Notes from Tech Show London 2026

Today, I enjoyed the Tech Show London at ExCeL London. The venue is huge and the event brings together several technology shows under one roof.

What struck me most was the scale of the data centre industry.

A large part of the exhibition floor was dedicated to racks, cooling systems, power infrastructure, and the operational technologies required to run data centres. Walking through the halls, it quickly became clear that this ecosystem is very active and large.

The show also included areas focused on DevOps, big data, AI, and cybersecurity. But those sections felt smaller, and the companies present were not always the hyperscaler names we usually associate with these topics. Instead, the exhibitors seemed to target mid-enterprise environments, where organisations still operate or manage significant infrastructure. From what I heard the companies present at the show were very happy with the type of customer they were meeting.

For example, some cloud providers were present, such as IONOS, but the overall impression was less about hyperscalers, and more about the broader ecosystem around infrastructure and operations.

My impression is that Tech Show London represents a particular slice of the industry: companies building and operating the infrastructure layer, together with software vendors serving organisations that still manage their own environments or run hybrid setups.

It also made me think that you could have filled the same exhibition space with other specialised ecosystems. A cybersecurity-focused conference, an AI-focused event, or a DevOps-only gathering would likely bring their own dense networks of vendors and tools.

Events like this are a reminder that the technology industry is not one single context. It is a collection of overlapping ecosystems, each with its own conferences, vendors, and conversations.

And at Tech Show London, the data centre world clearly occupies a large part of that landscape.