Automation, robotics & warehouse events for California operators, 2026–2027

The California anchors are RoboBusiness 2026 (Santa Clara, October) and IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2026 (Santa Clara, December 7 to 9). NVIDIA GTC 2027 (San Jose, March) anchors the AI compute side of automation. ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo (San Jose, August 27 to 28) and SDV & AV Silicon Valley Summit (Santa Clara, September 29 to October 1) cover autonomous systems.

California automation teams travel to six national shows in the 2026 to 2027 window: IMTS (Chicago, September 2026), Assembly Show (Rosemont IL, October 2026), Pack Expo International (Chicago, November 2026), Manifest (Las Vegas, February 8 to 10, 2027), ProMat (Chicago, March 2027), and Automate (Las Vegas, May 10 to 13, 2027, just outside window; note the show moves from Detroit to Vegas in 2027). MODEX 2026 ran before the window start; the next MODEX is 2028.

RoboBusiness 2026 (Santa Clara) is the West Coast warehouse robotics anchor. ProMat 2027 (Chicago, March) is the biennial North American warehouse automation show. Manifest 2027 (Las Vegas, February) covers supply chain automation. Pack Expo International (Chicago, November 2026) covers end-of-line and palletizing robotics.

IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2026 (Santa Clara, December 7 to 9) is the humanoid robotics research conference of the year. NVIDIA GTC 2027 (San Jose, March) covers humanoid robotics AI through the Isaac robotics tooling. RoboBusiness 2026 (Santa Clara, October) covers commercial humanoid deployments.

NVIDIA GTC 2027 (San Jose, March) is the primary bridge event. Databricks Data + AI Summit 2026 (SF, June 15 to 18) covers ML for predictive maintenance and perception. Snowflake Summit 2026 (SF, June 1 to 4) covers data infrastructure for automation telemetry. AWS Summit LA (June 10) is the free option with IoT and RoboMaker content.

The North American industrial automation trade show circuit runs through Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Rosemont because that is where manufacturing and distribution remain concentrated. IMTS, ProMat, Pack Expo, Assembly Show, and Automate all run in the Midwest. California hosts the robotics AI, autonomous systems, and Silicon Valley ecosystem (RoboBusiness, Humanoids, NVIDIA GTC), which is why this directory covers both California-based events and the national shows CA operators travel to.

AWS Summit Los Angeles (June 10, 2026) is free with registration and covers IoT Core and RoboMaker content. Google I/O (May 19 to 20) offers a free livestream. SF Tech Week and LA Tech Week (October 2026) include free robotics and automation gatherings. ProMat 2027 (Chicago, March) is free to register for the national show; California operators travel.

Robot.com editorial verifies this directory weekly. Every event is sourced from a tier-1 publisher or the official event website: organizer domains (robobusiness.com, nvidia.com/gtc, automate.org, promatshow.com, pmmi.org, imts.com, manifestvegas.com) and research bodies (ieee-ras.org). Aggregator sites are used only for cross-reference, never as primary sources. The directory covers a rolling 12-month window and is maintained by Natalia Gutierrez, Communications and PR Lead at Robot.com (ng@robot.com).