Robotics events for California teams, 2026–2027

RoboBusiness 2026 runs October 14 to 16, 2026 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It is the primary commercial robotics business conference in North America, held in the densest cluster of commercial robotics companies in the world. The second-biggest is NVIDIA GTC 2027, which runs in March 2027 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and brings 25,000+ attendees across robotics AI, Isaac, Omniverse, and foundation models.

Commercial robotics startups should prioritize RoboBusiness 2026 (Oct, Santa Clara), NVIDIA GTC 2027 (Mar, San Jose), IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2026 (Dec, Santa Clara), and ADAS & AV Technology Expo 2026 (Aug, San Jose). Add SF Tech Week robotics tracks (Oct 2026) and LA Tech Week robotics tracks (Oct 2026) for founder and investor access without booth costs.

IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2026 runs December 7 to 9, 2026 at the Santa Clara Convention Center (verify venue). It is the primary global humanoid robotics conference. Humanoid and bipedal robotics research, engineering, and industry converge here. Critical for any commercial robotics company positioning against or alongside humanoid platforms.

California robotics teams regularly travel to six national and international events: ICRA (Jun 2026, Vienna) and IROS (Oct 2026, Daegu) for academic research, XPONENTIAL (May 2026, Atlanta) for unmanned systems, Automate (May 2027, Detroit, watch item outside window) for industrial robotics, RSS (Jul 2026, TBA) and CoRL (Nov 2026, TBA) for robot learning research, and NeurIPS (Dec 2026, TBA) for foundation model research that shapes robotics AI.

ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Technology Expo 2026 (Aug 27 to 28, 2026, San Jose McEnery Convention Center) is the largest West Coast AV and ADAS event. CoMotion LA 2026 (Nov 2026, Los Angeles) covers mobility and AV policy. LA Tech Week (Oct 2026) includes autonomy-focused tracks given the LA concentration of AV engineering talent.

Yes. NVIDIA GTC 2027 (March 2027, San Jose) is the primary robotics AI anchor, covering Isaac, Omniverse, foundation models, and simulation. Embedded Vision Summit 2026 (May 19 to 21, 2026, Santa Clara) covers perception and edge AI. CVPR 2026 (June 2026, location TBA) is the primary academic computer vision conference. CoRL and NeurIPS cover robot learning and foundation models for robotics AI research.

RoboBusiness 2026 (Oct, Santa Clara) is the highest-density commercial robotics investor room. SF Tech Week robotics tracks (Oct 2026) and LA Tech Week robotics tracks (Oct 2026) are where early-stage robotics founders and VCs meet without booth costs. NVIDIA GTC 2027 (Mar, San Jose) concentrates the robotics AI investor community alongside the full Robot.com product family demonstration.

This directory is verified weekly by Robot.com editorial. Last verification: April 20, 2026. The window covers a rolling 12 months, currently April 2026 to April 2027. Events with TBA dates are flagged in content_notes and re-checked against the organizer's official site each week.