n8n Conference
2026.
Build & Workflow Document.
Agentic workflows at scale demand confidence, governance and technical credibility. BUILD is the founding flagship for a market that needs to see n8n as enterprise-ready, builder-loved and ahead of what comes next.
Where we are.
This is the n8n Conference 2026 proposal, built around the now-locked decisions set out in the cover above. It draws on the 23 April call with n8n leadership and Forum Europe's site visits to Berlin in late April, including Anna Harrison's walk-through of Wilhelm Studios on 28 April.
The rest of the architecture carries through from the earlier thinking: the seven content pillars, the three stages (Vision, Enterprise, Builder), the named team, the €180,000 fixed Forum Europe management fee, and the proposed event title BUILD. Forum Europe's recommendation starts from a €1.35M core plan, with the €2M ceiling treated as creative headroom to be shaped with n8n across technical experience, enterprise proof, community mechanics and post-event content.
The venue is settled. Wilhelm Studios at Kopenhagener Strasse, in the Wilhelm Hallen foundry complex in north Berlin, is the room the event is now built around: cast-iron pillars, glazed pitched roofs, raw concrete, generous single-volume halls. Anna Harrison walked it on 28 April. The design that follows is anchored on its specific spaces, Hall C as the stage volume, Hall B as the community-and-expo floor, the Ferro Canteen and Ateliers for workshops and intimate formats.
This is the live version of the proposal. It supersedes the earlier pack and stands on its own. Every concept, format and number the conference depends on is set out inside this document, fully and without cross-reference.
Why this needs
to exist.
n8n does not need a conference for visibility alone. It needs a flagship gathering because the market it operates in is loud, crowded and changing fast. More AI tools, automation products and agentic workflow platforms will enter the category over the next few years. That makes the conference more important, not less. Its job is not only to create excitement around n8n now. It is to show the whole market why n8n is the platform people can trust: open enough for builders, controlled enough for enterprises, and advanced enough to sit at the cutting edge of how work gets automated.
By whole market, we mean the people who shape whether n8n becomes the category centre: builders, community leaders, enterprise buyers, agencies, systems integrators, partners, analysts, and the n8n team itself.
It makes the ecosystem visible to itself, gives enterprise buyers confidence that this is a serious platform, and helps n8n define the category it wants to lead rather than simply compete inside it.
Six adjustments
since the call.
The 23 April call surfaced six substantive shifts. Each is set out below: what changed, why, and what it means in practice for this document and for the build that follows.
Wilhelm Studios is the venue. The design is built on its rooms.
The venue question is closed. Wilhelm Studios at Kopenhagener Strasse, Reinickendorf, inside the wider Wilhelm Hallen foundry complex, is confirmed for 11 to 15 October 2026. The earlier proposal carried two live scenarios; that choice is now made, and this document commits to Wilhelm in full rather than hedging across two rooms.
Anna Harrison walked Wilhelm Studios on 28 April and produced the working spatial model the rest of this document is built on: Hall C, three contiguous halls at roughly 4,190 m², as the stage volume carrying all three stages; Hall B as the community-and-expo floor, catering, sponsored lounges, registration and breakouts; the Ferro Canteen as the workshop space; the Ateliers and Oat Milk Studios as cosy rooms for roundtables and one-to-one meetings.
Wilhelm gives BUILD a serious industrial base: substantial, flexible, and credible without becoming corporate. Cast-iron pillars, glazed pitched roofs, raw concrete, exposed brick. Spotify, Zalando and Google have all delivered events in the complex.
What this changes downstream: every room reference in the walked-through conference now defaults to Wilhelm. Hotel and transport planning anchors on the Wilhelm location, with a primary room block on the nearest direct-line hotels. The venue is no longer a variable in the build; it is the fixed point everything else is planned against.
Brand evolution as a twelve-week arc, not a four-minute moment.
The original proposal placed a brand reveal at sixteen-hundred on Day 2: lights, film, drop, cheer. n8n's actual rebrand is gradual. Colours and vibe are locked, logo to be confirmed, a July networking event teases the new register, the October conference is the consolidation point.
The four-minute moment is replaced with a twelve-week arc. Six beats: at T-12, the identity glimpsed at the July networking event (printed card, single piece of collateral, sixty-second opening film). At T-8, a single short film posted to community channels with no marketing wrap. At T-4, the full visual register surfaces in the conference programme. At T-1, seven daily content drops across the final week. At T-0, the venue at full strength on Day 1 morning. At T+1, the closing film as the year-one statement, with the Workflow Wall timelapse becoming the Year 2 launch hero asset.
Joint creative ownership between n8n's brand team and Forum Europe's creative director, established at a creative and brand meeting early in the process.
Language stripped of white-glove and VIP framing throughout.
A clear comment on the 23 April call flagged the importance of getting the hospitality register right. The event should not create different tiers where some delegates are treated better than others. Treatment is shaped by what each role asks of the day, not by who they are.
The reframe is relevance-curated everywhere. The elevated lounge is curated by audience fit, not gated by seniority. The Enterprise Stage is quiet, serious, and visible from the main concourse, not hidden as a private members' club. Hospitality is curated by audience fit, not gated by status.
This is cultural to n8n, not tactical. The change runs through every page on which audience access or hospitality is described.
The expo as one connected ecosystem floor, not a trade show.
Partner areas are integrated as islands inside the community space, not walled booths. The expo floor and the community lounge are the same space.
Drinks at end-of-day reception are served from the partner zones, not from a bar. Breakouts run inside the main halls in glass houses or domes, with the Ferro Canteen and Ateliers held for sessions that need a closed door, keeping the community floor unbroken.
The sponsor commercial model changes: booths become experiential hosting spaces, priced and sold differently. The €25,000 to €150,000 partner-booth revenue line in the previous draft is rebuilt under the ecosystem-floor concept; three commercial scenarios under this model are set out later in this document.
The nearest visual precedent is a craft-led, design-led activation delivered in the same venue. The Berlin production team that built it is available to Forum Europe.
The smart-fridge bridge as the audience design directive.
The phrase from the call that anchored the design. The two archetypes that never cross paths at work.
The junior developer-tinker running an agency: super-flexible in tool usage, GDPR a vague concept, lives in the experimental layer. The senior security specialist: zero flexibility in tool choice, fixed stack to defend, no experimentation in working hours. They would have an amazing conversation over a drink about a humanoid robot or a smart fridge.
The audience model that follows is built around three constituencies, community, ambassadors, partners, and a deliberate two-day rhythm. Day 1 is invitation-only, with around 750 in the room. Day 2 opens to the wider community and scales to as many as 1,400. Most of the Day 1 attendees stay through into Day 2, so the senior register holds across both days.
Capability-led content, not platform-led.
Programming leads with capability, "frontier AI lab leadership", "widely-read independent technologist", "senior policy voice on agent governance", not with specific names. The conference's editorial position is durable across whatever the platform ecosystem looks like in October.
The seven content pillars are unchanged. The contrarian voice slot on each stage, on each day, remains a protected programming line.
What this means in practice: at T-12 we open the speaker pipeline with capability briefs rather than names ("frontier AI lab leadership"; "widely-read independent technologist"; "senior policy voice on agent governance"). Named speakers lock from T-8 to T-6, drawn from a wider pool that fits the brief. The contrarian slot is the last one filled, deliberately, so the line-up can absorb whatever the AI market is arguing about by October. This is the producer discipline that keeps the conference relevant whatever moves in the next five months.
