Industry events & conferences for contact centre planners
The events planners actually go to — not a directory of everything with “customer” in the title. For each one: what it is, when it usually runs, and what a workforce planner gets out of the day. Editorial. None of these have paid for placement. Last reviewed: June 2026.
UK & Ireland
The core circuit for a UK or Irish planner. Two or three of these a year is a respectable habit; all of them is a hobby.
Customer Strategy & Planning Conference — The Forum
The Forum’s flagship spring conference and the closest thing the UK has to a dedicated planning conference — forecasting, scheduling, real-time, insight, and quality streams run by practitioners. The 2027 edition is already listed on The Forum’s site. For a planner: the one UK event where the entire agenda is your day job. UK Spring Planning-specific
Best Practice Showcase & #RaisingStandards — The Forum
The Forum’s other two annual conferences. The Best Practice Showcase (25 June 2026, Queens Hotel, Leeds) is built around its awards winners — real teams explaining what they changed and what happened. #RaisingStandards (3 November 2026, Park Hall Hotel & Spa, Wolverhampton) is aimed squarely at planning, insight, and quality professionals. Both also run as virtual editions. For a planner: case studies from operations like yours, presented by the people who did the work. UK Summer/Autumn Virtual option
UK National Contact Centre Conference — CCMA
The CCMA’s annual one-day conference, in its 13th year — 29 September 2026 at the QEII Centre, Westminster. Free for CCMA members, £199 + VAT otherwise. Leadership-leaning rather than planning-specific, with a small expo. The CCMA’s UK National Contact Centre Awards run separately in the autumn. For a planner: hear what contact centre directors are being told, so you can anticipate next year’s strategy conversation. UK Autumn Free for members
Call & Contact Centre Expo
The big free UK trade show — 18–19 November 2026 at ExCeL London, co-located with its customer experience sister event. Heavy on vendor stands, lighter on depth, but the seminar programme has improved. For a planner: two days of WFM and CCaaS vendor benchmarking without a single procurement meeting — and it costs nothing but the train fare. UK November Free
Engage Customer Summit
Engage Business Media’s large London CX event — 7–8 October 2026 at Evolution London, typically 3,000+ attendees. Broader customer-engagement territory rather than contact centre operations. For a planner: useful for seeing where the CX conversation is heading before it lands on your forecast as a new channel or a journey redesign. UK Autumn CX-leaning
CCMA Ireland Annual Conference
The Irish industry’s main annual gathering, run by CCMA Ireland (a separate body from the UK CCMA), usually in Dublin in May — the 2026 edition (“CX 2026: Start, Stop, Continue!”) ran on 13 May. CCMA Ireland also runs the Irish industry awards in the autumn. For a planner in Ireland: the one day a year the whole Irish customer contact community is in the same room. Ireland May
Europe
Worth the flight if you operate multilingual or pan-European queues, or want a read on the wider market.
CCW Europe Summit
The European arm of the Customer Contact Week family (IQPC) — 5–7 October 2026 at the Passenger Terminal, Amsterdam. Around 850 attendees, summit-style with heavy peer-discussion formats. For a planner: the best European venue for comparing notes with operations running multilingual and multi-country models. Europe Autumn Paid
CCW Berlin (CallCenterWorld)
Europe’s largest customer-dialogue congress and trade fair, every year in late February at the Estrel Congress Center, Berlin — the 2027 edition runs 23–25 February. Largely German-language, but the trade show floor is the biggest vendor concentration in Europe. Not to be confused with CCW Las Vegas, below — the shared initials are a coincidence. For a planner: the widest single view of the European vendor landscape, especially WFM and automation. Europe February Trade fair
US & global
The American circuit sets much of the industry agenda a year or two before it crosses the Atlantic.
SWPP Annual Conference
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals’ conference — the only major event on this page that is entirely about workforce management. Runs each spring in Nashville; the 2026 edition was 27–29 April at the Omni Nashville. Workshops, certification sessions, and a community that talks shrinkage at breakfast. For a planner: the deepest technical WFM content of any event, anywhere — if you go to one international event in your career, strong case for this one. US Spring WFM-specific
Customer Contact Week (CCW) Las Vegas
The largest customer contact event in the world — 22–25 June 2026 at Caesars Forum, Las Vegas. Vast expo hall, multiple summits, and the full spectacle. For a planner: overwhelming as a learning event but unmatched for vendor benchmarking and for calibrating where the US market — and therefore your next technology cycle — is heading. US June Expo
ICMI Contact Center Expo
ICMI’s annual conference — 26–29 October 2026 at the Gaylord Palms, Orlando. Smaller and more operations-focused than CCW, with pre-event training courses and a strong management-fundamentals strand. For a planner: the best US event for the operations-management layer around planning — the discipline Brad Cleveland’s books come from. US Autumn Training
We’ve deliberately left out the WFM vendor user conferences (NICE, Verint, Calabrio, Genesys and friends, mostly autumn). They’re worth attending if you run that vendor’s platform — your account manager will find you — but they’re product events, not industry ones. The industry calendar notes when they typically fall.
Free & community
No budget sign-off required. A planner with no conference budget can still build a serious event habit from this list alone.
Call Centre Helper webinars
Free, frequent, and reliably practical — regular online sessions on forecasting, scheduling, erlang maths, attrition, and real-time management, with recordings afterwards. For a planner: the cheapest continuing education in the industry; the audience Q&A is often the best bit. Online Free
CCMA member events & site visits
Through the year the UK CCMA runs regional networking, themed summits, and — most usefully — visits to other operations’ contact centres. Free with membership. For a planner: seeing how another operation actually runs its floor is worth ten conference keynotes. UK Members
The Forum’s community events & virtual conferences
Alongside the headline conferences, The Forum runs member community days and virtual editions of each conference, with on-demand recordings going back years. For a planner: the virtual streams are the easiest way to get conference content past a travel freeze. UK Members Virtual
CCNG virtual roundtables
US-based member network running regular online roundtables and town halls, free for end-user practitioners. For a planner: a low-effort way to hear how US peers are handling the same problems, without the Las Vegas air fare. US/Online Free for users
How to choose
If the budget stretches to one paid event, pick the one closest to your actual job: The Forum’s Customer Strategy & Planning if you’re UK-based, SWPP if you can justify the trip and want pure WFM depth. Add Call & Contact Centre Expo (free) in a year you’re shopping for technology, and the Call Centre Helper webinars every year regardless. Everything else is situational.
This page is a curated reference, not an endorsement; inclusion doesn’t imply affiliation, and exclusion doesn’t imply criticism. Links are non-affiliate. Spotted an event we’ve missed — or a date that’s moved? Tell us in the discussion on LinkedIn — we review this page twice a year.