics conference in Glasgow, exists specifically to connect quantum hardware makers with the laser, optics and cryogenics suppliers that scale them. AI, HPC and Quantum in Rome and AIDAQ in Berlin both treat quantum as one topic within a broader AI-and-infrastructure agenda rather than the headline. ## How the room actually works Pricing splits along the same lines as the audience. Government-programme showcases (the UK Showcase, the PQC Conference) are free. Industry and vendor conferences charge standard delegate rates in the EUR 180 to EUR 990 range, usually with an early-bird window that closes six to twelve weeks ahead. Investor-matchmaking programmes charge a flat access fee (Tech Tour's General Pass is EUR 990 excluding VAT) rather than a tiered structure, because the product is curated one-to-one meetings, not content. Members-only events like QBC Summit do not publish a public price at all. Scale correlates weakly with prestige here. EQTC, the genuine policy centre of gravity, expects fewer delegates than AIDAQ or the UK Showcase, both of which treat quantum as a secondary theme. A reader trying to gauge an event's importance from attendee count alone will misjudge this circuit; the more reliable signal is who is named as a speaker or co-organiser; imec, CERN, the European Commission, national research councils and the major hardware vendors (IQM, Pasqal, Quandela, IBM, D-Wave, Quantinuum) recur across the genuinely central events and are largely absent from the peripheral ones. ## The seasonal structure The 2026 calendar clusters hard around three windows. Early-to-mid summer is the densest: 16-18 June alone sees Commercialising Quantum Global in London, the Optica Quantum Industry Summit in Glasgow and France Quantum in Paris run on overlapping or identical dates, with Qubits Europe following two days later, also in London, and IQT Nordics opening in Oslo four days after that. Anyone trying to attend more than two of these in the same week has to choose. Early autumn carries a second wave: Q2B Copenhagen (9-10 September) and AIDAQ in Berlin (22-23 September) open the season, followed by a tight first half of October in which the Quantum Infra Summit EU (Leuven, 1-2 October), Tech Tour Quantum & Defence (Berlin, 8-9 October) and AI, HPC and Quantum (Rome, 8 October) run within a week of each other, before Quantum Industry Day in Switzerland (13 October) and the Munich Quantum Software Forum (14-15 October) close the month. Late autumn into winter is the policy and standards window: QBC Summit (3-4 November), the UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase (6 November) and the World Quantum Cannes Festival (17-18 November) lead into EQTC itself (30 November to 3 December) and the Post-Quantum Cryptography Conference in Amsterdam (1-3 December), which overlap by three days. March carries only the Quantum Networks Summit in Paris, making late winter and early spring the one genuinely quiet stretch on this page. ## The 2026 context Three forces are shaping this circuit. First, public money is moving from research funding toward adoption: the EU Quantum Flagship's second-phase package (reported at roughly EUR 1.2 billion through 2030) and the forthcoming EU Quantum Act are explicit reference points at EQTC, the Quantum Infra Summit EU and Q-Expo's QOMPASS coordination initiative, all in 2026. EuroHPC added a concrete data point in mid-August, opening six funding calls worth EUR 119 million for quantum computing, communication and pilot-line infrastructure across trapped-ion, superconducting and neutral-atom platforms, with applications due in November. Events built around "commercialisation" and "adoption" rather than pure research, Commercialising Quantum Global, QBC Summit's own theme this year, are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Second, post-quantum cryptography has become a compliance deadline rather than a research topic, driven by NIS2 and DORA in Europe and the NIST PQC standards (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA) globally. That is why a parallel PQC events track now exists at all: enterprise security buyers do not attend the same conferences as quantum hardware researchers, so the circuit split rather than merged. Third, defence and dual-use investment has become an explicit category. Tech Tour's Berlin event runs quantum and defence as twin tracks rather than separate programmes, and the Quantum Infra Summit EU's agenda includes quantum sensing for defence alongside civilian infrastructure, reflecting the same dual-use logic already visible in this site's Defence vertical. ## Trends 2027 Expect the national-showcase model to keep multiplying rather than consolidating. Four countries already run their own flagship in 2026; a fifth or sixth national showcase appearing in Germany, Spain or Italy by 2027 would extend a pattern, not break one, since national quantum programmes have every incentive to keep the spotlight on their own spinouts rather than cede it to a pan-European event. The PQC migration circuit is likely to grow faster than the quantum-computing circuit proper through 2027, simply because its audience (enterprise security teams) is an order of magnitude larger than the audience for quantum hardware and its trigger (regulatory deadlines) is fixed rather than aspirational. The open question is whether EQTC's new Quantum Vertical Exchanges day succeeds in pulling commercial adopters away from the industry-first events, or whether the Flagship's policy centre of gravity and the industry's commercial centre of gravity simply continue to run in parallel, as they did throughout 2026. ## Methodology and data standards This circuit covers in-person and hybrid EMEA events only, and includes both pure-quantum events and multi-topic events (AIDAQ, AI/HPC/Quantum Rome) where quantum computing or quantum technology is an explicit, named programme pillar rather than an incidental mention. Purely academic physics conferences without an industry, investor or policy dimension are excluded. Every entry is verified against the organiser's own published material at the date recorded in each fiche; attendee figures are organiser-declared unless stated otherwise, and fields that could not be independently confirmed are marked as such in the fiche rather than estimated.