Four tensions.
Held in balance.
The conference is built around four working tensions. Each shapes a specific design decision in the chapters that follow. Acknowledged here so the trade-offs are explicit, not buried.
Two days,
one narrative.
The two days as a single narrative inside the 11 to 15 October window. Build over the opening weekend, Day 0 evening on Tuesday 13 October, Day 1 on Wednesday 14 October, Day 2 on Thursday 15 October. At each stage: who is in the room, what happens, where it happens, and what the production beat is. All room references are to Wilhelm Studios, the locked venue: Hall C the stage volume, Hall B the community-and-expo floor, the Ferro Canteen and Ateliers for workshops and intimate formats.
Day 0 evening. Founding Contributors Dinner.
Forty to fifty delegates, drawn from the maintainers and top community contributors plus selected senior meetup leaders, are invited to the Founding Contributors Dinner the night before Day 1. The dinner is hosted by n8n leadership and the n8n Berlin team. Forum Europe supports operationally where required; the relationships are n8n's to lead.
The dinner is mixed-table seating with deliberate cross-audience assignments. Senior buyer next to developer-tinker. Maintainer next to enterprise architect. Forum Europe is on hand to support where required.
Day 1, morning.
08:30 arrival. Hall B receives the 750 Day 1 delegates. Walking-coffee is poured from a single station at the far end of Hall B, deliberately, to make the walk into the foundry hall, not at the door. Staff are facilitators, not gatekeepers.
09:30 Vision opens. Vision Stage in Hall C, entered through C1 from the cobbled main yard. Founder welcome, ten minutes; first capability-led keynote, twenty-five minutes; first contrarian voice, fifteen minutes; first fireside, thirty minutes. Total ninety minutes of mainstage in the morning. No panels.
10:30 Knowledge Buffet opens. Across the floor of Hall B: forty-five-minute short-form sessions, fifteen running concurrently, delegates choose three. Format documentation in the formats section.
11:15 Working Groups assemble. Six commissioned working groups, six tables, six Forum Europe facilitators. Working until 12:30. Output mounts on the Output Wall before lunch.
Parallel rooms are audience-led. Five to six bookable breakout rooms (twenty to fifty seats each) host partner workshops, ambassador-led meetups and community-led sessions running in parallel to the Vision Stage and Knowledge Buffet. n8n leadership appears in the room as participants and hosts; the morning's editorial weight is carried by the audience, not delivered to it.
Day 1, afternoon. Five canonical formats.
13:30 Walking Session. Three concurrent walks, one host, one question, no slides.
14:30 Reverse Showcase. A moderated format in which enterprise operators frame real workflow problems and builders respond with practical approaches, constraints and integration paths. Seventy-five minutes.
15:45 Agency-to-Enterprise Speed Match. A structured matchmaking format: twelve-minute pre-briefed conversations between agency builders and enterprise architects across four rounds, focusing on the highest-yield pairings. Forum Europe matchmakes against the registered briefs.
17:00 Enterprise Anchor. A single named senior anchor, fireside structure, forty-five minutes. The day's editorial pivot: from "what is being built" to "what is being trusted in production".
18:30 Day 1 drinks. Drinks served from the partner islands, not from a bar. Day 0 facilitators continue table-hosting. Soft close at 21:30.
Five canonical formats. The room runs on these.
Knowledge Buffet
45-min short-form, 15 concurrent tracks, delegates choose three. Curated, not open-call.
Commissioned Working Groups
Six groups, one per table, each with a published artefact target and a Forum Europe facilitator.
Walking Session
Three concurrent walks, 30 delegates and one host each. One question, no slides.
Reverse Showcase
Enterprise buyers pitch their needs to builders. Roles reversed by design.
Speed Match
12-min structured rounds, matchmade by Forum Europe against registered briefs.
The room runs on these five named formats.
No invented theatre, no recycled conference shorthand.
Day 1, evening. No scene change.
17:00 to 19:30. Reception flowing into the community lounge. No scene change. Lights warm rather than dim. Drinks served at the partner islands. The same room transitions from working day into evening. The Workflow Wall is at full visibility, the day's connection patterns building across its 12 metres. The Working Group output begins mounting on the Output Wall.
19:30 to 22:00. Two parallel hospitality moments. The top fifty senior anchors plus selected strategic partners convene for the Strategic Partners Dinner inside or near the venue. In parallel, around two hundred broader community ambassadors and active community contributors are hosted at the Community Awards Dinner at KINDL, a contemporary art and brewery venue in Neukölln, sited under the Flagship-tier sponsor's programme. Awards are presented across four categories: most-active maintainer, fastest-growing meetup, best community resource of the year, the rising-contributor recognition.
The remaining delegates continue at the reception, drift to nearby restaurants in pre-arranged groups, or peel off for the evening. No programmed activity from twenty-two hundred onwards.
Day 2 begins. The ecosystem becomes visible.
Three-act day · Act I "community arrival" · Act II "working sessions" · Act III "shared commitment"
07:30 Walking-and-coffee. Optional, as Day 1.
08:30 to 09:00 Community arrival. Volume increases significantly as community ticket holders arrive. Day 1 attendees who carried through have a separate fast-track entrance.
09:00 to 10:30 Day 1 Working Group share-back. Single-track on the Vision Stage. The standard keynote slot is replaced by the working-group share-back. Each of three selected groups has six minutes plus four minutes of audience response. The full twelve outputs are visible on the Working Group Output Wall in the lounge for the rest of Day 2.
Day 2, midday. The room works.
10:30 to 12:15. Parallel programming round one across all three stages. Vision continues with the day's editorial spine. Enterprise and Builder run in parallel.
12:30 to 14:00. Knowledge Buffet round two. Same logic as Day 1, with refreshed prompts drawn from the morning's working-group share-back.
Knowledge Buffet round two reuses the Hall B lounge floor without breaking it down. The Workstation continues running. Audience seats on benches and plinths along the brick. Speaker pitch under the glazed pitched roof, daylight-led.
Day 2, afternoon. The room commits.
14:00 to 15:30 The Reverse Showcase. Vision Stage. Three maintainers each present the question their tool is designed to answer and what it would take for that answer to travel into enterprise stacks. The format reverses the usual stage geometry: the people who build the tools speak from the stage, the people who run enterprise estates listen from the audience. At close, enterprise delegates identify which conversations should continue. Follow-on conversations are documented, with named owners on both sides and a six-week tracking horizon. Where genuine commercial intent emerges, it is captured and worked through Forum Europe's matchmaking layer rather than performed on stage.
15:30 to 16:00. Walking Session round two. Twelve pairs, thirty minutes.
16:00 to 18:00 Agency-to-Enterprise Speed Match. Two-hour structured session. Each agency founder gets four fifteen-minute slots with pre-booked enterprise delegates. Both sides have filled in intent in advance, so conversations start at "what can we do together" rather than "what do you do".
Maintainers gain a clear hearing with the buyers their work would otherwise reach only as a procurement line.
Three maintainers, ninety minutes
Builders speak. Enterprise architects listen. Real budget is committed on the floor.
