AI Conferences for Higher Education: Who Should Go Where

Search for AI conferences for higher education and the results are not a list. They are a stack of event pages, and each one was written for a single person on campus. One addresses the provost, one the CIO, one the faculty developer, one the scholar who studies universities for a living. Read them side by side and the question stops being which event is best. It becomes who in your institution should be in which room.

That is the sorting below, with real dates, prices and proposal deadlines taken from the organisers' own pages, covering the stretch from late October 2026 to June 2027. If you are still deciding what kind of event you want at all, start with the four different formats that share the name AI education conference. This piece assumes you already know you want a higher education room and need to pick one.

Sort by the job, not by the event name

Universities send people to conferences to bring something back. A provost needs a governance model that survives a faculty senate. A CIO needs to know what peers are licensing and how they secured it. A teaching centre needs assignments that work next semester. A researcher needs a programme slot, because presenting is what most departments will pay for.

The events on this list are honest about which of those they serve, usually in a section called Who Should Attend. The mistake is sending the wrong person.

Presidents, provosts and academic leaders

AAC&U Conference on AI and Higher Education

The AAC&U Conference on AI and Higher Education runs 28 to 30 October 2026 at the Hilton in Atlanta and online. Its audience list is the clearest definition of the leadership room: presidents, provosts, academic leaders, student affairs professionals, IT specialists, librarians, researchers and institutional decision makers. The stated subject is coordinated, institution wide strategy, from academic integrity and curricular change to governance and policy. The online option makes it the easiest leadership event to join at short notice.

ASU Agentic AI and the Student Experience

Arizona State's summit, Agentic AI and the Student Experience, ran 20 to 22 October 2026 in Tempe for more than 700 education and industry leaders, after a call for proposals that drew over 200 submissions from nearly 100 universities across 10 countries. It sold out. The lesson for next year is timing: a leadership event with industry in the room can fill well before the doors open, and a waitlist form is not a plan.

ESCP AI in Higher Education Summit 2027

For European institutions, the ESCP AI in Higher Education Summit meets on 16 and 17 March 2027 at the Champerret campus in Paris. Its submission window opened on 26 October 2026 and closes on 15 January 2027, with an early decision on 31 December for anything sent before 15 December. Two details set it apart. It asks returning institutions to report what held and what was dropped from initiatives presented in 2026, which is rare and useful. And for 2027 it opens a category for companies and start-ups working with universities. For a wider view across the continent, see the best AI conferences in Europe.

CIOs, IT directors and campus AI leads

Notre Dame AI Forum

The Notre Dame AI Forum runs 16 to 18 November 2026 at the Morris Inn in South Bend. Last year it drew more than 130 AI strategists and leaders from over 50 institutions. It is open only to faculty and employees of colleges, universities and nonprofit academic institutions, which is the point: CIOs, CISOs and IT directors can compare implementations without a sales team listening.

Denison AI Leaders Summit

The Denison AI Leaders Summit in Granville, Ohio, from 9 to 11 November 2026, is the small room. It caps attendance at 45 seats, lets each institution register up to four people, and charges $300, with a reception, lunch, a summit dinner and a resource exchange included. It is designed for whoever has become the institution's AI lead, whatever the job title says.

EDUCAUSE and Internet2

EDUCAUSE runs AI programming segmented by role, including an online course for leaders, Driving Institutional Value, from 2 to 11 November 2026. The Internet2 Global Summit in Philadelphia, 5 to 8 April 2027, carries an AI Strategy and Governance track for research and education networks, explicitly about strategy and policy rather than technical implementation. Its call for proposals closed in September, so 2027 is an attend year, not a present year.

Faculty, instructional designers and teaching centres

UCF Teaching and Learning with AI

The fifth Teaching and Learning with AI conference at the University of Central Florida runs 1 to 3 June 2027, face to face only. It says plainly that it is about practice, not AI research, and that it serves frontline faculty, librarians, instructional designers and faculty developers. Formats are short: 30 minute sessions, 60 minute workshops, 10 minute TAI Talks and posters. Proposals close at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on 22 January 2027.

