Learn, Grow and Connect at the Analytics+ Conference

In just a few short weeks, you will have an exceptional opportunity to sharpen your skills, power up your future career and network with the leading experts in the field of analytics.

Don’t miss it.

The 2026 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference takes place April 12-14 in National Harbor, Maryland. Wherever you are in your analytics journey, joining us at this event will help you learn and grow.

Attending this conference year after year helped me launch my career, offered me new opportunities and continues to keep me at the cutting edge of analytics. As chair of this year’s conference, I’m a little bit biased. But experience has shown me just how important these few days a year are in sharpening my analytics thinking.

Ten years ago, I was wrapping up my education in operations research (O.R.) and had an opportunity to go to a new-to-me INFORMS conference in the spring. I had two important insights at that conference. First, the profession of analytics is inherently industry-agnostic. Second, this conference is where that cross-industry community of professionals comes together to learn how to do our jobs better.

During that first conference, I made many new connections with whom I’m still in touch today. Later, at the 2022 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference, I met a future colleague who led to an inflection point in my career.

Each year I attend, I learn new things – even as an experienced professional. I come out of talks ready to use the state-of-the-art where I should and knowing more best practices every time. I return to my work both inspired and more equipped to do analytics correctly, the first time.

Inspiring Keynotes

This year, we have two fantastic keynote speakers lined up for National Harbor. We know they will both inspire you and help you level up in analytics.

On Monday, April 13, Scott Taylor, a passionate data evangelist colloquially known as “The Data Whisperer,” will help us understand why and how to tell a great data story that will get buy-in from leaders and managers. We’re excited to bring this kind of message to you because effective communication is so vital – not only to your own career but also to help everyone get more value
from analytics.

On Tuesday, April 14, Cynthia Rudin will inspire you to think beyond maximizing one fixed goal and instead how optimizing for interpretability also helps adoption. She has led the field in thinking about how to minimize the trade-off between transparency and accuracy, while showing just how easy it is to improve on the default approach. This message is crucial not only for analytics professionals but for anyone trying to judge the value of using analytics.

Training & Networking for Every Level

Early in our planning for the 2026 Analytics+ Conference, we settled on a philosophy of “training for every level” [1] because no matter where you are in your career, you can benefit from continued learning.

With that in mind, we have reshaped Tuesday’s agenda to end with a training workshop block. Here, you’ll have the opportunity for hands-on learning, deeper discussion and even more networking with peers. Each session will have a take-home tool or resource you can bring back to your organization and start using immediately!

You will find panels for early career, mid-career and senior leaders at our Sunday evening parallel workshops, which will each include valuable networking opportunities. If you are a first-time attendee trying to learn how to make the most of the conference, these sessions are especially useful.

We consistently hear that the best part of Analytics+ is the opportunity to connect with others. If you or your organization are thinking of trying something for the first time, chances are you’ll find an attendee who has done it before and can tell you what’s worked, what hasn’t and where the “gotchas” are. 

Talking with your peers can be the best way to learn what’s happening at other organizations. Many of our attendees have decades of experience in analytics and view attending the conference and sharing guidance as a crucial way to give back. But no matter how much experience you have, analytics is so varied and broad that everyone will go home with new insights and tools.

The Decision-First Mindset

INFORMS has always brought a decision- and impact-first perspective to what it means to work in analytics. Whereas other conferences focus on methods or technologies, INFORMS looks to real-world actions and decisions. Some of the ways you will see this in action at the Analytics+ Conference include the following:

• The Edelman Competition, in which Chewy, the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) of India, ECCO Shoes, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia will compete to convince the judges that they have delivered real value for their organizations using analytics. These presentations are open to all and will give you new ideas for how to measure the value of the work we do. Then head to the Edelman Gala Monday evening to find out who won our “Nobel Prize of O.R.”!
• The INFORMS Analytics Framework as a structured way of navigating the conference and finding exactly the right skills to accelerate your career.
• Networking with Certified Analytics Professionals (CAPs) who have earned one of the three levels to see how the Essentials, Pro or Expert certification can help you do more in your work. These certifications validate that you know what it takes to get stakeholder buy-in or sustain a model for the long haul.

Register Today!

Registration is now open! Visit https://meetings.informs.org/analytics/register/ to register. If you have at least six people from your organization attending, optimize your prices by using the group rate.

Take advantage of the hotel block at the Gaylord National Resort so you can make the most of your time at the conference to take the shortest path there.

For more information and registration details, visit the Analytics+ website at https://meetings.informs.org/analytics/.

On behalf of INFORMS and the 2026 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference organizing committee, we look forward to you joining us in National Harbor as we explore how analytics continues to drive smarter decisions for a better world.