Retail Technology Show 2026

About Retail Technology Show 2026

Retail Technology Show 2026 was a two-day retail technology conference and exhibition held on 22–23 April 2026 at ExCeL London. Organised by Nineteen Group, it is free to attend for retailers, consumer brands and leisure and hospitality organisations, and pairs a large exhibition floor with conference sessions on the Supernova, Pulse and Spark stages across six streams: connected retail; leadership, cybersecurity and economy; loyalty, customer experience and personalisation; retail media, AI and data; return to growth; and sustainability, supply chain and innovation. The full programme was on the official Retail Technology Show website.

Magebit at Retail Technology Show 2026

Booth: A Magebit stand for both days, with a card draw for a silver coin.

Team: Arturs Kruze (CEO) and Nigel Leadbitter (Account Manager).

On the floor we talked with retailers, platform vendors and agency partners about performance, headless builds, Hyvä, AI-driven personalisation and agentic commerce. Before the show we visited our client UK Meds in Nottingham for a roadmap session, and on the first evening we hosted a dinner in London with our client Personal Homecare Pharmacy, two of the healthcare and pharmacy stores we work with. We wrote up the trip and the themes from the show floor in our Retail Technology Show 2026 recap.

Highlights

• Headline keynotes: fireside chats with Archie Norman (Chairman, Marks and Spencer), Anthony Houghton (Group CEO, Holland & Barrett), Sarah Boyd (Managing Director UK, Sephora) and Touker Suleyman (Hawes & Curtis).
• Retail and government: BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson discussed whether government is helping or hindering retail innovation, growth and investment.
• AI moved from hype to implementation: retailers we spoke to were asking how to deploy personalisation engines, demand forecasting and agentic customer journeys, not whether to.
• Composable commerce and retention: more retailers were moving off monolithic platforms, and with acquisition costs rising, loyalty and lifecycle tooling were at the centre of growth plans.