B2B event teams are operating under increasing pressure. Budgets remain constrained. Audience expectations continue to rise. CMOs want clearer evidence that events contribute to business impact. Yet not all event programs respond in the same way.

Our analysis of Forrester’s 2026 State Of B2B Events Survey reveals that the highest-performing organizations do things differently, taking a fundamentally different approach to how they plan, measure, and operate events.

Here are five lessons that stood out:

Leading Organizations Focus On Customer Engagement

Lead generation remains the most common objective for B2B events. But among the largest and most mature organizations in our research, a different picture emerged.

These organizations were significantly more likely to use events to strengthen existing customer relationships, identify expansion opportunities, and improve customer engagement. In contrast, smaller, less mature organizations, remain focused on events as a source of net-new leads.

This reflects a broader shift occurring across B2B marketing. As buying groups become more complex and customer retention more valuable, leading organizations increasingly recognize the value events deliver across the customer lifecycle.

The Best Event Programs Simplify Their Technology 

For years, event teams have added technology to address every new requirement, leading to complex, fragmented event technology stacks. Survey data suggest that leading organizations are now moving in the opposite direction.

While only around one-quarter of organizations overall plan to reduce the number of event technology providers they use, consolidation is significantly more common among the highest-spending organizations. However, these organizations are not reducing event technology investment. In fact, in a majority of cases they are either maintaining or increasing spend at the same time as they look to consolidate the number of solutions they use.

Their objective isn’t cost cutting but simplification to support cleaner data flows, integration, and a more cohesive attendee experience.

Integration Separates Leaders From The Pack

One of the strongest correlations in this year’s research was the relationship between event technology integration and event performance.

Organizations with deep integrations between their event platforms and their wider marketing and sales systems reported significantly stronger outcomes. They were more likely to activate event data, demonstrate event impact, adopt AI, report higher satisfaction, and secure budget increases.

As AI erodes traditional sources of audience data, first-party event data becomes ever more valuable. But it only becomes valuable, when it is connected and activated and leaders recognize this.

Virtual Events Are Making A Comeback

For many years, the narrative around virtual events has been one of decline with many teams discounting them from their mix. However, this year’s data shows a resurgence of interest. More than a quarter of event leaders told us they plan to run more virtual events over the next 12 months, a 100% year-on-year increase. This trend was particularly pronounced in APAC.

This doesn’t herald the return of pandemic levels of virtual events. Instead, it reflects a growing recognition that different audiences, objectives, and stages of the buying journey require different event formats. The most mature organizations are not debating whether in-person or virtual formats are better. Instead, they are building audience centric portfolios that combine multiple formats to achieve different objectives.

The future of events won’t be exclusively in-person or virtual. It will be increasingly about selecting the right format for the audience and objective.

B2B Event Leaders And CMOs Disagree On Event Success 

Perhaps the most concerning finding in the survey is the gap between CMOs and event practitioners perceptions of event success. Approximately half of event leaders said they were satisfied with how their events had performed. However, only a third of CMOs shared that view.

The disconnect is important because it influences future event plans and investment. Leading organizations are addressing this challenge by moving beyond activity level measures of event performance. Instead, they demonstrate how events contribute to broader sales and marketing objectives such as revenue, customer growth, and buying group engagement.

What This Means For B2B Event Leaders

This year’s research shows that event maturity is less about scale and more about strategy.

Leading organizations approach their events differently. They take an audience centric approach to format selection, look for value beyond lead generation, integrate event data into their wider revenue engine, and align their metrics with executive priorities.

The widening gap between event leaders and laggards is no longer driven by event execution alone. It’s increasingly determined by an organization’s ability to transform events from siloed activities into a unified eco-system.

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