The Leeds Digital Festival is the largest open tech event in the North. Whether you’re in coding, FinTech, social media, AI, HealthTech, data, start-ups, digital creativity, cybersecurity or AI, the Festival celebrates digital in all its forms.
Anyone can host an event, and it’s free to do so, as long as it’s tech-related and relevant for the Leeds tech ecosystem. From start-ups to tech giants, anyone with a passion for tech and digital is encouraged to get involved and be part of Leeds Digital Festival 2025.
Returning in 2025 for its 10th anniversary from Monday 22nd September to Friday 3rd October, Leeds Digital Festival will be hosting a two-week programme packed with world-class tech content.
If you’re planning on submitting an event to this year’s festival, read on to discover top tips and key info you need to know to put together a Festival-ready event.
Your event should be fully formed before you submit to us.
Think about your target audience, topic and theme. Then, decide on a date, time and venue. At this point, you should think about which speakers to include in your event and include them in your event description.
Our Event Organisers’ Guide provides more comprehensive advice on putting together an event for Leeds Digital Festival, with plenty of tips on everything from coming up with an idea to sorting out the logistics to making your event accessible and inclusive.
Once you’ve consolidated all your event details, booked your venue and confirmed your speakers, you’ll need to create a ticketed event page to generate a booking link. You can use services like Eventbrite, Skiddle and Meetup.
Now you can submit your event to us for consideration for inclusion in the Festival. To do this, you’ll need to input all the event details we require – including an event title, image, description, and booking link – for our team to review.
Submissions will be open until Friday 25th July at 5pm.
Once we have your event, you’ll receive an email confirming that we’ve received it. Then, the details will be reviewed by the team. This involves double-checking the quality of the event, and ensuring that we have all the information we need.
Please allow up to five working days from submission before contacting us about your event – we’re a small team manually checking hundreds of event submissions!
Note: If you get your event submitted early, it means we’ll have more time to work with you or contact you if we’re unsure about something in your submission.
Once your event has been reviewed, the team may get in touch with some suggestions or questions. This could be anything from a small tweak to your event description to selecting a different time slot if your first choice clashes with another event aimed at a similar audience.
Some of the most common reasons why we contact organisers are:
We may get in touch to offer up some thoughts on the event content, or make suggestions as to how your event could better align with our brand and the programme.
After the submission deadline of Friday 25th July, we’ll review the programme to identify any clashes. If your event clashes with a similar event, we’ll contact you and give you the opportunity to make any adjustments.
Once your event submission is complete, we’ll send you an email to confirm that your event has been approved for the Festival.
At this point, we’ll share the Festival’s logo along with our brand guidelines, alongside a few more graphics that could be handy in promoting your event with our branding.
Top tip: Please add the email address [email protected] to your contacts to ensure you receive our messages.
If your event doesn’t pass the review stage, we’ll be in touch to let you know the next steps.
The Leeds Digital Festival 2025 programme will go live on Tuesday 26th August 2025.
On that day, please visit the website and confirm that the details of your event are correct. If there are any issues, please contact us as soon as possible.
As an LDF event host, you’ll have access to our audience of tech enthusiasts, and you’ll benefit from our in-house marketing activities. But when it comes to telling people about your event, you can help spread the word even further by carrying out your own promotional activities too.
Remember: The more you shout about your own LDF involvement, the more we can amplify the message that you are putting out.
When your event is approved, we’ll send over some LDF-branded graphic assets which may come in handy. Share them with your partners, speakers and everyone involved in your event.
Another way to help your event make it onto the LDF channels is to create your own content for the team to engage with – make sure you and your partners tag the Leeds Digital accounts and use #LeedsDigi25
If you’re keen to get involved in the 10th anniversary of the Leeds Digital Festival, check out our Event Organisers’ Guide for 2025. It’s packed full of helpful tips, key dates and important information you’ll need to know when putting together an event for submission to this year’s Festival.
Please note: For 2025, we’re introducing a new policy: non-sponsors will be able to submit up to three events.
We’re a small team and each event submission requires time and support. By limiting submissions from non-sponsors, we’re aiming to ensure the programme remains high quality and manageable, and to recognise the organisations that contribute to making the Festival possible.
Leeds Digital and the Festival are funded entirely through sponsorship. Ongoing support from our sponsors has enabled us to grow and evolve over the last ten years, so that we are now able to offer a year-round service to the local and regional tech sector.
Our sponsors benefit from involvement in both the Mini-Fest and the main Festival, in addition to the value derived from the year-round presence of Leeds Digital.
Not only does sponsoring Leeds Digital connect you with the digital sector in Leeds, the wider region and beyond, it also unlocks additional benefits before, during and after the Festival, including:
Discover plenty more Sponsorship benefits here.
The Leeds tech scene never stops – and neither do we. Head to our What’s On page to discover the digital events happening around the city region all year round.