Twelve pairs, thirty minutes
Round two. One question, no slides. Optional, parallel to the lounge programme.
Four × fifteen-minute slots
Agency-to-enterprise. Pre-filled briefs. Six-week follow-on deadline with named owners.
Documented follow-ons
Conversations leave the room with named owners on both sides. Tracked at T+6 weeks.
Closing keynote, brand arc T-0,
then Kraftwerk.
18:00 to 19:00. Closing keynote and brand arc T-0 moment. Vision Stage. The closing editorial position of the conference, anchored by a senior editorial figure. The brand arc film is shown as the final beat of the conference, summarising what the audience has been seeing for twelve weeks.
20:00 to 24:00. Kraftwerk afterparty. No lanyards at the door. Inside the venue, role identity is invisible. Capacity at eight hundred. No programmed content. Music, drinks, dancing, room.
Kraftwerk gives the conference a destination beat outside the venue, an unmistakably Berlin signature, and a separation between the working day and the night that follows. It is the recommended path.
A credible variant held in reserve: keep the afterparty inside the conference venue rather than transitioning to Kraftwerk. The Vision Stage volume becomes the dancefloor; lighting and LED panels reused from the day's production; full bands on the keynote stages; capacity comfortably 800 to 1,000. Reference point: Slush, November 2024, where the conference floor became the afterparty without a venue change.
The case for it: zero attrition between programme and party. The walk to Kraftwerk loses delegates, particularly the international cohort with morning flights. Holding the room keeps the network the room produced together for one more beat. The trade-off is the loss of the Kraftwerk signature and the destination-Berlin moment. Decision held open until production design lock.
What makes Path B newly viable: Wilhelm Studios carries no noise restrictions on site. There is no curfew to design around, so a full-volume on-site afterparty with live bands runs as late as the programme wants, in the same room the conference was built in.
The venue: Wilhelm Studios.
Wilhelm Studios is locked. It is the events arm of Wilhelm Hallen, a former iron foundry in north Berlin, over 8,000 m² of modular space: cast-iron pillars, glazed pitched roofs that bring daylight into every hall, raw concrete, exposed brick. Anna Harrison walked it on 28 April and produced the spatial model the rest of this document is built on. adidas, Boston Consulting Group, Zalando, Google, Spotify, Nike, Hugo Boss, Porsche, Deutsche Bahn and Tech Open Air have all delivered events in the complex.
Wilhelm gives the event a serious industrial base. It feels substantial without becoming corporate. That matters because BUILD needs to make n8n feel technically ambitious, enterprise-ready, and still open to the builder community.
Wilhelm Studios
Kopenhagener Strasse 60 to 68, Reinickendorf
Three contiguous main halls plus side halls and ateliers inside the foundry complex. The design uses Hall C as the stage volume and Hall B as the single community-and-expo floor, with smaller rooms for workshops and intimate formats.
Two volumes, one flow
Stage volume and social volume, side by side
The plan keeps the conference legible: delegates arrive into Hall B, the social volume that carries the Workflow Wall, the Node Garden, the Workstation, the partner islands and catering, and step through to Hall C, the stage volume, for plenary moments. Hall B is the room the delegates remember; Hall C is where the programme is delivered.
The room the design is built on.
What we walked. Anna Harrison walked Wilhelm Studios on 28 April. The halls are generous single volumes: cast-iron pillars in disciplined rows, glazed pitched roofs bringing daylight down the length of each hall, raw concrete floors, exposed brick. Substantial, flexible, and immediately credible on screen and on arrival.
What sits where. Hall C, the three contiguous halls, becomes the stage volume. Hall B becomes the community-and-expo floor: the Workflow Wall mounts on its long unbroken wall, the Node Garden tunnels the approach, partner islands populate the floor at deliberate distance so the room reads as a community lounge first and a partner zone second.
Working with the pillars. The cast-iron pillars require deliberate floor planning. Tiered seating at the rear of Hall C holds sightlines past the columns; the Workstation and centrepieces in Hall B sit in the bays between pillars rather than fighting them. The pillars become part of the register, not an obstacle to design around.
What stays. The pillars, the glazed pitched roofs, the concrete floors, the exposed brick, all load-bearing for the room's character and all kept.
The room, in use.
Wilhelm has carried conferences, expos and galas at flagship scale. The evidence that the room works for a two-day, 1,400-delegate gathering is not theoretical; it has been done here, repeatedly, by names the enterprise audience will recognise.
Photography · Wilhelm Studios, with images by Devid Gualandris and from the Spotify All Ears production
Hall C. Three contiguous halls, ~4,190 m².
How Hall C is read. The three contiguous halls, C1 at 1,906 m², C2 at 1,471 m², C3 at 807 m², are entered through C1 from the cobbled main yard. C1 is the largest, with 6.9 to 10 metre ceilings, and houses the Vision Stage. Hall C carries all three stages and acts as the single plenary volume across both days: opening keynote, Day 1 mainstage, Day 2 share-back, closing.
Capacity. C1 seats 1,200 theatre, 1,600 banquet; C2 seats 700 theatre. The plenary holds the full Day 2 room with headroom. C1 carries pre-installed rigging and moving heads, so the main stage builds faster and cheaper than a bare hall.
What sits where. Three stages set in three segments. Silent-disco headsets allow deep listening with no sound bleed between stages. Tiered seating at the rear holds sightlines past the cast-iron pillars. Relay screens bring the stage close to the back of the room.
Hall B alongside. While Hall C carries the stages, Hall B holds the community lounge, the expo, catering, registration and breakouts, so the stage volume stays clear and the social volume stays warm.
Visualisation · concept image, atmosphere reference. Final seating count and stage architecture resolved at detailed production design.
Industrial warmth.
Everything we add is deliberate.
Wilhelm Studios gives us raw concrete, cast-iron pillars, exposed brick and a glazed roof that floods the halls with daylight. The creative direction does not fight the building. It amplifies what is already there: warmth layered onto an industrial frame, nothing cosmetic, every addition earning its place. The register is closer to a well-edited loft than a tech-conference expo hall.
Material palette
Five materials run through every touchpoint, from stage furniture to centrepiece surfaces to signage. Nothing else is introduced.
Raw concrete
The venue's own floors and walls. Left exposed wherever possible. The anchor that keeps the register honest.
Warm timber
Oak and ash. Stage furniture, the Workstation desk, workshop tables. Unvarnished, with visible grain.
Matte black steel
Signage frames, locker shells, the Node Garden armature. The structural thread that ties furniture to installation.
Amber and teal light
The two signature lighting colours. Amber for warmth and intimacy. Teal for energy and the n8n brand connection.
Living greenery
Olive trees flanking stage entrances, herb planters on workshop tables, seasonal foliage in the courtyard. Nothing artificial.
Three lighting states across the day
The lighting does more work than any single installation. Three distinct states carry the emotional arc from productive morning to cinematic close.
Morning daylight
The glazed roof floods the halls with natural light. Supplemented only with clean, neutral-white wash. The room feels open, productive, generous. Coffee stations and the Workstation are the warmest spots. The message: this is a working day.
Afternoon amber
As the programme deepens, the lighting shifts. Warm amber wash across the halls, copper uplights on the cast-iron pillars, the community lounge pools of warm light between the installations. The room draws in. Conversations slow down. The intimacy is deliberate.
