The 17 Best Financial Advisor Conferences To Attend In 2026

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Best Conference For/In: Overall Financial Planning | Technology | Tax Planning| Estate Planning | Retirement Planning | New Planners| Marketing | Conference Experience |Practice Management |Up-And-Coming| Community Conferences

Prior Years' Best Conferences List: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | Master Conference List

For Conference Organizers: For the embed code to post a "Top Advisor Conference in 2026" badge to your own conference website, click here or scroll to the bottom of this page.

For Vendors/Exhibitors Considering Sponsorships: Hopefully, this list will be helpful to you in deciding which conferences to potentially attend and exhibit at. For further ideas, please see our comprehensive master list of all financial advisor conferences, along with the earlier years' Best Advisor Conference lists (noted above). There are also many opportunities to exhibit at various FPA chapters, some of which have a sizable (150+) attendance at annual chapter symposia. For those seeking further assistance, I have limited availability to consult directly with companies on distribution and go-to-market strategies to reach financial advisors as well.

What Is The ROI Of Attending An Advisor Conference?

Attending a conference as a financial advisor is not an inexpensive proposition… conference registration fees are typically at least $750 and, in some cases, more than double that amount. Travel costs from airlines to ground transportation are usually several hundred dollars more. Plus two to three nights in a (usually pretty nice and thus a few hundred dollars per night) hotel. Which can quickly put the total cost of attendance at nearly $2,000 or as much as $3,000 all-in. And that's before considering the business impact of taking a few days out of the office.

Yet the reality is that when financial advisors can earn $300,000, or $600,000, or even $1M+ in annual revenue by serving a full book of clients, it literally only takes a 2% improvement in productivity (or even less) for a conference to generate a 100% "return on investment" for the financial advisor. It could be one planning idea that draws in a new client or expands a relationship with an existing client. Or one new vendor with a solution that helps the firm be more efficient in the work it does for clients. Or one new growth strategy that takes the business owner on the first step of an entirely new journey to next-level the firm.

However, the rise of the internet – from media to blogging to podcasts to video – means that conferences no longer hold the "keys to the kingdom" when it comes to professional development content. While it was once impossible to get timely, in-depth content (at best available through books, which had a significant publishing lag), written, audio, and video content are all widely available for free, and there are numerous high-quality education providers that can give financial advisors a key takeaway to apply with their clients while fulfilling their continuing education obligations. And any vendor will happily do an individual demo of their software if you just reach out and ask.

But the ROI of a conference isn't just in the ability to get CE or novel planning or business ideas from spending an hour consuming some educational content, or finding a new solution provider in the exhibit hall. For some, it's about the topical immersion into a particular domain, from a tax conference to a retirement conference to a marketing conference. For many, it's about the community connection of being around other financial advisors, who have similar circumstances and are going through similar challenges, from whom we can learn. And for others, it's about the experience of getting outside the four walls of your office, having a break, and being able to simply enjoy a (business-deductible) event.

The Future Of Advisor Conferences As Experiential Events?

There is no better example of the rise of the "conference as experience" phenomenon than the Future Proof Festival, which, after a short four years of running in Huntington Beach, California, has now amassed an annual attendance of nearly 5,000 participants, quickly becoming one of the largest advisor conferences in existence (rivaled in turnout by only Schwab IMPACT and LPL Focus).

Effectively running the "anti-conference" conference, the Future Proof Festival is held entirely outdoors on the California beach (or technically, on a turfed-over beach parking lot, so you're not actually walking in the sand, but you are less than 50 feet away from the ocean lapping at the shore!). Which brings an entirely different energy than spending two to three days inside the traditional hotel ballroom.

In addition, their unique Breakthru app allows attendees to find others who they might be interested in meeting up with in advance and schedule brief 15-minute 'get-to-know-you meetings' (at a pre-arranged location with a series of tables so it's easy to find each other), effectively next-leveling the 'networking' experience of conferences to no longer simply be a matter of who you happen to bump into while sitting in a session or wandering the hallways, to something that allows advisors to be very intentional about who they want to see and connect with to make the event as productive as possible.

