Healthcare Estates returns to Manchester Central on 13–14 October 2026, bringing together the UK’s healthcare estates and facilities community for two days of insight, collaboration, and practical learning.
Recognised as the sector’s leading annual event, Healthcare Estates provides a unique platform for NHS leaders, estates and facilities professionals, and industry partners to come together at a time of significant transformation across the healthcare estate.
A sector at a critical juncture
The NHS estate is undergoing profound change. Significant investment in new hospital developments is reshaping parts of the estate with modern, digitally enabled facilities designed to meet future demands. At the same time, many organisations continue to operate within challenging infrastructure, managing backlog maintenance, operational pressures, and the challenge of maintaining safe, compliant environments.
This divergence in estate capability, digital maturity, and investment is creating a growing gap, one with important implications for patient outcomes, staff experience, sustainability, and long-term system resilience.
Healthcare Estates 2026 addresses this challenge directly through its central theme:
Mind the Gap: Are We Heading for a Two-Tier Estate?
The event provides a forum to explore this question openly, bringing together those delivering new-build hospitals with those working to maintain and improve legacy estates. It is this combination of perspectives that makes Healthcare Estates uniquely valuable.
A conference shaped by real-world challenges
At the heart of the event is a comprehensive Conference Programme designed to reflect the realities facing NHS organisations today. Structured across five core areas: Governance, Assurance & Compliance, Strategic Health & Social Care, Estates & Facilities Services, Digital Technology & Innovation, and Medical Engineering, offering both strategic insight and practical, experience-led learning.
Attendees will hear directly from NHS England, the New Hospital Programme, Integrated Care Boards, and Trusts from across the country, alongside contributions
from IHEEM’s Technical Platforms and Advisory Groups. These sessions provide guidance on critical areas including sustainability, fire safety, ventilation, water safety, and medical devices, ensuring relevance across all aspects of estate management.
For NHS decision-makers, the value lies in the ability to understand how policy, strategy, and operational delivery intersect, supported by real-world examples and lessons learned from across the sector.
An exhibition focused on practical solutions
Complementing the Conference is an extensive Exhibition featuring over 250 specialist suppliers and professional organisations. Covering planning, design, construction, energy, facilities management, engineering services, digital technology, and water safety, the Exhibition provides a comprehensive view of the solutions available to the sector.
For those involved in procurement and project delivery, the Exhibition offers a highly efficient environment to evaluate suppliers, compare approaches, and engage directly with organisations delivering solutions across the NHS. This face-to-face engagement supports more informed decision-making, reduces risk, and helps accelerate project timelines.
In addition, a series of free-to-attend Exhibition Theatres delivers practical insight on key topics such as sustainability, digital innovation, resilience, and performance, ensuring that all attendees can access valuable learning alongside the exhibition experience.
Supporting better decision-making
Healthcare Estates is designed to support the needs of those responsible for planning, funding, and delivering healthcare infrastructure. Whether addressing backlog maintenance, progressing Net Zero strategies, enabling digital transformation, or navigating capital investment decisions, the event provides access to the knowledge and connections required to move forward with confidence.
Attendees benefit from:
- Insight into current sector priorities and policy direction
- Practical learning drawn from real-world NHS experience
- Opportunities to benchmark solutions and suppliers
- Access to trusted expertise across technical disciplines
- Connections with peers facing similar challenges
This combination of insight and engagement makes Healthcare Estates a critical forum for those seeking to align strategy with delivery.
Celebrating excellence across the sector
Alongside the Conference and Exhibition, the Healthcare Estates Awards recognise outstanding achievement across healthcare engineering and estates and facilities management. The Awards highlight the organisations, teams, and individuals driving innovation and excellence across the sector.
The Awards Gala Dinner brings the community together to celebrate these achievements in a prestigious setting, providing an opportunity to strengthen relationships and reflect on the progress being made across healthcare estates.
A community driving progress
At its core, Healthcare Estates is defined by its community. It brings together professionals from across the NHS, government, industry, and academia to share knowledge, exchange experience, and collectively address the challenges facing healthcare infrastructure.
As the sector continues to evolve, the importance of collaboration, shared learning, and informed decision-making has never been greater.
Healthcare Estates 2026 provides the platform to do exactly that, helping to bridge the gap across the estate and support the delivery of safer, more sustainable, and more effective healthcare environments for patients, staff, and communities.
Register now to be part of the conversation shaping the future of healthcare estates.