Evening dramatic
October in Berlin, it is dark by six. The venue earns its keep. Stage lighting at full intensity. The Workflow Wall glowing at peak density. The glazed roof becomes a lantern visible from the street. The courtyard lit by the spill. The message: something is happening here.
You arrive at Kopenhagener Strasse.
This is what you see.
Not a schedule. A sensory walkthrough of the delegate experience, moment by moment, from the cobbled approach to the closing film. Each moment paired with the image that carries it.
The approach
You step out of the S-Bahn at Schonhauser Allee and walk north. The street is quiet, residential, Berlin-ordinary. Then the cobbled yard opens up and the building is there: brick, steel, glass, a former factory that never pretended to be anything else. A row of olive trees flanks the entrance. Registration is a badge tap, not a queue. Your NFC chip is live.
The Node Garden
You walk through a fourteen-metre tunnel of illuminated nodes. As your badge passes the sensor, one node lights up and a trace of light connects it to the nearest node already lit. You are now part of the network. The tunnel opens into Hall B and the scale hits: the Workflow Wall already accumulating on the far wall, the food market to the left, the Workstation running dead centre.
Hall B, the community floor
The room is already alive. The food market is serving coffee and pastries from long timber tables. Partner islands are conversations, not booths. The Workflow Wall is a slow accumulation of light on the far wall. The Zine Press at the Workstation is already running. There is no MC, no stage call, no forced energy. The room found its own register.
The Workstation
Six metres of working desk, daylight-lit, the Zine Press at one end and the Snail Mail Desk at the other. A designer is pulling a riso print of the morning briefing. A delegate is writing a postcard. The Working Wall behind it is still mostly blank. By tomorrow afternoon it will be covered. You pick up a coffee and read the daily intelligence sheet.
Hall C, the opening
You file through into the stage volume. The pillars frame the sightlines. The screen is wide and the ceiling is high. The lighting is clean, sharp, stage-ready. The opening keynote begins without fanfare, no countdown clock, no walk-on music. The room is already paying attention. Silent-disco headsets are at every seat for the afternoon when three stages run simultaneously.
Lunch and the afternoon shift
The food market in Hall B runs a proper lunch, not boxed catering. The lighting has shifted to the afternoon amber state. The pillars are glowing with copper uplights. The lounge zones between the installations are filling up. The Workflow Wall has noticeably more connections than this morning. Two delegates are comparing what their nodes look like.
Evening. The venue transforms.
It is dark outside. The glazed roof is a lantern from the street. The courtyard is lit by the warm spill from the halls. The closing session plays. The Workflow Wall is at its fullest density, the entire network visible. You collect your locker, the zine, the postcards, the riso prints. You walk out through the Node Garden, still lit, into the courtyard where the coaches to Kraftwerk are waiting.
Space by space.
Raw, then dressed.
Seven zones that carry the conference. Each shown as the venue gives it to us, then as we intend to dress it. Where we have existing photography of the space in use, we show it. Where we need a concept render, the placeholder carries an exact brief.
The approach and Node Garden
The cobbled courtyard is the first thing delegates see. Olive trees line the approach. Registration is a badge tap at the gate. The Node Garden tunnel sits between the courtyard and Hall B: fourteen metres of illuminated nodes on a slim timber armature, lighting up as each delegate passes through. The transition from street to conference happens here, not at a reception desk.
Hall B, the community floor
The social and creative heart of the conference. The Workflow Wall runs the full length of one wall. The Workstation sits at the centre. The food market, partner islands, lounge zones and the four centrepieces fill the rest. This is where delegates spend the majority of their non-stage time. The register is market hall, not expo floor: long timber tables, food stations, living greenery, warm lighting.
Hall C1, the Vision Stage
The largest contiguous hall at 1,906 m², with ceilings reaching 10 metres. Cast-iron pillars frame the sightlines. The Vision Stage sits at the far end with tiered seating carrying 1,200 delegates past the pillars. This is where the opening keynote lands, where the closing film plays, where the room is one room. The existing concept render shows the atmosphere we are building.
Hall C2 and C3, Enterprise and Builder stages
Two adjoining halls carrying the intimate-format stages. C2 at 1,471 m² holds the Enterprise Stage, C3 at 807 m² holds the Builder Stage. Silent-disco headsets eliminate sound bleed. The format is closer to fireside than keynote: smaller audiences, deeper conversations, audience-mic interaction. The exhibition photo shows this space already carries intimate events well at scale.
Ferro Canteen, the workshop rooms
The former canteen space, repurposed as the workshop and breakout volume. Commissioned Working Groups run here on Day 1 afternoon: twelve groups, twelve real workflow problems, solutions produced and riso-printed for the Output Wall the following morning. The register is atelier, not classroom: working tables, good light, materials to hand.
The courtyard, October evening
By 18:00 the courtyard is the transitional space between the closing session and the evening programme. Warm light spills from the halls through the glass walls. Outdoor heaters and festoon lighting carry the atmosphere. The coaches to Kraftwerk load from here. On Day 0, the Founders' Dinner is served in the courtyard under the open sky.
Day 0, the Founders' Dinner
Sixty people under the glazed roof the evening before the conference opens. Long communal tables, candlelight, no microphones, no slides. The founders and early community sit together. The tone for the two days ahead is set here, quietly, over food. The gala-dinner photograph from Wilhelm's own portfolio shows exactly the atmosphere: the glazed roof as lantern, the room small enough to hold a conversation.
The working objects, felt.
The production spec is elsewhere in this document. This is what the delegate sees, hears, touches. Each installation described as an experience, not a line item.
The Workflow Wall
Twelve metres of LED along the long wall of Hall B. When you arrive, it is mostly dark, a few early sparks where the first delegates tapped badges. By mid-morning, clusters are forming. By afternoon, the network is dense enough that you can see patterns: groups of people who met, regions of the room that connected, moments where the density spiked after a session ended and everyone came back to the floor. By the closing session, the wall is the picture of what the room built together. The timelapse becomes the Year 2 launch asset.
The ambient glow is visible from across the hall. It does not demand attention. It accumulates it.
The Node Garden
You do not walk past it. You walk through it. Fourteen metres of tunnel, slim timber armature, hundreds of node-shaped light fixtures. Your badge triggers one. A trace of light connects your node to the nearest already-lit node. By the end of Day 1, the garden is fully lit and the traces form a web of light visible from the courtyard. At night, it is the first thing you see from the street.
The Workstation
The longest table in the room. Six metres of working surface, daylight-lit, staffed across both days. At one end, the Zine Press is pulling prints. At the other, the Snail Mail Desk has a small queue. In the middle, the day's intelligence briefing is laid out, the Working Group outputs are being mounted, and a designer is setting type for the afternoon edition. It is the newsroom of the conference, running in public, producing the artefacts that end up in delegate lockers and travel home.
The Delegate Locker
No goody bag at the door. Instead, a personal locker opened by your NFC badge. Through the day, things accumulate inside it: a postcard from someone you spoke to, a copy of the conference zine still warm from the press, riso prints of the Working Group solutions, a partner gift selected by the partner team rather than dropped into a carrier bag. You collect everything on the way out, in your own time. The artefacts the room produced for itself are the ones that travel home.
Evening and after-dark.