But arguably, that doesn't mean all conferences need to replicate the Future Proof experience, or that they should even try to. Topical immersion is still relevant, and a key feature of most leading conferences that are continuing to grow; in fact, the more focused the content is in a particular domain, the better it tends to do as it becomes known as the go-to for 'that' thing. Which, if it's focused enough, doesn't need Future Proof's Breakthru app to find others like you, because everyone at the conference is like you by virtue of who the conference attracts with its intended focus to begin with.

In fact, it's notable that the most expensive advisor events now are the ones that don't offer CE and, instead, are focused into the practice management domain. Where, if you're a business owner, actually figuring out how to move the needle on your business is a whole order-of-magnitude more impactful. And those events are often much more intimate – 100 advisors or perhaps even just 25 in a focused cohort – to ensure the intimacy and trust you need to tackle your collective business challenges together.

That being said, there does seem to be an added pressure on all event organizers that a 'great' conference isn't just successful in the content they put on the stage, it's also a function of who they attract (and the consistency/commonalities they have), and the experience that advisors have in going through the conference.

Successful Conferences Specialize In Tackling Particular Advisor Problems

As financial planning information of all types has increasingly become accessible on the internet, financial advisors have faced growing pressure to pick some kind of specialization or niche, to both differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace and have more clarity about their truly ideal client so they can refine their value proposition to be compelling for that particular clientele. And with financial planning educational content now online, conferences are going through the exact same transition as they find new advisor problems to solve.

More than a decade ago, Harvard academic and business consultant Clay Christensen developed the "Jobs To Be Done" framework for innovation, which recognizes that ultimately consumers buy a product or service because there is a particular 'job' that they need it to do. Sometimes the job is obvious (you buy a hammer not for the sake of driving nails into the wall, but because you want to frame a house or hang a picture), and sometimes the jobs is less obvious (as Christensen recognized with a now-famous example of how commuting drivers often buy a morning milkshake not for sustenance or even a sweet tooth, but to 'engage' them during a long drive… which helped to explain why the company struggled when it made a thinner easier-to-drink version of the milkshake that 'ruined' the job by being too easy to consume quickly!).

In this context, it's clear that the historical problem that advisor conferences solved was "I need to get Continuing Education (CE) credits"… which simply isn't a problem that conferences can solve as efficiently as internet-based CE-on-demand businesses can. Now the job-to-be-done is more along the lines of "immersion into a topic at a deep/advanced level to gain a mastery beyond what can be accomplished online alone". Or a chance to connect with others who are going through similar challenges. Or tackling a thorny business issue (that you may not resolve in the span of a conference, or even a year). Or, candidly, sometimes it's just an excuse to travel to a lovely destination and attend a few sessions in exchange for a business-deductible travel expense.🙂

Which, again, helps to explain why the best Tech conference, or the best Marketing conference, or the best Tax conference, or the best Retirement conference, or the best Experiential conference, are all growing… while conferences that have all the tracks for tech, marketing, tax, and retirement are struggling. Because a broad-based conference isn't focused enough to be excellent at any particular topical domain and isn't focused enough to attract a common base of advisors who have shared circumstances and challenges for other advisors to meaningfully connect with.

Because in the end, if the advisor conference doesn't have a good chance at solving a real problem the advisor is trying to solve (from their educational needs to their business needs to their community needs to their experience needs), it simply won't have the necessary ROI to compel advisors to register and attend!

Finding The 'Best' Advisor Conference (For Your ROI)

The ongoing evolution of advisor conferences toward specialization is making it incrementally easier for advisors to find the 'right' conference to tackle the particular problem or challenge they're facing in their business. However, the reality is that most conferences don't outright name themselves for the tax, retirement, estate, practice management, or other topic they're focused on, which means it can still be difficult to figure out which conferences are really 'best' in any particular domain. Not to mention that some categories now have multiple competitors, which means advisors still have to choose which specialized conference to attend in the category.

