The UK Space Power Conference runs September 23-24, 2026 in London. It's owned by UK Space Command, which makes it the first UK defence-space event with the buyer in the room rather than the vendor. Keynotes: Minister Luke Pollard MP and Air Chief Marshal Sir Harv Smyth. Tickets are £495+VAT, VIP at £695+VAT.
If you sell into defence, space, or dual-use tech, this is the one conference on the 2026 calendar where the procurement side shows up in uniform.
Why an inaugural event is worth more than an established one
Established conferences have established attendee lists. Everyone in your category already knows who's going. The exhibitor floor is booked out two years ahead. Your outbound has to fight through a hundred competitors who booked the same booth.
Inaugural events are different. The first year is when the organiser is still filling seats. That means:
- Speaker lists get published in waves, not all at once. You can track additions weekly.
- Sponsor tiers are cheaper and less crowded. A mid-tier package at a first-year event often buys the visibility of a top-tier package at year three.
- Attendee lists are smaller but higher-signal. People who pay £495 for an unproven conference are usually there for a specific reason, not because it's on the annual rotation.
- The organiser is motivated. UK Space Command wants this to work. That means they're pushing invitations to the right people.
We've seen this pattern before. The App Growth Summit playbook we wrote earlier this year made the same point: first-year events are where the ratio of buyers to vendors is still in your favour.
The ticket price tells you who's coming
£495+VAT is not a cheap ticket. It's also not a £2,000 enterprise conference ticket. That price point filters for a specific attendee:
Senior enough to approve a budget line. Junior enough that they still fill out their own registration form. Probably a programme lead, a capability manager, or a technical director at a primes contractor or an MOD-adjacent outfit.
VIP at £695+VAT is the tier to watch. That's where you'll find the people who take meetings on the day. If you're going, the VIP upgrade pays for itself with one good conversation.
Compare that to the £397/month lead gen agency tier most founders start with. One VIP ticket costs less than two months of outsourced prospecting, and it puts you in a room with people who can actually sign.
What to do before September 23
Don't wait for the attendee list to be published. By then, everyone else is working the same list.
Here's the sequence we'd run:
Now through June. Build a target list of UK defence-space companies. Start with the primes: BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Airbus Defence and Space UK, Thales UK, Leonardo UK. Then go one layer down to the SMEs that supply them. The UK space sector has roughly 1,500 active companies. You don't need all of them. You need the 80 that sell into the capability areas UK Space Command actually buys: ISR, space domain awareness, satellite communications, launch, and ground segment.
July. Watch the speaker list. Every time UK Space Command adds a name, that's a signal about which programme areas are getting budget. A keynote from someone in space domain awareness tells you SDA is a priority. A panel on launch tells you something else. Match your outbound messaging to the programme areas that get airtime.
August. Start the email sequence. Not a "are you going to the conference" email. That's the laziest possible opener and every SDR in your category will send it. Instead, lead with the programme area. "We work with [two companies in their supply chain] on [specific capability]. Saw UK Space Command is keynoting on [topic] at Space Power. Worth a 15-minute call before the event?"
September. Book meetings for the 25th and 26th. The two days after the conference are when everyone is still in London and still thinking about what they heard. Most people fly home on the 24th. The ones who stay are the ones worth meeting.
What doesn't work at defence conferences
We've watched founders burn £2,000 on a booth at a defence event and come back with a stack of business cards that never convert. The failure mode is always the same: they treat it like a trade show.
Defence procurement doesn't work like SaaS procurement. The buying cycle is longer. The relationships matter more. The person you meet at a conference is almost never the person who signs the contract. They're the person who introduces you to the person who signs the contract.
So don't optimise for meetings booked at the event. Optimise for introductions made. A single warm intro to a programme director at a primes contractor is worth more than twenty badge scans.
And don't skip the compliance angle. If you're doing outbound to UK defence companies, you're emailing people whose inboxes are filtered harder than most. The DMARC changes Google and Microsoft pushed through hit government-adjacent inboxes first. Make sure your sending domain is configured properly before you start the August sequence.
If you're going, go with a plan
The UK Space Power Conference is a two-day event with a £495 entry fee and a keynote list that tells you exactly where UK Space Command is spending. That's a lot of signal for the price.
But signal only converts if you do the work before the event. Build the list now. Watch the speaker announcements. Write the sequence in August. Book the follow-up meetings for the 25th.
If you want to see how MiraReach handles the prospect list build and the pre-event sequence, give MiraReach a try. We score inboxes, draft the emails, and wait for you to press send.
— Mira