September preview: agents, humanoids and a summit by the sea

On 15 September the Ritz-Carlton at Potsdamer Platz turns into a classroom for agent builders: from 8:55 am to 5:05 pm the summit lines up main-stage sessions that are almost entirely hands-on — Hugging Face's Arek Borucki on multi-agent systems with smolagents and MongoDB Atlas, Lovable's Yehya Abouelnaga on agents as “infinite state machines”, or Zalando's Diaa Abdallah on agentic AI for advertising at scale.

Add two panels — including “Why do agent systems break in production?” with voices from Siemens Energy — a two-hour NVIDIA workshop on multimodality and a four-hour media hackathon with fal, offering a prize pool of 4,500 dollars in platform credits according to the organiser. A nice touch: the ticket also covers the co-located Chief AI Officer Summit in the same building, and the day closes with a happy hour. The organiser expects 300+ builders and tech executives from more than 225 companies.

From 9 to 11 September the Humanoid Robots Summit Europe brings the international humanoid scene to the Liederhalle: Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, Unitree, PAL Robotics, BMW, Siemens and Honda Research send executives on stage — 37 speakers in total, plus an exhibition with over 40 exhibitors according to the organiser, from Agile Robots to Fraunhofer.

The programme spans policy and mass production (day 1), applications in medicine and industry, force sensing and an ethics dialogue between “Investors, Engineers, and Ethicists” (day 2), through to guided site visits at robotics companies around Stuttgart (day 3). Booking late requires patience: the on-site passes (All Access €1,499, VIP €1,799) are sold out according to the organiser — a virtual pass remains at €699. The conference language is English throughout.

“Closing the implementation gap” is more than a motto: on 14–15 September Brains on Silicon packs 98 programme slots onto four stages at the ICD Dresden — from agentic workflows and sovereign AI to physical AI. Anthropic's DACH lead Roman Howe opens the conference, and day 1 closes with You.com CEO Richard Socher in a remote interview with DIE ZEIT; in between, OpenAI, GitHub, SAP LeanIX, Flix and FALKE deliver hands-on material for the 1,500+ expected guests and — by now — 100+ speakers, according to the organiser.

The fringe programme is worth the trip alone: an expanded expo with live demos, a startup area where twelve selected startups pitch and the audience votes the finalists onto the main stage, two parallel masterclass tracks (one masterclass is included in the ticket) and a networking party right at the venue at the end of day 1. Two-day tickets are €439 — with an early price of €399 until 1 September.

Community formats rarely get this compact: the fifth AI Nights edition on 17 September at Design Offices Nürnberg City lines up three 30-minute talks with quarter-hour breaks. Martin Hofmann (head of IT at infra fürth) shows how AI secures power and water grids — and becomes a target itself; Tom Fischer (AI manager at Verlag Nürnberger Presse) reports how AI became a product engine at the Nürnberger Nachrichten; Tim Junge (IBM) and Markus Utomo build AI systems playfully. Host Andreas Pabst guides the evening.

Doors open at 5 pm, drinks and snacks are included in the ticket, and the speakers stay around all evening according to the organiser — and whoever is not done after the open networking moves on to the aftershow party at Disco Stadl, free beer included. An evening that shows why Nuremberg's AI community ranks among the most active in the country.

The month's biggest splash belongs to Barcelona: on 22–23 September the World Trade Center expects over 10,000 builders and AI leaders, 200+ speakers and seven tracks according to the organiser — with names like Chema Alonso (Cloudflare), Pablo Rodriguez (Google), Ilyass El Mansouri (OpenAI), Howard Wright (NVIDIA) and Laura Gilbert (Tony Blair Institute). Notable for the format: no talk, track or village sits behind higher ticket tiers; Workshop Village, Experience Village, coworking zones and the expo floor are open to everyone.

The summit is only the core of AI Week Barcelona (16–23 September) with more than 50 partner side events across the city — from the hackathon at Norrsken House (19–20 Sep) to dinners, demos and parties. Ticket status at press time: Silver €345, Gold €635 (with networking zone and Seaview Terrace), Platinum €1,390 — prices rise on 28 August, and passes always cover both days.