NXT BLD 2026: a decade of looking around corners

As we approach the ten-year anniversary of NXT BLD, our 2017 selves would be amazed at just how far the AEC industry has come — and at the technology revolution right around the corner. With AI, design automation, and data-driven approaches poised to reshape architecture, engineering, and construction, our future gazing event (13-14 May, London), has never felt more important

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Ten years ago, NXT BLD set out with a simple premise: the AEC industry was on the cusp of a technology revolution, and needed an event to cut through the noise and show what was actually coming.

A decade on, and many of the ideas first aired at NXT BLD 2017 at the British Museum, from generative design to reality capture, have gone mainstream, and the pace of change is only accelerating.

To celebrate our ten-year milestone NXT BLD 2026, incorporating the NXT DEV conference stream on day 2, will be held at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Centre in the heart of Westminster, London on 13–14 May 2026.

We hope you’ll join AEC Magazine’s editorial team, our partner Lenovo workstations, and hundreds of fellow AEC industry leaders for two days of breakthrough technologies, visionary speakers, and the kind of honest, no-fluff conversations that have become a hallmark of the event.

AI is closer than you think!

At the heart of NXT BLD 2026 is a single, unavoidable reality: AI is going to fundamentally change what AEC software can do and what it should look like. And while that may sound like a distant promise, we believe the first major impacts will land within the next two years.

On both days, this year’s programme will explore that shift across several interconnected themes. Agentic BIM points to a world where intelligent software agents don’t just assist designers but actively drive workflows, making decisions, running analyses, and coordinating across disciplines with minimal human intervention. Design automation is pushing beyond parametric scripting into territory where entire building systems can be generated, evaluated, and optimised in hours rather than weeks.

Underpinning all of this is a shift toward data-first thinking, the recognition that the real value in a building model isn’t the geometry but the structured data behind it, and that whoever controls and connects that data holds the keys to productivity.

These forces are also rewriting how we consume software itself, with a move toward applications on demand: lightweight, task-specific tools assembled around open data rather than monolithic platforms that try to do everything.

Together, these themes point to the biggest workflow transformation the industry has seen since the move from 2D to 3D, and NXT BLD 2026 is where you’ll hear it debated, demonstrated, and challenged by the people making it happen – from software developers to the most advanced architecture, engineering and construction firms.

Engineering takes centre stage

With Consigli’s sale to Aecom underscoring just how much value the market now places on engineering capability, the spotlight on the ‘E’ in AEC has never been brighter. And of all the disciplines, engineering is where AI is delivering the most dramatic leaps with real-time analysis, whole building solves, and automated system design that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

On day 1 we’ll bring together the hottest AI-driven engineering startups at a single event for the first time: Francisco Iorio, CEO of Augmenta; Lucas Epp, VP and head of engineering at StructureCraft and developer of Branch3D; Andrew Krippner and Davis Muxlow, CEO and COO of Hvakr; and Niklas Lindgren, CEO and co-founder of Endra will all be presenting their latest technologies. From electrical to MEP to structural, these are the companies redefining what’s possible, and this is your chance to see them all under one roof.

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Autodrawings

Meanwhile, automated drawing production (days 1 & 2) is quietly reaching a tipping point. What was once experimental is now maturing into tools that firms can deploy today to dramatically cut the time spent creating and editing construction documentation.

Robert Graebert of Graebert CAD, Adi Shavit from Swapp, Bill Allen from Chaos, and potentially Rocco Matta of Ideatura will be on hand to demonstrate and discuss what’s now possible, and what it means for productivity on real projects.

BIM 2.0

Our BIM 2.0 track (days 1 & 2) is a rare gathering, perhaps the only time this year you’ll find Motif, Arcol, Autodesk (Forma), Hypar, Snaptrude, and Qonic all in one open forum. Each of these platforms is pushing BIM authoring into the cloud and, critically, each is building in the agentic AI layers that could fundamentally redefine what a BIM tool even is. This isn’t incremental improvement, it’s a generational shift from BIM as static documentation toward BIM as a live, intelligent environment where AI agents can reason, iterate, and act on design data in real time.

With Amar Hanspal’s Motif reframing the “I” in BIM from Information to Intelligence, and every vendor on this list racing to stake out territory in that new landscape, the competitive dynamics have never been more fascinating or more consequential.

Our BIM 2.0 panel will bring these players together to confront the big question head-on: what does BIM authoring actually look like in the age of AI, and who will define it?

Data

At NXT BLD, our data track (days 1 & 2) will explore how firms can break free from vendor lock-in and take genuine ownership of their project data. We’ll examine practical strategies for running large language models in-house, cutting token costs without sacrificing capability, and applying AI agents directly to architectural and engineering datasets.

Speakers will make the case for open infrastructure – platforms like Speckle and That Open Company, that give practices the freedom to connect, query, and act on their data without routing everything through proprietary gatekeepers. If data is the fuel for agentic AI in the built environment, this track asks a critical question: who controls the pump?

Reality capture

Making sense of the 3D dots and splats, this year’s reality capture track (day 2) tackles the growing convergence of AI and the physical world.

Dr Florent Poux, a leading authority on 3D data science, spatial AI researcher, and author of O’Reilly’s 3D Data Science with Python, will demonstrate how AI and deep learning are transforming raw point clouds into semantically rich, actionable datasets, automating what was once painstaking manual classification work.

Robert Klaschka will host a wider Reality Capture panel discussion exploring how these technologies are reshaping survey-to-model workflows across the AEC industry.

From LiDAR to photogrammetry to Gaussian splatting, the session asks how technology advances move us beyond capture as documentation toward capture as a live, intelligent foundation for design and construction.

…and there’s more

That’s just some of the headline acts. NXT BLD will feature a packed programme of talks from leading practices, developers, and VCs covering the latest advances in technology, workflow, and industry strategy. More speakers and sessions will be announced throughout the month — watch this space.

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