The tenth Vision Sustainable Event Summit welcomed over 250 people at The Showman’s Show, October 26. There was a real sense of community and positive purpose throughout a day that brought together sustainably minded event professionals. A morning of workshops saw invited guests exploring the challenges, opportunities, and asks around the Vision 2030 Climate Actions.
Opening our doors for the afternoon of free to attend panels, unwrapping actions to enable the 2030 Climate Actions, with the launch of the Energy and Travel Taskforces. We looked at tackling the challenges to decarbonisation, celebrated wins and showed what is possible to progress towards more environmentally friendly events. In this blog, host of the day Graham Brown shares his highlights and reflections.
“It was great to be back at The Showman’s Show for our tenth sustainable event summit. Heartfelt thanks to all who supported us, so that we could continue hosting a ‘free to attend’ summit, where event professionals packed our venue for maybe our best SES ever.
My main takeaway was the real sense of community. The great mixture of familiar faces alongside first-time attendees, with 29 speakers and 250 plus, who gathered to talk about event sustainability. Discussions spanned innovations, challenges, from all corners of event fields who’d come to share knowledge, learn, and make their contribution to a greener event industry.
Our invited morning ‘community’ of 80 guests split into round tables with focused discussions around the pillars of the Vision 2030 Climate Action. The interactive roundtables, hosted by industry experts, evaluated summer 2026 sustainability challenges, celebrated wins, and dissected barriers to implementing the 30 climate actions across suppliers, government, and sector bodies.
The table leads closed our morning, summarising the balance of sustainable technical and cultural advances, juxtaposed with commercial and practical barriers that had seen the morning fly by for everyone in the room.
Guests continued catching up on news and plans over our networking lunch, in out thankfully cosy marquee on a blustery Autumnal day.
Welcoming our additional delegates for the afternoon panels I briefly set the scene for them on our 2030 Climate Action plans and Vision Pledge, before introducing an insightful opening talk by Feimatta Conteh, Arts Council, xxxx, setting a collaborative, sector-wide tone for urgent climate action across the live events industry.
Then, into the panels. First was Climate Transition Plan 2030 — Making It Real: The panel explored practical frameworks to transition commitments into measurable action across event operations and supply chains.
Smart Power & Decarbonisation: Launch of the Smart Power Guide 2 and Season of Energy, followed by back-to-back ‘Quick-Fire Presentations’ on decarbonising event power by 2030 and showcasing clean energy innovations in action with leading supplier partners.
Extreme Weather & Climate Adaptation: Addressed operational resilience, site safety, and adaptive strategy for outdoor events facing increasingly unpredictable UK summer weather.
We always love to celebrate success. Johnny Lance joined us for the Showman’s Show Green Supplier Award live presentations, spotlighting innovative solution providers and connecting event organisers with eco-pioneers. All three finalists were brilliant in their own fields, with La Pee winning.
Our final panel of the day ‘Best of the Summer — Green Success Stories 2026’, continued to positive vibe. Welcoming organisers to share a varied array of high-impact circular economy wins, low-carbon initiatives, and practical sustainability victories from across the 2026 festival season.
As the light drew in, the post show conversations continued. It was a day that gave everyone plenty to discuss, think about, and act on in the coming year.”
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You can view presentation deck that was shared at SES 26 here>>