BE-ST Fest 2026 hits the road with four regional events across Scotland
BE-ST Fest 2026 is expanding across Scotland, bringing the UK’s biggest festival for a low carbon built environment directly to regional communities for the first time.
For the past five years, industry leaders, policymakers, innovators and practitioners have travelled to Glasgow for BE-ST Fest. In 2026, the festival evolves into a new regional format with four individual full-day summits taking place across Scotland, creating more opportunities for local collaboration, discussion and action.
Under the theme “Driving Delivery”, BE-ST Fest 2026 will focus on the practical steps needed to accelerate the transition to a low carbon built environment. Each regional event will explore the specific opportunities and challenges facing local areas while connecting attendees to national and international expertise.
As momentum builds across retrofit, clean heat, low carbon construction and modern methods of construction, the built environment remains responsible for around a quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. While progress is being made, significant barriers remain around delivery, skills, finance, supply chains and scaling proven solutions.
BE-ST Fest 2026 will put industry at the centre of the conversation, focusing on the technologies, business models and delivery approaches that are already demonstrating measurable impact. Through keynote sessions, panel discussions and interactive workshops, attendees will explore how to accelerate deployment at scale and turn ambition into action.
The programme will feature leading voices from across the built environment sector, with speakers to be announced in the coming months. Topics will include retrofit, clean heat, innovative materials, skills, modern methods of construction, smart energy systems and more. Each event will include plenary keynote sessions in the morning followed by breakout workshops and collaborative discussions in the afternoon.
The International Retrofit Conference will also return as part of BE-ST Fest 2026. It will be the opening event of BE-ST Fest taking place in Edinburgh at the Royal College of Physicians on the 2nd September 2026.
BE-ST Fest 2026 dates and locations:
2 September 2026 – BE-ST Fest East: International Retrofit Conference, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh
23 September 2026 – BE-ST Fest South, The Crichton, Dumfries
6 October 2026 – BE-ST Fest North, Eden Court, Inverness
4 November 2026 – BE-ST Fest West, Technology & Innovation Centre (TIC), Glasgow
The festival will finish with the Accelerate to Zero Awards at the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow on Thursday 5 November 2026, recognising the projects, organisations and individuals driving progress across the built environment sector.
Sponsorship opportunities are also available for organisations looking to align with Scotland’s leading platform for built environment innovation and net zero delivery. A range of partnership packages are available across the regional events as well as BE-ST Fest as a whole, offering direct engagement with industry leaders, policymakers and practitioners. To find out more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact hlloyd@be-st.build.
BE-ST Fest 2026 is free to attend.