FTT Fintech Festival 2026: The View From the Floor

By Tom Dickinson and Chloe Walker, FF News, FTT Fintech Festival

There is a particular kind of tired you only get at the end of a big fintech show: the back-to-back meetings, the miles of carpet, the feeling of being swept from one stage to the next by a current you didn't choose. The FTT Fintech Festival, back at The Brewery in London on 9 to 10 November, didn't leave us feeling like that. It left us feeling like we'd actually been to something.

This year Fintech Talents brought five co-located events under one roof (the FTT Fintech Festival itself, the Future Identity Festival, FTT AI Transformation, FTT Mutuals and the FID Fraud & FinCrime and IAM programmes), spread across eight stages, with more than 400 speakers and upwards of 2,500 attendees. On paper, that's a big event. On the floor, it didn't feel like one, and we mean that as a compliment.

The most relaxed show on the circuit

Tom: "As always, it was a really good atmosphere, and it stayed that way throughout. It honestly felt like the most relaxed fintech event on the circuit. It's more conversational. There's a real sense of community. You see the same faces year after year, but not in a dull way. It feels like you're part of something, rather than just ticking off another conference."

That relaxed feel isn't the same as quiet. When the sessions broke for coffee, the show floor filled up fast, and plenty of the people we spoke to were running their days on back-to-back meetings.

Chloe: "I didn't get into many of the sessions myself, but every one I walked past looked well attended. And at every break the floor was packed. It was clear a lot of people had full diaries."

Big names and year-old startups, side by side

One of FTT's strengths has always been its mix, and 2026 was no exception. Household names in UK financial services sat alongside technology providers and early-stage startups, and nobody seemed to be in a separate tier.

Chloe: "One of the companies I spoke to was literally a year old, and then you've got Equifax there, which is obviously a really well-known brand. That range is what makes it interesting. You'd have a conversation with a start-up and then walk ten feet and be talking to a bureau."

Tom: "It's a really nice blend: loads of well-established organisations, plenty of startups, a lot of tech providers. That makes for great networking, because the person next to you at the coffee station could be a buyer, a partner or a competitor, and you won't know until you ask."

The exhibitors noticed it too. Chloe spent time with the team from Gong, who are focused on helping organisations get the customer-facing side of their business right. What struck her was that they weren't just there to pitch.

Chloe: "They were genuinely interested in hearing from the companies focused on payments or AI transformation, and how all of these things get woven together. A lot of the booths said the same: it was a real mix of conversations, with people coming over to understand what they actually do rather than just grabbing the merch."

AI, yes, but not the way you'd think

It wouldn't be a 2026 fintech event without AI on every stage, and FTT gave it a dedicated home in the FTT AI Transformation programme, with sessions on responsible AI and on agentic AI moving from assistance to action. Around the venue, people were joking that obviously everyone's talking about AI. But the conversations Chloe heard had moved on from the hype.

Chloe: "Everyone was jokingly saying, of course it's AI, but it's not quite as simple as that. Quite a few people made the point that a lot of companies are trying to build AI themselves, in-house, when maybe they should lean on the companies that specialise in it. Embed their software, integrate it into how you already work, rather than trying to do it all yourself."

That's a shift worth noting. A year ago, the question in the room was whether to use AI at all. At The Brewery, the question was increasingly who you build it with, and where the specialists end and your own team begins.

An app that actually works

It sounds like a small thing, but anyone who has spent a day hunting for a contact at a conference will know it isn't. FTT runs a proper hosted meetings programme and a networking app to go with it, and it delivered.

Tom: "For a smaller event, it's got a proper app. It's really good. Like at some of the bigger shows, you can reach out to people and actually get meetings booked. That was the feedback across the board from everyone I spoke to."

On the ground for FF News

We had two crews filming across both days. On Monday afternoon we sat down with Karen Bradbury from Invest NI in the Press Lounge to talk about why Northern Ireland keeps punching above its weight in fintech, and what the region is doing to build its talent pipeline. That interview will be live on FF News shortly, alongside the rest of our coverage from the week.

We also heard plenty of good things about the stage content, with Citi's Peter Gill among the sessions people were still talking about at the end of the day.

Pick your own festival

If there's one thing that sums up FTT for us, it's choice. With eight stages and a floor that rewards wandering, you shape the event around what you need from it, rather than the other way round.

Tom: "It doesn't feel like you're going through the motions. You can pick and choose what you get out of it really easily, and you don't feel dragged along by the current the way you can at some of the bigger events. You're an active participant in it. Bloody good show."

We couldn't put it better. See you at The Brewery next year.