October in Berlin, it is dark by six. The conference does not end when the stage programme does. The venue transforms. What was a productive working environment becomes something cinematic, something you photograph, something you remember. This is the section of the day that earns the venue its fee.
The glazed roof becomes a lantern
From inside, the warm amber light fills the halls. From outside, the entire glazed roof of Wilhelm Studios glows against the Berlin sky. The building announces itself. Delegates arriving late for the evening programme see it from the street. The courtyard catches the spill.
The Workflow Wall at peak density
By the closing session, the wall carries the complete network of every delegate interaction across both days. The timelapse plays during the closing film. The density is the proof: the room connected.
Kraftwerk
Coaches from Wilhelm Studios to Kraftwerk Berlin. The afterparty is a distinct venue, a distinct register: raw concrete, monumental scale, Berlin at night. The conference closes. The evening begins somewhere else entirely.
Render brief index.
Eight concept renders needed to complete the creative vision pages above. Each brief specifies the camera angle, lighting state, what is in frame, and what mood the image should carry. The venue is Wilhelm Studios, Berlin. The design register throughout is industrial warmth: raw concrete, warm timber, matte black steel, amber and teal lighting, living greenery.
The entrance tunnel from the courtyard side
Lighting: Morning daylight, warm-white node fixtures
In frame: Slim timber-and-black-steel armature, hundreds of node-shaped fixtures, several lit (early arrivals), Hall B glow at far end, olive trees flanking entrance
Mood: Anticipation, arrival, the threshold moment
Used in: Creative Vision 03 (Zone 01)
The social heart of the conference at capacity
Lighting: Afternoon amber state, copper uplights on pillars
In frame: Workflow Wall (12m LED, teal-white, network graph) on left wall, Workstation (6m timber desk, Zine Press running) centre, food market (long timber tables, greenery) right, partner islands, 200+ delegates, industrial pillars
Mood: Warm, alive, market-hall energy
Used in: Creative Vision 03 (Zone 02)
Intimate-format stage during a fireside session
Lighting: Warm amber, focused stage wash
In frame: Fireside format (two chairs, low table, wide screen), 400 seated delegates, silent-disco headsets visible, cast-iron pillars framing sightlines
Mood: Intimate, focused, conversational
Used in: Creative Vision 03 (Zone 04)
Commissioned Working Groups in the former canteen
Lighting: Natural daylight from industrial windows, warm supplementary
In frame: Groups of 8-10 at timber tables, whiteboards, printed briefs, facilitator standing, herbs and small plants on tables
Mood: Productive, atelier-not-classroom, focused energy
Used in: Creative Vision 03 (Zone 05)
The transitional moment between conference and evening
Lighting: Dusk/early dark, amber festoon lights, teal-white spill from hall windows
In frame: Cobbled yard, groups in conversation, coach visible at gate, outdoor heaters, olive trees silhouetted, warm light spill from building
Mood: Atmospheric, transitional, Berlin-at-night
Used in: Creative Vision 03 (Zone 06)
The LED installation accumulating the network
Lighting: Afternoon amber, wall itself teal-white primary glow
In frame: 12m LED panel showing organic network graph (hundreds of nodes, connection traces), amber spark animations, delegates in front tapping badges, Hall B floor behind
Mood: Accumulation, ambient presence, the network made visible
Used in: Creative Vision 04 (Workflow Wall)
Inside the tunnel as delegates pass through
Lighting: Warm-white node fixtures, roughly half illuminated, daylight from courtyard behind
In frame: Slim timber-and-black-steel armature, node-shaped fixtures, light traces connecting lit nodes, one delegate ahead with badge outstretched, Hall B entrance at far end
Mood: Discovery, transition, becoming part of the network
Used in: Creative Vision 04 (Node Garden)
The personal locker wall with a delegate collecting
Lighting: Afternoon amber, Hall B ambient
In frame: Matte black steel locker shells with NFC readers, one delegate tapping badge, open locker showing zine/postcards/riso print, Hall B floor in background
Mood: Personal, considered, the opposite of a goody bag
Used in: Creative Vision 04 (Delegate Locker)
Two anchor themes, seven pillars,
threaded across two days and three stages.
The themes carry the editorial position; the pillars carry the substance. Every session is tagged to one theme or the other, so a delegate can choose to follow the technical thread or the human thread without having to navigate by stage.
The theme of the technical surface. Architecture, observability, integration, the developer experience, the agentic workflow as a systems problem. Holds the room when the conversation is about how the work gets done.
The theme of the people who do the work. Community, talent, employer brand, ethics, the human cost and benefit of the workflow becoming agentic. Holds the room when the conversation is about who the work is for.
Architecture and integration
How agentic workflows are built, scaled and maintained.
Observability, trust and reliability
How agentic workflows are monitored, governed and trusted in production.
Developer experience
What it is like to build with n8n in October 2026, and how that compares to alternatives.
Enterprise adoption
How real organisations are moving agentic workflows from experiment to production.
Ethics and regulation
Where the policy boundaries sit, and how to build inside them.
Community and open source
What the community has produced, what is shared, and what the maintainers need.
Talent and employer brand
How n8n's ecosystem is reshaping the engineer-and-builder labour market. Geographic spine: DACH primary, EU secondary, UK and US tertiary on Day 2 community ticketing.
Editorial filter
The smart-fridge bridge test. Does the session create a shared reference point around which different kinds of n8n user can have a useful conversation without a forced agenda? Sessions that pass become the spine. Sessions that don't are reworked or struck.
Protected slot
The contrarian voice. Each stage, each day. Drawn from the seven pillars but staged as the dissenting view. Protected from sponsor influence.
n8n's audience does not segment by persona or seniority.
It segments by relationship to the platform: community, ambassadors, partners. That is the language the conference uses. The 23 April call surfaced two ends of the same ecosystem. Two archetypes who do not normally cross paths at work but share a platform. The conference is built to bring them into the same room.
The junior developer-tinker.
Agency-flexible. GDPR a vague concept. Lives in the experimental layer.
The unifying object is the smart fridge.
The two would have a useful conversation over a drink about it. The smart-fridge bridge is the test every format passes.
The senior security specialist.
Zero flexibility in tool choice. A fixed stack to defend. No experimentation in working hours.
Three constituencies.
Community.
The global community of users, contributors, builders, agencies, and curious developers who use n8n in production or in experiment. Day 2 opens to community presence at scale rather than confining it to a side track.
Ambassadors.
A smaller, vetted layer of community members. n8n leadership describes them as "local voluntary champions": meetup leaders, city organisers, the connective tissue between n8n and its user base. Meetup-in-a-box at T-12.
Partners.
Technology partners, integration partners, agencies and enterprise customers whose presence makes the ecosystem case visible. Hospitality islands inside the community lounge, speaker nominations, Day 0 onboarding, and seeded workflows for the Day 1 working groups.
Day 1 closed, Day 2 open. Two ends, one room.
Closed. Partner-and-ambassador-led. Relevance-curated.
Day 1 is not a day where n8n speaks at the audience. It is a day where partners and ambassadors programme the room around a shared centrepiece, with n8n leadership in the room as participants and hosts rather than as keynote subjects.
Senior anchors
Maintainers, the most active community contributors, strategic partners, editorial and policy figures. Personalised invitations from n8n leadership six months in advance, "the people we talk to on a weekly or monthly basis".
