Industry Conferences May Be Getting Smaller. That’s the Point

Should I stay or should I go? 

That’s the question many advisors are asking about attending industry conferences in 2026. There’s an overwhelming amount of options, and the rise of online learning has changed the calculus on traveling to expensive locales for continuing education credits that could just as easily be attained online. In fact, sticking to the traditional format may not be an option for live event organizers anymore. In 2019, 32% of CE was earned at live events, but that percentage fell to just 11% by 2024, according to the Investments & Wealth Institute. The firm’s CEO, Sean Walters, thinks that number could drop even further. 

“I’ve been organizing and attending conferences for more than 30 years,” Walters told Advisor Upside. “I spent significant time in 2024 and 2025 gathering information from IWI members, speakers and event sponsors to understand their evolving preferences. There’s no doubt that we’re at something of a crossroads for industry events.” 

What Advisors Want

In this environment, some organizers are choosing a different route to the traditional advisor conference, favoring smaller events devoted to more specific training and exclusive network building. They believe advisors are ready for something new, and that vision seems to be resonating.

“One big change is offering up a lot more peer-to-peer learning time,” Walters said. At one recent IWI event, for example, much of the conference’s second day was devoted to small-group workshops and 20-minute meetings where advisors could exchange ideas and talk about shared challenges. The idea was to provide something advisors can’t get online, or at a massive conference featuring product demos and VIP presentations. 

“Our attendees are highly experienced, tenured pros,” Walters said. “Most don’t want to sit in a conference hall listening to PowerPoint presentations.” Instead, they want close access to experts in more of a collaborative setting, where they ask questions and learn from their peers about how to structure their firm and how to win the best clients. 

Intimate Is the Word. The American College of Financial Services is taking a similar approach, said Jared Trexler, the college’s chief marketing and strategy officer, at least as it pertains to its new Horizons retirement conference. The event is exclusively focused on teaching about retirement income, long-term care planning and related behavioral finance topics. It also provides a sense of exclusivity, with only about 500 people attending. “We’ll probably never get much bigger,” Trexler said. “Building an event that is intimate is a real thing to us. We don’t want advisors to feel like they’re a commodity.”