Digifest 2026: from disruption to direction
Lawrie Phipps, Director of External Policy Development at Jisc, reports from the annual event held at Birmingham’s ICC
Digifest 2026, taking place in Birmingham on 10 to 11 March, had a significant policy focus on the role of digital, data and AI in the UK’s future education and research system. With the government’s post-16 education and skills agenda, the science and technology framework, and the growing emphasis on productivity and growth, discussions at this year’s event, themed “from disruption to direction”, repeatedly returned to the question of how digital capability and infrastructure underpin both teaching and research.
Jisc CEO Heidi Fraser-Krauss opened the event by acknowledging the pressure institutions are under, but framed disruption as an ongoing state, not a temporary phase. This raises a key challenge for the sector, how we build confidence, governance and the shared infrastructure needed to use technology responsibly and at scale.
This theme ran through keynote sessions on digital inclusion, workforce capability and the changing role of AI. The reality is that as digital systems become more embedded in research workflows, collaboration, and access to information, questions of trust, transparency and sustainability are becoming just as important as technical capability. Many of the discussions highlighted that the same infrastructure supporting learning environments also underpins research activity, including secure connectivity and identity, access to content, data, and digital tools.
Changemaker and youth activist Melati Wijsen tapped into the theme of disruption in her opening keynote, underscoring the importance of building cultures where experimentation is not only tolerated but structurally enabled. That sentiment was reflected across many sessions and conversations at Digifest of the need to empower people in an age of technological complexity, placing digital fluency, upskilling and collaboration at the forefront of organisational capability building.
AI was a particular focus across the conference, but the tone was more reflective than in previous years. Conversations centred on who shapes these systems, how are they governed, and how can the sector avoid becoming dependent on opaque or commercially-driven platforms.
In sessions such as The Power and the Principles: who’s really shaping AI?, the emphasis was on the need for collective approaches across the sector to ensure that adoption supports openness, integrity, and public trust in research. A strategic keynote from Adobe focused on preparing learners for a world where AI “is the backdrop,” expanding the lens by highlighting the convergence of creativity, digital literacy and machine assisted innovation.
Meanwhile, the Day 2 opening session unpacked the government’s Digital Inclusion Action Plan, placing emphasis on the structural barriers affecting talent development and driving digital inequalities. As access to devices and connectivity remains uneven, the implications extend into widening participation in education, research, and digital-first knowledge exchange.
Whereas previous Digifests captured the pace of technological change, Digifest 2026 captured how the education and research community is looking for direction. With policy, funding and institutional strategy increasingly aligned around growth, skills and research productivity, the message was clear: sustainable progress will depend less on individual tools, and more on shared infrastructure, collaboration, and the confidence to make long-term decisions in an uncertain environment.