Programmatic
Drawn primarily from the ambassador layer plus the most active community contributors. Sent at T-12 weeks with the meetup-in-a-box kit included. Signed by the n8n community lead, addressed by name.
Peer-nominated
Peer nominations from the first fifty and the next five hundred, vetted by an n8n curation committee. Being told by a peer that you should be in the room is more credible than any algorithmic ranking.
The framing is relevance-curated, not gated by status. VIP architecture is the wrong register for this audience: the average developer would find an executive room culturally inert, and white-glove treatment runs against the values that built the platform. Day 1 is built around that objection rather than against it.
How the invitations get sent. Forum Europe can manage the invitation operations end-to-end, or play a supporting role to n8n's community lead. The split is one of the things agreed during onboarding and discovery if Forum Europe is selected. Either way, the relationships are n8n's; the operational machinery (waves, response tracking, escalations, the meetup-in-a-box distribution, the peer-nomination process) is built around how n8n wants to run it.
Community-led. Three ticket bands. Engineered fifty-fifty mix.
Day 2 opens to the community at three ticket bands plus comped ambassador and scholarship tickets. The composition is roughly fifty-fifty between Day 1 carry-through and fresh community ticket holders. That ratio is engineered, not accidental.
650 to 700
Day 1 attendees who stay through.
600 to 700
Tickets at €249 · €449 · €599.
Scholarship · 50
Comped 100
Across the ambassador programme; students, open-source contributors, under-represented developers.
Geographic primary DACH, EU secondary, UK and US tertiary. The "founding edition" framing leaves room for a US Year 1 edition to launch in parallel with Berlin's second year. Without the carry-through, Day 2 dilutes into a community day with little enterprise presence; with it, Day 2 holds the room composition Day 1 produced.
The Node Garden welcomes the delegate.
The Workflow Wall remembers them.
Built around a small number of working objects and one visual register that runs through every diagram, every floor plan, and every brand-arc beat.
The Workflow Wall.
A 12-metre LED installation along the long unbroken wall of Hall B at Wilhelm Studios. Delegate badges carry NFC chips linked to the registration record. Tap-to-tap exchanges between delegates light up the wall, with spark animations between connected nodes.
By Day 2 close, the patterns are the picture of the network the room has formed. The timelapse becomes the Year 2 launch hero asset.
Non-interactive fallback wall held against live system failure, playing a curated visual loop in the new brand register.
The Node Garden.
A fourteen-metre tunnel of illuminated nodes connected by visible light traces, sited on the approach into Hall B. Each delegate's NFC badge tap at registration lights one node in the garden as they pass through, and a light trace connects their node to the closest other delegate's node already lit.
The Workstation,
plus four working centrepieces.
The community lounge is anchored by the Workstation, a single oversized working desk where the conference's daily artefacts are produced and circulated, the lounge's centre of gravity, on at all times. Around it sit four working centrepieces. The Builder Stage is a stage, not a centrepiece.
A single oversized working desk, on at all times. Six metres long, daylight-led, staffed by Forum Europe production. The Zine Press sits at one end, the Snail Mail Desk at the other; the Working Group output is mounted, sorted and circulated from the centre run. The Workstation is where the conference's record of itself is produced in front of the delegates, across both days.
The Working Wall
Twelve metres of blank wall with cards and markers. Delegates contribute the workflow problem they wish someone would solve. By Day 2 close, a heat-map of community pain.
The Zine Press
A working risograph press operating at the Workstation. Delegates submit single-page contributions across the two days. Every delegate leaves with a copy of the conference zine, made by the conference itself.
The Snail Mail Desk
A staffed postal desk where delegates write postcards to other delegates, to themselves, or to people they want to commit to following up with. Some delivered on-site; some posted in the new n8n stamp register, arriving the following Tuesday.
The Working Group Output Wall
Empty on Day 1 morning, revealed on Day 2 morning with the twelve riso-printed solutions from the Day 1 Commissioned Working Groups. Twelve real workflow problems, twelve solutions, all read at standing height.
Each delegate is allocated a personal locker on arrival, opened by NFC badge tap. Postcards from the Snail Mail Desk, copies of the conference zine from the Zine Press, partner-curated giveaways, riso prints from the Output Wall and any other artefact a delegate wishes to take with them are deposited there through the day. Delegates collect their locker contents on the way out, in their own time. The lockers do the work that a goody-bag-at-the-door would otherwise do badly: nothing is forced, nothing is missed, and the artefacts the room produced for itself are the ones that travel home.
The digital layer.
What the physical event also produces.
The two days at Wilhelm are the centre of gravity. Around them, a set of digital and content systems make the event more useful in the room and more valuable afterwards. Five layers are budgeted for and built into the project from kick-off.
A twelve-week arc,
not a four-minute moment.
Six beats across twelve weeks plus the closing statement. Each beat has a channel, an asset, an owner, and a working metric. Joint creative ownership between n8n's brand team and Forum Europe's creative director, established at a creative and brand meeting early in the process. Single output: the Brand Arc Storyboard.
July networking event
Identity glimpsed in card texture · 60s film
First public asset
60s short film · community channels · no marketing wrap
Full register surfaces
Programme · Day 1 attendees · trade press
Seven daily drops
Final week · community
Day 1 morning · full strength
Node Garden · Workflow Wall
Day 2 close
Closing film · timelapse
€1.35M working target.
Inside the envelope.
Reconciled openly at T+60.
n8n leadership confirmed on 6 May that the working budget envelope sits at €1.5M to €2M. Forum Europe's recommendation starts from a €1.35M core plan, with the remaining headroom treated as creative working space. If appointed, we would use the first working sessions with n8n to decide where additional investment should go: richer technical experiences, stronger enterprise proof points, more ambitious live workflow demonstrations, deeper partner activations, or a more developed post-event content layer. Forum Europe's management fee is fixed at €180,000 across the full twenty-four weeks of build plus twelve months of follow-up. The disciplined procurement on each direct-cost line is the commitment. The reconciliation at T+60 is the proof.
| Venue | €80,000 to €110,000 |
| Stage and set production | €110,000 to €135,000 |
| LED and the Workflow Wall | €70,000 to €95,000 |
| Lighting and AV | €90,000 to €110,000 |
| Creative production: zine press, Delegate Lockers, NFC badges, Node Garden fixtures, optional podcast booth | €120,000 to €155,000 |
| Speaker honoraria and travel | €60,000 to €90,000 |
| Ambassador and scholarship programme | €60,000 fixed |
| Partner experience build-out | €40,000 to €70,000 |
| Digital and content (app, matchmaking, livestream, video output, post-event editorial) | €60,000 to €90,000 |
| Travel and hospitality (delegate) | €35,000 to €55,000 |
| Reception and in-venue hospitality | €30,000 to €50,000 |
| Communications and marketing | €40,000 to €65,000 |
| Contingency (approx. 8%) | €80,000 to €110,000 |
| Direct costs subtotal | €875,000 to €1,135,000 |
| Forum Europe management fee (fixed) | €180,000 |
| Total | €1,055,000 to €1,315,000 |
Working target lands at €1.35M including a small upper-bound buffer. Sits comfortably inside the €1.5M to €2M ceiling cleared by n8n leadership. The lower bound holds open the disciplined €1.05M build if scope is tightened.
