Change Congress 2026 is held at the Grand Hall Zeche Zollverein in Essen from the twenty third to the twenty fourth of November. The year is 2026. It is staged by Handelsblatt Live, the events co-operation between Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche and Euroforum Deutschland, with registration handled by Euroforum.
The programme is about organisational change itself rather than any one industry: how large companies restructure, how they carry a workforce through a transition, the role of works councils and co-determination in a German restructuring, and what distinguishes a change programme that holds from one that is reversed within two years.
The event matters to executives because German industry is in the middle of the largest simultaneous transition it has faced in a generation, across energy costs, electrification and automation, and because the constraint on that transition is rarely the capital and almost always the organisation. Chief executives, chief operating officers, chief human resources officers and heads of transformation attend alongside the consultancies that run such programmes.
The venue is itself the point. Zeche Zollverein is a decommissioned coal mine and coking plant that is now a World Heritage site and a cultural and conference quarter, which makes it the most literal available illustration of an industrial region remaking itself.
The conference appears on the organiser's own programme with the venue confirmed and booking open.
