Record turnout expected for tenth Leeds Digital Festival 2025.
The landmark festival will run to 3 October, featuring over 230 events across Leeds and online, and promises to bring together the brightest thinkers, trailblazers and businesses in the region’s tech and digital sectors.
The festival celebrates a decade of open, collaborative innovation, offering a programme that spans FinTech, AI, digital creativity, cyber-security, data, sustainability and much more.
Sessions, such as the Northern FinTech Summit, will explore investment, regulation, and growth across financial technology, while events like “Breaking into Tech & Building a Career: Real Journeys, Honest Conversations” will spotlight pathways into the sector. Other highlights include “The Modern Digital Workplace Experience: Why Are Personas So Important?”, which will examine how understanding employee personas informs more effective workplace systems, and “The Next Generation of Collections: Personalised, AI-Powered, Empathetic”, looking at how institutions can deploy AI in ways that are both efficient and sensitive to customers’ experiences.
Also taking place is the annual Leeds Digital Careers Fair on 30 September at Leeds Arena. It will showcase over 100 employers and training providers, with over 1,500 attendees expected to attend.
Stuart Clarke MBE, Festival Director (pictured above), said: “This tenth anniversary feels like a momentous one for Leeds Digital Festival. The appetite for this programme has been phenomenal, not just in terms of numbers, but in the diversity of subjects, the quality of contributors, and the scale of collaboration. We believe this year will set new records for attendance, audience engagement, and for showcasing what Leeds can do in the digital world. If there was ever a time to get involved, it’s now, and I urge people not to miss out.”
This year is also Stuart Clarke’s final year as festival director, before he moves into the role of chair, with Deb Hetherington set to take over directorship for 2026 and beyond.
Premier sponsors, including CGI, Skipton Group and PEXA, are playing a vital role in making the festival possible.
Jenny Wood, Group CIO of Skipton Group, said: “At Skipton Group, we see first-hand how technology can unlock innovation, transform lives, and build resilience. As a premier sponsor of this year’s Leeds Digital Festival event, we are excited by the opportunities the festival creates for learning, networking, and innovation. The festival is a powerful platform to explore vital themes like financial inclusion and digital wellbeing, and we’re proud to support it.”
Simon Wright, UK Chief Operating Officer at PEXA, said: “We believe strongly in the festival’s role as a connector. It enables collaboration across sectors, gives emerging voices a platform, and helps accelerate ideas into action. Backing this programme in its tenth year is about celebrating where we have been and where we can go together.”
Leeds Digital Festival 2025 is supported by premier sponsors CGI, Skipton Group and PEXA, alongside executive sponsors including Accenture, Genio, Leeds City Council, Lloyds Banking Group, and others.
The complete programme is now available to sign up on leedsdigitalfestival.org