All direct costs reconciled openly to original supplier invoices, sixty days post-event.
Twenty-four weeks of build plus twelve months of follow-up. The fee does not flex with scope.
Creative production line
The Creative production line consolidates the experiential build that the earlier document treated as scattered hardware: the Workflow Wall LED hardware and software stack, the Node Garden fixtures, the NFC badge programme that drives both objects, the Zine Press riso operation across two days, the Delegate Locker bank with NFC unlocking, an optional broadcast-grade podcast booth on the expo floor, and a working margin for further creative interventions agreed at kick-off. Holding it as one line gives the creative director a single budget envelope to manage against the brief, rather than line-item negotiation across hardware, software, and consumables.
Contingency uplift
Contingency runs at approximately 8% of direct costs, raised from the 5% level at the prior envelope. The uplift reflects the founding-edition risk profile, the increased experiential build, and a deliberate buffer against late-cycle creative additions agreed in the final eight weeks before doors open. Any contingency unspent at T+60 is returned to n8n in the open reconciliation.
Three sponsor scenarios. One ticket band.
Six islands at an average of €40,000.
Covers the partner experience build-out and a portion of digital and content.
Eight islands at three tiers (€30k / €60k / €120k), avg €58k.
The working target for Year 1. Calibrated against the ecosystem-floor model.
Twelve islands at an average of €72,000.
Funds the Year 1 surplus that seeds Year 2.
Partner islands replace partner booths. Partners are sold the experiential hosting space, not the booth. The value exchange is set out at partner-pipeline launch (T-16). Five to fifteen partner stations in the base model, each with a common n8n-owned base build, demo screen, single computer, and restrained branding allowance. An adjacent workshop room with around thirty laptops supports one-hour partner-led hands-on sessions across both days.
n8n's net position, combined view.
Build cost is one part of the picture. Sponsorship and community ticket revenue offset most of it. The table below shows n8n's net outlay at three combined scenarios. All figures are working bands and firm up at contract.
| Conservative scenario | |
| Total build cost (low end of the recommendation) | €1,055,000 |
| Sponsorship (conservative · 6 islands at €40k average) | €240,000 |
| Day 2 ticket revenue (700 tickets, blended €330) | €231,000 |
| n8n net outlay | €584,000 |
| Base scenario · working target | |
| Total build cost (€1.35M working recommendation) | €1,315,000 |
| Sponsorship (base · 8 islands at €58k average) | €466,000 |
| Day 2 ticket revenue (700 tickets, blended €380) | €266,000 |
| n8n net outlay | €583,000 |
| Ambitious scenario | |
| Total build cost (full €2M ceiling, with named upgrades) | €1,990,000 |
| Sponsorship (ambitious · 12 islands at €72k average) | €864,000 |
| Day 2 ticket revenue (700 tickets, blended €430) | €301,000 |
| n8n net outlay | €825,000 |
The middle path. Build at €1.35M, with sponsorship at the working target and ticket revenue at the realistic blended price.
Based on 700 community ticket sales across the €249 / €449 / €599 band. Blended price varies with sales mix.
Every direct cost and every revenue line opened to documentation at T+60. The bands above firm up to single figures at that point.
Sponsor philosophy.
Sponsors improve the experience or they are not sponsors.
No sponsor buys stage time.
The expo is designed, not rented.
Activations demonstrate, not decorate.
Transparency over exclusivity.
The contrarian voice slot is protected from sponsor influence.
Ticket pricing · €249 / €449 / €599 community band
On-sale opens at T-10.
From T-8 to event.
Carries the lounge contribution programme.
Ambassadors plus scholarship for students, open-source contributors, under-represented developers.
The band holds against the case for tightening it (the gut-feel range from the call was €250 to €400). The early-bird and the free ambassador and scholarship programmes carry the accessibility argument; tightening the band collapses the value architecture without materially expanding accessibility.
What could break, and how we plan around it.
A serious producer plans for the things that go wrong, not just the things that go right. The risks below are the ones we have weighted as material. Each has a named mitigation, agreed at kick-off and reviewed at every critical-path checkpoint.
Why Forum Europe.
Choosing a producer for a founding-edition conference is choosing the tone of voice the event will speak in for years. Our way of working is careful and considered by design. We do not try to make every event feel like a festival, because we believe a careful, well-made event is exactly what a company building for the long term should look like. In a market this loud, we believe that kind of partner is what makes n8n look like the durable, long-term company it is.
A founding-edition flagship is not the same brief as a one-off conference. It needs a partner that holds editorial judgement, production discipline and commercial reconciliation in the same hands, and that can carry the work across years as n8n's category settles around it.
We take it off n8n's desk.
The team has a platform to build. They should not be sourcing venues or reconciling 140 invoices. n8n's involvement is vision, approval and a payment schedule. Every supplier contracted through Forum Europe. Every invoice reconciled openly.
We lead the thinking.
The editorial spine, the audience model, the working objects, the brand arc, the invitation architecture: none of it was asked for. All of it is in this document. Forum Europe operates as the editorial mind, not a reskin of a stock conference template.
Multi-year flagship, ready.
Offices in the UK, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Thailand and South Africa. Local relationships in Brussels, Washington, New York, London, Sydney and across Asia. When the franchise expands in 2027 and 2028, Forum Europe is already the local partner.
We protect the founder vision.
Flagship events die the same death every time: vision translated through twelve suppliers until the soul is unrecognisable. The job of the integrating layer is to hold the line. n8n's brand team retains creative ownership; Forum Europe carries the weight of execution and shields the room from sponsor pressure.
Digital is what we do.
Trusted by the EU and the US administrations to convene their major regular international gatherings. Forum Europe's core practice is the digital industry: technology summits, developer conferences, regulatory convenings, and flagship events for the companies and institutions shaping how digital markets work. n8n's conference sits at the centre of what we already do.
The track record under those four reasons:
Credentials. The rooms we have built.
A non-exhaustive selection of figures who have taken the stage at Forum Europe convenings over recent years. Provided as a register of access, not a name-drop.
Antony Blinken · Gina Raimondo · Margrethe Vestager · Thierry Breton · Henna Virkkunen · Maria Luís Albuquerque · Alexander De Croo
Tim Cook · Mark Zuckerberg · Sundar Pichai · Pekka Lundmark · Peter Wennink · Börje Ekholm · Christian Klein · Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Forum Europe self-curated: The Digital Festival (Brussels), The Brussels Tech Summit (Brussels), the Global Spectrum Series, the Connecting series.
Forum Europe-delivered for institutional partners: Masters of Digital (for DIGITALEUROPE), EU-US Trade and Technology Council, the ICDPPC privacy commissioners' conference.
The Digital Festival, Brussels. Curated and built by Forum Europe. A festival of ideas rather than a conference, bringing senior officials, the digital industry, university-and-developer communities and creative performance into one Brussels room. Festival register, technical workshops and live performance, all in a single day.
The Brussels Tech Summit. Curated and built by Forum Europe. A self-produced summit putting senior officials, the digital industry and the developer community into one room. Workshops and fireside chats running alongside the plenary programme.
Responsibility and accessibility.
