FLIRT 2026 - Future Leaders in Responsible Technology

Something is happening to your industry. The question is whether you're shaping it or watching it happen to you.

FLIRT - Future Leaders in Responsible Technology - is a two-day festival-conference taking over Brighton on 2nd and 3rd November 2026. From the founding team behind the AIMI Conference, the UK's first Creative AI conference for the media and creative industries, FLIRT takes that conversation further. It's the UK's first city-wide gathering for organisations navigating the responsible roll-out of AI. How do you implement it in the real world, operationalise it across your teams, prepare your people for what's coming, and build something that actually lasts?

Not a tech conference that mentions culture. Not a media event that nods at AI. The real thing.

FLIRT maps the full picture of what an AI-native organisation actually looks like, from the creative and cultural layer through to systems, infrastructure, governance, talent, and real-world execution. A blueprint, spread across a city.

At the centre of that blueprint is AIMI, the AI in Media Institute - the founding community for media and creative professionals who have been having this conversation longer than most, and are not done yet.

The programme

The Main Stage is where the big ideas land: keynotes, defining moments, and the perspectives that set the industry agenda. The Future Stage is where the workforce conversation happens honestly, what is changing, what is breaking, and what organisations are actually doing about it. Alongside them, the Startup Village brings together the most exciting early-stage AI companies in one place, with live pitches, investor access, and the chance to get in front of the people who matter. Across the satellite zones, live demonstrations of frontier technology, from robotics to real-time generative AI, giving you the chance to see, touch, and interrogate what is actually possible right now.

Beyond the stages, FLIRT is built for human connection: hands-on workshops, live immersive experiences, proper debates, and a full programme of 'Flirt After-hours' events that make Brighton itself part of the experience.

Specialist zones run in parallel across satellite venues throughout Brighton, covering: Systems, Startups, Machines, Sonic, Flow, Experiences, Trust, Capability, Storytelling, and Access. One wristband. Every venue. Both days. Every stage filmed and broadcast live.

Who is this for

If AI is changing how your work gets done, this event is for you.

FLIRT is built around a simple truth: AI does not just affect one department. It cuts through every function, every workflow, every team. So the people in the room reflect that.

Founders, CEOs, CMOs, and brand directors. Agency leaders and creative directors. Film-makers, musicians, and artists. Film and TV producers. Music executives. Publishers, journalists, and broadcasters. Content creators and game developers. Product leaders, engineers, and XR builders. AI startup founders and the CTOs alongside them.

COOs and operations leads navigating new tooling. Finance professionals rethinking process. Legal and IP specialists dealing with the real consequences of AI-generated work. Risk and governance leads. HR, People, and L&D directors managing the human side of AI adoption. VCs, angel investors, and family offices. Policymakers, civil servants, and trade body representatives.

Students and emerging creatives who are early enough in their careers to shape what comes next rather than inherit it.

People who are tired of being talked at about AI, and ready to be in a room where it actually gets contested.

Built on a proven concept

FLIRT grows directly out of the AIMI Conference (March 2025), the UK's first Creative AI conference. Sold out. 600 attendees. 40 speakers. 2 stages. The concept works. FLIRT is what it becomes at scale.

If you know you'll be in Brighton in November, now is the moment.

In partnership with AIMI, the AI in Media Institute.

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Host or Publisher AIMI