ServiceNow World Forum London is at ExCeL on 20 October 2026. Free to attend, 8:30am to 6pm, and this year it closes with Louis Theroux.

We go to these events every year, and the honest answer is that most people get about a third of the value they could. They turn up, sit through the keynote, walk the expo, and go home with a tote bag. Here is how to do better, plus what the agenda quietly tells you about where ServiceNow hiring is going.

The essentials

• Date: Tuesday 20 October 2026
• Venue: ExCeL London, One Western Gateway, Royal Victoria Dock, London E16 1XL (open in Google Maps)
• Times: 8:30am to 6:00pm
• Cost: Free
• Register: Sign up on ServiceNow’s registration page
• Sessions: Browse the full session catalogue
• Format: In person only

When to register

Registration is open now and it costs nothing. ServiceNow has not published a cut-off date, but the rooms have a fixed capacity and the popular breakouts fill first, so there is no advantage in leaving it. Register, then go into the session catalogue and book the sessions you actually want. People who do that in September get their first choices. People who do it the week before take what is left.

Nearest stations are Custom House and Prince Regent on the DLR, and Custom House on the Elizabeth line, which has made getting there from central London considerably less painful than it used to be.

What is actually on

Badge pickup and the expo open at 8:30am. The main keynote runs 10:00am to 11:00am. Sessions and the expo carry on through to 5:00pm, Louis Theroux closes the day from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, and the networking reception runs 5:00pm to 6:00pm.

The part worth planning around is the hands on AI labs. You get to build and test your own AI agent rather than watch someone demo one. If you are technical, that is the most useful hour of the day. If you are a hiring manager, sit in on one anyway. It will tell you more about what your team actually needs to be able to do than any amount of reading job specs.

Who is speaking

From ServiceNow, Jayney Howson, Chief Learning Officer, and John Aisien, Senior Vice President and General Manager. The customer line up includes leaders from Kingfisher, HM Revenue and Customs, Primark and Heathrow.

A tip after a few of these: the customer sessions are almost always more useful than the product ones. The product sessions tell you what ServiceNow wants to sell next year. The customer sessions tell you what actually worked, what broke, and how long it really took. Go to the customer sessions.

Louis Theroux is an unusual booking for an enterprise software event and it will pull a crowd. If you want a seat, do not wander in at ten to four.

What the agenda tells you about hiring

This is the bit most event guides skip.

The themes this year are AI Control Tower, AI agents and Workflow Data Fabric. We see the same pattern every year: what ServiceNow pushes hardest on stage in October starts showing up in the briefs we take around two quarters later. Employers do not usually ask for it by name straight away. It arrives as “we need someone who has actually done this, not just been on the course.”

That gap is where the money is. The people who go to the labs, build something, and can talk about it in an interview six months before the job titles catch up are the ones who move up a band. We have seen it with Virtual Agent, we saw it with ITOM, and we are watching it happen now with agentic AI.

If you are hiring, the same logic applies in reverse. The candidates who can genuinely do this work are not on the market for long, and the salary expectations move faster than most internal bands do.

I will have copies of the 2026 UK salary survey with me

I am bringing printed copies of this year’s UK ServiceNow salary survey to ExCeL. I will leave a few around the cloakrooms, and I will have some on me during the day. If you see me, just ask. If I have one left, it is yours.

It is the most useful thing you can walk away with if you are anywhere near a hiring decision or a pay conversation in the next six months.

How to get something out of the day

Build your agenda before you arrive. Sessions fill. Pick your three must-attends and treat the rest as flexible.

Write down two questions before you go. Make them specific. “What does the roadmap look like” gets you a brochure answer. The thing you are actually stuck on gets you a real one, and people are remarkably generous when you ask them something real.

Go to the reception. Everyone leaves at five. The hour after five is where the actual conversations happen, and it is the cheapest networking you will do all year.

Do your follow ups within 48 hours. Connect while people still remember the conversation. After a week you are a stranger with a tote bag.

Not attending?

ServiceNow usually puts keynote and selected session content online afterwards. It is worth watching the keynote back even if you skip everything else, because it sets the direction for the following year. The SNUG community and the ServiceNow community forums tend to have the interesting reactions within a day or two.

Come and find us at ExCeL

We will be at World Forum London on the 20th. If you are hiring into your ServiceNow team, thinking about your next move, or you just want a straight conversation about what the market is paying right now, come and say hello. And ask about the salary survey.

If you would rather line something up in advance so we are not both wandering the expo hoping to bump into each other, grab a slot in my diary and we will sort a time.