Detailed accessibility and responsibility planning is produced at T-16 and reviewed at every critical-path checkpoint. The headlines, committed in writing now:
Named at proposal stage.
Confirmed at contract signature.
Five named principals plus a senior experienced member of the Forum Europe team and a senior facilitator named at contract. Production partners held to Wilhelm-experienced Berlin firms.
Strategic lead, senior client counsel, overall account direction. Day rate not chargeable on retainer.
Day-to-day relationship owner. Lead on the partner-relations workstream and the on-sale launch.
Operational executive. Production working group lead. Critical-path tracker owner. On-site executive Day 0 to Day 2. Led the Berlin site visits, including the Wilhelm Studios walk-through on 28 April that the venue plan is built on.
Speaker pipelines, editorial briefs, the contrarian voice slot. Working Groups, Reverse Showcase, Speed Match. Live Intelligence Feed direction.
Communications and marketing workstream lead. Brand arc execution beats one to four. On-sale launch. Daily content drops. Press relations.
Drawn from Forum Europe's editorial network. Carries the Live Intelligence Feed and the Editorial Brief across T-20 to T+4.
Named senior facilitator on the floor across Day 1 and Day 2.
Set, lighting, audio, LED Workflow Wall, broadcast capture, on-site security. The Berlin production team that built a craft-led, design-led precedent in the same venue is available to Forum Europe.
Three comparable references are provided alongside this document, drawn from Forum Europe's recent portfolio of senior tech and policy convenings. Direct contact details are sent separately to n8n leadership for outreach without Forum Europe in the loop.
Three steps to commitment.
Hear the re-pitch and press-test it. Walk the locked room together. Talk directly to comparable references. Then commit. With doors on 14 October, the build needs a decision in early June to hold the timeline comfortably.
The re-pitch, and the challenge.
Forum Europe presents on 27 May: who we are, our read on n8n and this conference, how we envision the event at Wilhelm, and why we are the right partner. Press-test the substance on the call and after it. Forum Europe stands ready to redraft any section on twenty-four hours' notice.
Joint working session at Wilhelm Studios.
A half-day at the locked venue with Forum Europe leadership and creative team, n8n leadership, the n8n event lead, and the n8n brand team. Walk the rooms, pressure-test the experience design, answer the operational questions that only emerge in the building. By video if scheduling does not allow.
Direct reference contact.
Three named referees with direct contact details, sent separately to n8n leadership for outreach. Without Forum Europe in the loop.
Jeremy Rollison · Samsung
Aarti Holla-Maini · UN Office for Outer Space Affairs
Target · before contract signature
Bruce Macfarlane · CEO
bruce.macfarlane@forum-europe.com
Charlene Bowditch · Director
charlene.bowditch@forum-europe.com
Anna Harrison · Project Director
anna.harrison@forum-europe.com
Early June 2026
Around twenty weeks to doors
Day 1 morning · Wednesday 14 October 2026
What you receive after the event.
The work does not stop on Day 2 close. Below is the full list of post-event deliverables included in the €180,000 management fee, with the timing for each.
Berlin grows on a proven model.
US Year 1 runs in parallel.
The architecture is built to grow. Year 1 in Berlin is the template, not the endpoint.
The same architecture, deepened. Day 2 grows from 1,400 toward a 2,500 planning ceiling on what Year 1 produces. The Workflow Wall timelapse from Year 1 becomes the Year 2 launch hero asset.
A second founding edition in a US city, in parallel with Berlin Year 2, at the same 750 / 1,400 scale and on the same architecture. Same team, same editorial logic, city confirmed at T+60.
Event references.
The rooms we have built.
A visual portfolio drawn from Forum Europe's recent work. Each event listed here shares at least one structural characteristic with the n8n Conference 2026 brief: scale, editorial ambition, venue complexity, audience seniority, or experiential register. The rest of this section walks through five comparable convenings, with photography from the events themselves.
Format variety inside one room.
Belgium's marketing flagship runs at scale, 1,650 delegates across three stages and two labs, but the design discipline is what carries the relevance: the room holds plenary keynotes, podcast formats, silent-disco breakouts, LED cube installations and dinner programming inside one continuous venue, without the expo dominating the floor.
Video · BAM Marketing Congress
A festival of ideas, not a conference.
A Forum Europe-produced festival in Brussels, designed from the ground up to bridge the worlds that rarely share a room: senior officials, the digital industry, university and developer communities, and creative performance. Festival register; technical workshops; live performance. A self-curated event, built end to end by Forum Europe.
A self-built tech summit in Brussels.
Forum Europe's own tech summit, designed from the ground up to put senior officials, the digital industry and the developer community into a single Brussels room. Workshops and fireside chats alongside the plenary programme. A self-curated event, built end to end by Forum Europe.
Transatlantic seriousness, held cleanly.
Six ministerial meetings across three years, coordinating transatlantic positions on trade, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and emerging technology standards. Forum Europe carried programming, editorial and stakeholder layers across the cycle. Photography below from the European Commission Audiovisual Service.
Photography · European Commission Audiovisual Service
A serious editorial register at scale.
The annual gathering of data-protection authorities from 120 jurisdictions, plus heads of state, technology principals and civil society. The relevance to the n8n brief is the editorial register: a serious convening that carried Tim Berners-Lee on a single-track plenary, alongside dense panel programming, without losing community texture.
Video · ICDPPC Brussels 2018
Where the human register holds across days.
A multi-day gathering across roughly twenty venues in Ljubljana, with plenary sessions, performing arts, community rituals, deep-practice rooms and an 800-strong dance moment in the city's main square. Most relevant to the n8n brief for what it proves about hospitality, delegate-experience design, and the difference between a programmed conference and a hosted gathering.
Video · Performing arts at the Hearth Summit
Annual flagship at scale.
Forum Europe's flagship digital policy and innovation forum, included as the most-recent reference for floor atmosphere, audience density, networking architecture and stage register at flagship scale.
Video · Masters of Digital
The working board.
A live, navigable workspace that runs alongside this document. It carries the spatial planning from Anna's 28 April Wilhelm site visit, the room-by-room mapping of where each working object sits, the twelve-week brand-arc storyboard, and the current production critical path. The board is the place where the build gets resolved in detail; this document is the argument for the build.
Open in a new tab if you want to scroll the board at full size, then return here. The board is updated as decisions firm up between now and contract.
Every important software ecosystem eventually needs a physical centre of gravity. For workflow automation and AI orchestration, that place does not exist yet. This is the proposal to build it.
BUILD.
The conference that makes n8n trusted by enterprises,
loved by builders and ahead of the market.
A decision in early June to appoint Forum Europe as the producer of n8n Conference 2026, so the twenty-week build to doors on Wednesday 14 October has comfortable runway.
The immediate next steps are the joint working session at Wilhelm Studios and direct contact with the three named referees. We can move on both within 24 hours of a green light.
Speak to any of us directly: Bruce Macfarlane (bruce.macfarlane@forum-europe.com), Charlene Bowditch (charlene.bowditch@forum-europe.com), Anna Harrison (anna.harrison@forum-europe.com).
BUILD should give n8n a flagship that feels trusted by enterprises, loved by builders, and ready for the market it is about to lead.
Confidential · n8n GmbH only · Not for redistributionPrepared by Forum Europe · Build & Workflow Document, V2 · Issued 26 May 2026