Great Digital for Good conference 2026: AI realities

The Great Digital for Good conference is back for 2026. Expect cross-sector collaboration, hands-on workshops, insights from your peers in world-leading impactful institutions, and actionable strategies from experts in their specialisms.

This year's theme is 'AI realities: the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI as it's used today'. We'll be exploring this decade's biggest trend (AI) from multiple viewpoints: an enthusiast's curiosity, a sceptic's eye, and a practitioner's war stories.

We've got a packed agenda designed to provide practical value to digital teams in purpose-driven orgs, focused on, but not limited to, getting value from AI whilst avoiding pitfalls.

Read the full adgenda here. Here's some highlights:

• The digital trust crisis – David Eccles, Numiko's Managing Director, explores what AI-generated answers mean for public organisations who must be the 'guardians of truth', and the responsibilities they have to the public to combat AI misinformation.
• How will AI change jobs? It's already changed ours – Digital practitioners across a range of roles: Designers, Developers, and Leaders share how AI has already transformed their roles and what they've learnt from adopting a new way of working.
• Workshop: AI realities – Interactive session led by Jaron Ghani and Paul Costello to identify your capability gaps and establish how your teams could utilise AI tools or solutions more effectively.
• AI's hidden workloads – Ash Mann draws on his experience and research to uncover the workloads AI projects can create and how to mitigate and plan for them.
• Workshop: Keeping it human – When AI isn't the right answer, how do we preserve the 'human touch'? What rules are needed around the use of AI in different areas?
• Why design still matters, even in an 'AI-first world' – Senior designer Callum Badger explains why, even in a world where AI answers replace search as the 'first port of call', well-designed web experiences remain a crucial part of the funnel.
• Unconference session – Always an attendee favourite. In this session, we'll break into groups to tackle the topics you choose in a live poll.
• Hardening your website in a world of AI-powered cyber threats – Hackers have AI tools too, making cyber attacks a matter of when, not if. In this session, experienced developers Andy Whale and Josh Hayter share how to make your site safe from these new cyber threats.
• What a hackday unlocked – Bethany Brown from the NSPCC shares how a hackday transformed their reporting and helped to energise their team.
  
  Plus lots more talks yet to be announced...
  
  Then last, but by no means least, we'll go to the pub!

If you haven't attended a previous conference, see our video below for a taste of what to expect. You can also read our write-up of last year's conference, which includes videos of the sessions.