Grace Hopper Celebration 2026 is canceled two weeks before it starts

The nonprofit posted a short update titled "An Important Update About Grace Hopper Celebration." It opens plainly: "It is with deep regret that we are announcing the cancellation of this year's Grace Hopper Celebration in Anaheim, CA."

Here's what was planned:

• Dates: October 27 to 30, 2026.
• Venue: the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California.
• Program: keynotes, technical sessions, workshops and a career fair with more than 700 organizations, according to Hoodline.

The call came roughly two weeks before opening day. Bloomberg reports the statement went out on Tuesday, October 13. The official event site was still promoting the conference and its speakers when the news broke.

"This isn't a decision we made lightly. We know this decision affects far more than an event." (Brenda Darden Wilkerson, AnitaB.org, as quoted by Bloomberg)

Money, in one word. AnitaB.org President and CEO Brenda Darden Wilkerson explained it in the statement, quoted by AfroTech:

"It is a function of not having the funds required to move forward with the Celebration, unlike in years past."

She said "both individual registrations and sponsorship commitments came in significantly below our expectations" and, in the end, below the level needed to cover critical operating expenses.

A big conference is a bit like a wedding where the venue, catering and stage are booked months ahead. If the guests and the gifts don't show up in time, the bills still do.

Very. The first Grace Hopper Celebration took place in June 1994 in Washington, D.C., with about 500 attendees. Computer scientists Anita Borg and Telle Whitney founded it. It moved around the US over the years, from San Diego to Orlando to Houston.

• 1994: about 500 attendees.
• 2019: about 25,000.
• 2023: 29,000, according to Hoodline.
• 2024: 17,000, counting in-person and virtual, per Hoodline.
• 2025: roughly 15,000, the fewest since 2016, according to Bloomberg, citing AnitaB.org's website.

AfroTech describes it as "the world's largest gathering of women in tech." For many students and engineers, it was the place to find a first job, a mentor or a recruiter in one long weekend.

The past sponsor list named in coverage reads like a stock index: Capital One, CVS Health, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intuit and Morgan Stanley.

Bloomberg reports that this year's sponsors included Amazon, Google, Nvidia and Bank of America. It wasn't clear what led to the shortfall, and organizers declined to comment beyond their statement.

Bloomberg lists the planned lineup:

• Keynote: futurist Sinead Bovell.
• Closing address: tech journalist Kara Swisher.
• Speakers: among them Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and president of Cloudflare.

Bloomberg notes the roster lacked the big public-company chiefs of earlier years, when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and IBM's then-CEO Ginni Rometty headlined. Past speakers have also included former astronauts, politicians and senior government officials.

The trouble didn't start this fall. Hoodline, citing reporting first detailed by Tom's Hardware, lays out AnitaB.org's 2024 finances:

By the numbers: the conference alone cost about $4.5 million more than it brought in that year. And attendance fell by about 12,000 people between 2023 and 2024.

Bloomberg reports an outpouring on LinkedIn, where women said the gathering had shaped their careers and that they felt "heartbroken" and "angry." Some said the cancellation reflected broader concerns about how the industry treats women.

Bloomberg places the news in a wider shift. US companies have been scaling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs since early 2025, when President Donald Trump issued executive orders aimed at ending DEI. A few data points from the report:

• Computer scientists: women are about a quarter, down from 37% in 1995, according to Girls Who Code.
• Boards: the share of women on boards of mid-size and large public companies dipped below 30% this year, according to 50/50 Women on Boards.
• Entry-level jobs: many companies have pulled back on entry-level hiring.

Sue Harnett, founder and CEO of Rewriting the Code, a 52,000-member nonprofit for students and early-career women in tech, told Bloomberg it is "a precarious moment." She said losing Grace Hopper leaves women with fewer in-person ways to meet employers.

Sohini Das, a senior at North Carolina State University, told Bloomberg this would have been her fourth Grace Hopper. She had won university grants to pay for the trip. "This was a space for women to be seen in the computer science world," she said.

Wilkerson said the circumstances leading to the cancellation "have adversely affected our finances," and that AnitaB.org is "evaluating strategic alternatives."

AnitaB.org apologized for the disruption. Its statement, as quoted by AfroTech, acknowledged that "many of you have made travel arrangements, booked hotels, received visas, secured time away from work."

Here's what attendees and companies know so far:

• Refunds: AnitaB.org will contact registrants about refunds by October 26.
• Questions: the address is GHC@AnitaB.org.
• Career fair: employers were told their interviews at the career fair are canceled, Hoodline reports.
• Resume Hub: participating companies keep access to the conference's database of candidate resumes.

In real life If you booked a flight and hotel for Anaheim, the conference refund covers your registration, not your travel. Check your airline and hotel cancellation rules now, and keep the AnitaB.org email for any travel insurance claim.

AnitaB.org started in 1997 as the Institute for Women in Technology, later became the Anita Borg Institute and took its current name in 2017. Wilkerson has led it since 2017. Besides the US conference, it runs Grace Hopper Celebration India, the Abie Awards and other programs for women in computing.

The event is named after Grace Hopper, a US Navy rear admiral and computer scientist. She built one of the first compilers, a program that turns human-friendly code into machine instructions. She also pushed for programming languages that read like English, work that led to COBOL.

Bloomberg adds that Nvidia's H100 and H200 AI chips are named after her too. Her team is also famous for taping a real moth into a logbook in 1947, a classic early story of "debugging."

Not everything is off. According to Hoodline, Grace Hopper Celebration India is still scheduled for January 20 to 22, 2027 in Bangalore.

What's next: AnitaB.org says it will explore other ways to serve women in technology. Wilkerson said the group is weighing "the type of programming we can offer in the future," with further announcements expected in the coming weeks. Nothing has been said yet about a 2027 edition in the US.

• If you registered: watch your inbox for the refund email before October 26 and sort out flights and hotels separately.
• If you were job hunting there: reach out directly to the recruiters and companies you planned to meet in Anaheim.
• If your company sponsors events: expect AnitaB.org's next announcement in the coming weeks about what replaces the conference.