This is the festival for those shaping what's next. The festival where bold minds meet, big ideas spark, and change gets real.
This June, it’s festival season, and we’re throwing one too - just ours happens to be for transformation leaders.
DifFest 2026 — limited to 50 senior leaders — is a three-day, Inside–Out experience built around Intelligent Transformation, set in the heart of Sheffield. This isn’t your normal conference. It’s an immersive reset. It’s about the real work:
- Winning commercially without losing socially
- Designing tomorrow without a blueprint
- Building advantage in an AI-accelerated world
- Leading when certainty has expired
- Creating performance that outpaces disruption
- And, yes, it will have energy, food, coffee, music, conversation, creative contributors, and more.
A festival feel, with substance at its core. You can move in and out as your diary demands:
- One day will sharpen you.
- Two days will deepen the thinking.
- All three will give you the full arc.
If you’re shaping what comes next — not just managing what is — this is the tent you’ll want to be in.
Lineup
Matt Davies
Dr Ashwin Mehta
Jenny Rae
Jayne Manley
Katie Driver
Good to know
Highlights
- In person
Location
Discovery
20 Hawley Street
#Block 4 Sheffield City Centre S1 4WP
How do you want to get there?
Agenda
-
Arrival and lunch
-
Kick-off: welcome to DifFest
-
The Future Belongs To The Brave
The Future Belongs to the Brave Leading people and brands through the AI revolution. Every major shift in history creates the same reaction: excitement, fear, resistance, and huge opportunity. The Industrial Revolution changed how the world worked. Today, AI is changing how the world thinks, creates, and competes. In this energising opening keynote, Matt Davies explores the parallels between then and now — from the Luddites’ backlash against mechanisation to the modern anxieties surrounding automation and artificial intelligence. But history shows us something important: technology alone never wins. The organisations that thrive are the ones that understand people, solve real customer problems, and adapt with purpose. Matt will challenge leaders to stop chasing tools and start leading through principles. He’ll introduce the concept of Brand Leadership — using brand strategy to guide decisions, align teams, and create meaningful customer value in uncertain times.