The regional one day symposium

A common format is the single day hosted by one university for its region, and it is often the cheapest way for a teaching centre to present. Idaho State holds its AI in Higher Education Symposium on 8 January 2027 and states that you do not need to be an AI expert to propose a session. The University of Iowa summit follows on 29 January 2027 and accepts posters on work that is still in progress. Look for the equivalent in your own state before booking a flight.

Researchers who study AI in universities

The research rooms ask for evidence, and their deadlines sit far ahead of the event. The CGHE annual conference at Oxford, 22 and 23 April 2027, takes Universities in an algorithmic age as its theme; panel proposals closed on 30 September 2026. The AIR Forum in Denver, 1 to 4 June 2027, is the meeting for institutional researchers, in person only with no hybrid option, and its proposal window has also closed.

Two venues bridge research and practice. AIFE 2026 at the National Institute of Education, NTU Singapore, runs 16 to 18 November 2026, publishes extended abstract proceedings with an ISBN and is building an academic book proposed to Springer. SAMYRAD met at Universidad CEU Fernando III in Seville on 5 and 6 October 2026, in partnership with IEEE and OpenAI, around the idea that academia, industry and policy need to sit in one room.

The calendar from here to June 2027

For the full year ahead beyond higher education, see our guide to AI conferences in 2027.

The room nobody builds: the research office

Read every page above and one role is missing. All of these events are about AI that universities use: in classrooms, in student services, in the IT stack. None is built for the other half of the question, the AI research a university produces and how it reaches a partner or a funder. The research office, the technology transfer team and the principal investigator with a promising result have no obvious room on this list.

That is the gap the EX Future Summit is designed around, and it is worth being plain about what it is and is not. It runs 18 to 20 November 2026 across three rooms at once: online, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, and Bali. It is built as a single continuous thirty hour broadcast between two islands twelve hours apart, so a researcher in any timezone can join live, and online attendance is free for verified researchers and students. The part that matters for a university is the programme: a Global Financial Raise track that maps R&D funding across venture capital, private equity, national grants and Horizon Europe, and eight hosted meet and greet sessions that match universities with private partners.

It will not replace AAC&U for a provost or Notre Dame for a CIO. It is the room to send the person whose job is turning research into a partnership. For how it sits among general AI events, see which AI summits are worth attending in 2026.

How to get the trip funded

Where travel budgets favour presenters over attendees, the proposal deadline is the real date in the calendar. For the 2027 season they cluster in January: ESCP on 15 January, UCF on 22 January, with the regional symposia open now. Missing them turns a funded trip into a request for discretionary budget.

Second, send a team where the event is built for one. Denison counts registrations per institution, and the AAC&U audience list names more than ten roles because one person comes home with notes while a provost, a registrar and a head of IT come home with a policy. Third, match the person to the room using the sections above, and write that match into the travel request. It is the argument a dean can approve.

FAQ

Are there free AI conferences for higher education?

Yes, mostly online. The Public AI Summit for Educators ran as a free two day virtual event in September 2026, aimed at community colleges, minority serving institutions and other broad access settings. The EX Future Summit's online room is free for verified researchers and students.

Can edtech companies present at higher education AI conferences?

It depends on the event. UCF lets a non sponsoring company run a 30 minute session only with a frontline faculty member or librarian beside it. ESCP opens a company and start-up demo category for the first time in 2027. Notre Dame admits only employees of academic institutions.

Which AI in higher education conferences can I attend online?

AAC&U offers an online option alongside Atlanta, EDUCAUSE runs its leadership course online, and the EX Future Summit runs an online room alongside Las Palmas and Bali. UCF, Notre Dame and the AIR Forum are in person only.

When are the 2027 proposal deadlines?

ESCP closes on 15 January 2027, with an early round for submissions before 15 December 2026. UCF closes on 22 January 2027. AIR, Internet2 and CGHE have already closed for 2027, so plan to attend those and present in 2028.