Next Gen Makers has confirmed the return of its national Engineering Skills Conference, taking place on Thursday 22nd October 2026.
The free half-day event returns to the Lloyds Bank Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre (AMTC) at Ansty Park, Coventry, running from 9:30am to 2pm.
Last year’s Conference welcomed over 200 attendees, with feedback describing the speaker lineup as one of the most comprehensive some delegates had seen at an early careers event.
Following that success, this year’s Conference brings together speakers and delegates from across UK engineering and manufacturing for a day of insight, best practice sharing and networking. Attendees will:
- Discover strategies to build a resilient early careers talent pipeline
- Understand how to create the ultimate apprentice experience, via a live Apprentice Panel Discussion and audience Q&A
- Learn how to leverage inclusion to attract more diverse talent
- Uncover how other organisations are mentoring and developing their apprentices
- Build their network with industry and education contacts over lunch
This year’s lineup includes an impressive range of keynote speakers, including among others: Dawn Helsby, Schneider Electric, Michael Jones, Merlin Entertainments, Olivia Lane, Amazon, Michael Clark, Cummins Inc, Daniel Kettleborough, Davicon Group along with the Birmingham City University Knowledge Transfer team.
The ever popular Apprentice Panel Discussion also returns, facilitating next gen insight sharing from a diverse range of apprentices with the employer audience.
Next Gen Makers Managing Director Adam Tipper comments: “Every year this Conference gets bigger, and the appetite from employers to learn from each other keeps growing with it.
“Bringing this calibre of speaker together whilst also uniting industry and education, at no cost to attendees, is exactly what Next Gen Makers is here to do.”
Tickets for the Engineering Skills Conference 2026 are free and available via Eventbrite.
Next Gen Makers takes an outside of the box approach to tackling the national engineering skills shortage by uniting a large community of employers to share apprenticeship and early careers best practice, whilst recognising and signposting to the best employers in the UK for engineering apprenticeships through it’s Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation, backed by strategic partner Make UK.