Slush 2026 runs November 18 and 19 at Messukeskus, the Helsinki Expo and Convention Centre, with its investor-only Investor Day a day earlier at Finlandia Hall, according to the organizer's event page. By the morning of November 1, the investor pass at €1,195 was the only ticket still on sale on slush.org; the startup pass and the other tiers were marked sold out.
The event is deliberately smaller this year. Slush said in January that it would cut its audience by 10% to concentrate on early-stage startups, and it has replaced the €1 million VC investment for its pitch competition with a €500,000 prize that takes no equity.
What changes in 2026
Slush 2025 ran November 19 and 20, according to its livestream page. This year's edition is a day earlier in the calendar and, by design, smaller. When Slush introduced Noora Saksa as its new CEO on January 27, it said it would "downsize the audience by 10% to better serve its core, early-stage startups," with recommendations tailored to each startup's stage. This year, Saksa said in the announcement, Slush is "doing less, but more intentionally." The organizer's homepage now cites 12,000+ attendees, 200+ speakers and 600+ side events.
The biggest format change is the Slush 100 pitch competition. From 2022 to 2025 the winner received a €1 million investment from VCs; in 2026 one startup wins €500,000 (about $559,000) with no equity attached, plus a speaking slot on the main stage next year, Slush said. Saksa's explanation: "A flat €1M at a fixed valuation and standard terms no longer fits most startups." Slush said the change also opens the competition to teams from outside Europe and the US, which the VC investment model had limited. A new program, Slush 20U20, brings 20 people under the age of 20, whom Slush calls supertalents, to Helsinki for the week.
Family offices also get their own program for the first time, running November 17 to 19 with Emergence Ventures and Commonplace and supported by UBS Global Wealth Management, Slush wrote on X on October 28.
The speakers
The 2026 speaker page lists 100 names, which Slush calls its first batch. For people who build and buy software, the founders and operators on it include Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, Erik Bernhardsson of Modal, Parag Agrawal of Parallel Web Systems, Jan Oberhauser of n8n, Tuomas Artman of Linear, Koen Bok of Framer, Eoin Hinchy of Tines, Grant Lee of Gamma, Christopher Pedregal of Granola, Colin Zima of Omni and Marcelo Lebre of Remote. Lovable sends its CEO, Anton Osika, and its head of growth, Elena Verna. Felix Rieseberg of Anthropic and Vrushali Paunikar, Carta's chief product officer, are also listed.
Investors on the list include Reid Hoffman, a partner at Greylock, Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator, Sonya Huang of Sequoia, Matt Turck of FirstMark and Shardul Shah of Index Ventures. Finland's president, Alexander Stubb, and Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, are listed too. Slush said on X on October 30 that the stage program would be published on November 3.
Investor Day and the LP track
Investor Day runs from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. local time on November 17 at Finlandia Hall. Slush says it brings together 2,000+ venture investors, plus LPs, and €4 trillion in venture assets under management. Its panels cover the late-stage and exit gap (Antti Vasara of the European Innovation Council and Ted Persson of EQT), secondaries (Joel Hwang of HarbourVest and Amir Malayery of Insight Partners), portfolio concentration (Greylock's Jason Risch and Felicis's Feyza Haskaraman) and a prediction panel on where venture is heading in 2027.
For limited partners, the LP program has 20 emerging managers raising funds I to III pitching on November 18, an LP reception on November 17 hosted with BACKED VC, and an invite-only LP and emerging manager matchmaking on November 18 run by Mountside Ventures and Blue Future Partners. Fewer than 100 tickets were left in its shop, Slush told investors on X on October 30:
Post on X by @SlushHQ
Investors, this is your last call. Fewer than 100 tickets are left in our shop. Slush will be fully sold out in a matter of days. Get your Investor Pass before it's too late 👉 https://t.co/ZlJNXS78J3 https://t.co/4a0YXbtS7j
Tickets and practical details
Prices as shown on slush.org on November 1, 2026, including Finland's 13.5% VAT. Dollar figures use the European Central Bank's October 30 reference rate of $1.1172 per euro.
Pass | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|
Startup | €395 ($441) | Sold out |
Investor | €1,195 ($1,335) | On sale |
Source: slush.org, checked November 1, 2026, 12:11 p.m. UTC; SaasBuzz conversion. A Thursday-only pass and the general pass for corporates and other attendees were also marked sold out.
Solo GPs and angel investors qualify for a €100 discount on the investor pass, which brings it to €1,095 ($1,223). Tickets are non-refundable but can be transferred to someone else before the event, according to the FAQ. Doors open at 8 a.m. both days; the opening show starts at 10 a.m. on November 18, and the afterparty runs from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on November 19. Badges can be collected from November 16 at Helsinki Airport, Mall of Tripla and Forum. Slush recommends tram 2 or the train from Pasila rather than taxis. It had not posted 2026 livestream details by November 1; in 2025 it streamed only the Founder Stage and put every recorded talk on its YouTube channel afterward.
What it means for software founders and investors
Slush sells itself on the ratio of money to founders. Its homepage promises "one VC for every two founders"; the figures on its own media page, 5,500 startup operators and founders to 3,000 investors at Slush 2025, work out to about 1.8 founders and operators per investor. That is the case for a seed or Series A software company to go, and the sold-out startup pass suggests founders have taken it. The planned 10% cut in attendance and the stage-based recommendations are Slush's answer to the obvious complaint about a crowded floor, though whether they make meetings easier to land will only show on the day.
Pricing points the same way. At €1,195, an investor pass costs about three times a startup pass, and investors were the last tier still on sale 17 days out. The prize change matters for founders too: a €500,000 award with no equity is half the old headline figure, but the winner gives up nothing for it, where the €1 million came at fixed terms that Saksa said no longer fit most startups.
The calendar is tight for anyone doing the November circuit. Web Summit in Lisbon and KubeCon North America in Salt Lake City both run November 9 to 12, which leaves five days before Investor Day and six before the main event opens. Web Summit is the broad-audience show and KubeCon the engineering one; Slush is where a European founder raising a round meets the funds. The stage program due on November 3 will show how much of the agenda goes to software, as against the AI and deep tech that Saksa's essay "Slush 2026 is a Bet on Europe" puts at the center of the year.
