ServiceNow World Forum Amsterdam is at RAI on 28 October 2026. Free, 8:30am to 6pm, and it is eight days after London.

That gap matters more than it sounds. If you are in the Benelux region or you cover Europe, you can realistically do both, and the two days give you a noticeably better read on the year than either one alone. London is the bigger room. Amsterdam is where you get closer to the people running things.

The essentials

• Date: Wednesday 28 October 2026
• Venue: RAI Amsterdam, Europaplein 24, 1078 GZ Amsterdam (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, no virtual option

When to register

Registration is open now and it is free. ServiceNow has not announced a closing date, but capacity is capacity and the better breakouts go first. Register, then go straight into the session catalogue and book what you want rather than deciding on the morning.

RAI has its own stop on the Amsterdam metro and a direct train from Schiphol takes around fifteen minutes. If you are flying in for the day, it is one of the easier venues in Europe to reach.

The shape of the day

Badge pickup and expo from 8:30am. Keynote 10:00am to 11:00am. Expo and breakout sessions run through to 5:00pm, the closing session is 4:00pm to 5:00pm, and the networking reception runs 5:00pm to 6:00pm.

The running theme this year is “AI that works”, built around AI Control Tower. The hands on labs let you build and test your own AI agent rather than watch a demo, which is the difference between understanding something and being able to say you have done it.

Who is speaking

Gaurav Rewari, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Data and Analytics Products at ServiceNow, is the name to note if data strategy is your concern. Jayney Howson, Chief Learning Officer, is also speaking, and Rumailah Burden, Advisory Solution Consultant on Employee Workflows, is worth catching if HRSD is where your roadmap is heading.

As with every one of these, the customer sessions tend to be more useful than the product ones. A vendor tells you what is possible. A customer tells you what it cost and how long it took.

The language problem nobody puts in the job spec

Here is the thing that makes hiring in the Netherlands harder than the headline numbers suggest, and it is the same story in Germany.

Clients want the best ServiceNow people they can get. They also want them to speak Dutch. Both of those are reasonable on their own. Put them together and you have cut the available pool down enormously, because the ServiceNow skills you need and native Dutch do not overlap nearly as often as people assume.

We have this conversation constantly. A client describes a role, we go and find genuinely strong candidates, and then the Dutch requirement rules out most of them. Sometimes that requirement is real, because the users they support work in Dutch and there is no way round it. Often it is not, and it is there because it has always been there.

The question worth asking before you open a role is a simple one. Who does this person actually talk to, and in what language? If the answer is an internal English speaking platform team, the language requirement is costing you months and probably money. If the answer is Dutch speaking end users all day, it is real, and you should plan for a longer search and a higher number.

Amsterdam is a good place to test that, because you will be standing in a room full of exactly the people you are trying to hire.

What this means if you are hiring in Europe

Beyond language, two patterns we see consistently. First, companies that recruit for these roles in house take significantly longer, mostly because the niche is narrow enough that generalist recruiters do not know who is who. Second, salary expectations in this market move faster than internal banding cycles, so offers get built on numbers that were accurate eighteen months ago and then get declined.

If you are planning a hire for Q1, the useful thing to do at Amsterdam is not to collect CVs. It is to work out what the going rate actually is before you write the business case.

Getting value out of the day

Plan your sessions in advance. Pick three you will not miss and leave the rest loose.

Bring specific questions. The vaguer the question, the more generic the answer.

Stay for the reception. The hour from five is where people stop presenting and start talking.

Follow up inside two days. Everyone means to. Almost nobody does, which is exactly why it works.

If you cannot make it

ServiceNow typically publishes keynote and selected session recordings afterwards. The keynote is the one to watch back, because it sets the tone for the following twelve months of product messaging and, eventually, of job specs.

Common questions

Is it really free? Yes. Registration costs nothing. You pay for travel and your own time.

What language are sessions in? Mostly English. Amsterdam draws a pan European audience and ServiceNow runs it accordingly.

Can I attend if we are not a ServiceNow customer? Yes. Plenty of attendees are evaluating the platform or work for partners.

How early should I arrive? Badge pickup opens at 8:30am and the keynote is at 10:00am. Arriving by 9:15am gives you time to get a badge, get coffee and get a decent seat.

Can I do London and Amsterdam? Yes, they are eight days apart. London is the 20th, Amsterdam the 28th.

Thinking about your ServiceNow team for 2027?

We recruit ServiceNow professionals across Europe, and most of our conversations at this time of year are with people planning headcount for the new year rather than filling something urgent.

If you want a straight read on what your roles are worth, how long they are realistically taking to fill, and whether that language requirement is helping or hurting you, book a call. No pitch, just the market as we are seeing it.