16:00 — Arrival, canapés & welcome drinks
16:30 — Garden games outside the castle
18:30 — Keynote Can Europe Win the AI Race? – Sasha Rubel, AWS
Sasha Rubel presents AWS's European AI report — the state of AI adoption across the continent, the real blockers around skills, capital, and regulation, and what's needed for Europe to compete. A conversation follows over dinner: where does Europe need to win, and what has to happen?
19:00 — Dinner
07:15 — Optional morning run / walk
08:00 — Breakfast
09:00 — Welcome & keynote + group discussion State of the Market – Peter Walker, Carta
Peter Walker opens the day with fresh Carta data on fund performance, dry powder, the return of DPI, and AI's growing share of venture capital - and what it all signals for the years ahead.
10:00 — Coffee break
10:30 — Roundtable 1 Is US Growth the Only Path — and What Would Change That?
Every European winner still seems to end up American - is this a necessity or can we break the pattern?
Staffan Helgesson, Paul Murphy and Evgenia Plotnikova
11:15 — Roundtable 2 Where Europe Wins: Placing Bets on the Next Decade
Defence, robotics, critical infrastructure, applied AI - where will Europe's next generation of category-defining companies actually be built?
Sara Rywe, Carlo Biggio and Alison Imbert
12:00 — Lunch
13:00 — Group session
13:30 — Keynote + group discussion European Fund Performance: What the Data Actually Says – René Andres, EIF
Rene Andres shares EIF's view from tracking 50,000+ LPs and thousands of European funds — why the performance gap with the US has largely closed, where Europe is still genuinely behind, and what needs to change in LP behaviour, and capital allocation.
14:30 — Coffee break
15:00 — Roundtable 3 The European Identity Crisis: What Does It Mean to Be a European VC in 2026
15:45 — Closing remarks
16:00 — End