To help navigate this challenge, since 2012, we've published an annual list of the Best Financial Advisor Conferences, based on my own experience speaking at nearly 1,000 conferences over the past 20+ years, and having seen firsthand which events are particularly good and worth recommending (or not)… and which are the best fit (or not) for any particular type of advisor.

To that end, our "Best Conferences" list this year focused more than ever on the particular specialization of the conference, or the particular type of advisor, who would likely find that conference most relevant to their individual advisor needs and circumstances. Because sometimes it's about the topical focus of the agenda; in other cases, it's about the type of advisor the event attracts; and sometimes it's about the intangible aspects of the conference experience (that are hard to determine from pictures on a website).

Because ultimately, the 'best' conference is only determined relative to the advisor themselves and whatever their own needs and goals are, to get the ROI that makes it – in terms of both the financial cost, and the cost of time – worthwhile to attend.

Best Overall Financial Planning Conference: FPA NorCal 2026

The FPA NorCal conference is hosted annually by a coalition of about half a dozen Financial Planning Association (FPA) chapters in the Northern California/greater San Francisco area. Yet despite being a regional conference hosted by a number of 'local FPA chapters', NorCal's finely tuned systems and processes for planning and executing the event – that have been running for more than 50 (!) years since its founding as a conference in 1972 and nearly 20 years at the same beautiful venue – ensure that the conference is consistently, year after year, a national-caliber financial planning event.

The typical NorCal conference agenda anchors around nationally recognized keynote speakers, from investment experts like Schwab's Liz Ann Sonders, JP Morgan's David Kelly, and Ariel Investments' Mellody Hobson, to business experts and pioneers like Greg McKeown of "Essentialism" and Salman Khan of Khan Academy, and inspiring success stories like soccer hall-of-famer and Olympian Brandi Chastain and Olympic-figure-skater-turned-philanthropist Kristi Yamaguchi, paired with a series of five parallel breakout tracks of financial planning content.

The content features a mixture of practice management sessions along with more technical CE, many of which run 75–100 minutes (not just the 'usual' 50-minute CE session) to allow room for the speakers to delve deeper into their topics. Which is welcomed, because the FPA NorCal conference has a rigorous speaker selection and vetting process and does not permit any 'pay-to-play' sponsored sessions… which makes it a lineup of speakers that advisors actually would want to listen to longer!

In fact, often, the biggest challenge at NorCal is that you'll want to see multiple sessions that conflict with each other in the same time slot – for which NorCal was also one of the first industry conferences to pioneer the effort of recording every session (general and all breakout sessions), making all recordings of all sessions included as part of the registration fee for all attendees. (So even if you can't attend every session in person, you'll get every bit of content as a registered attendee!)

An added benefit of the NorCal conference is that it's held at the beautiful Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco, and always falls on the Tuesday and Wednesday after Memorial Day… making FPA NorCal a great 'destination' conference to claim a deductible business expense for the flight but starting the trip with a long Memorial Day weekend in San Francisco (or if you prefer, perhaps visiting the wineries of Napa and Sonoma Valleys). And for those who like to use their points, the Palace Hotel is now a Marriott property!

The one important caveat, though, is that because NorCal started out as a regional conference and has morphed into a national event, it does have a capacity limitation (the main ballroom of the Palace Hotel caps out at approximately 600 attendees), so those who are interested should register early because the event has sold out in many years past!

Who Should Attend: Experienced financial advisors who really want to attend high-quality conference sessions and are looking for a well-run event (or those who simply want a nice destination conference to travel to with a significant other!?).

Details: May 26-27, 2026, at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, CA.

Cost: $1,199 for FPA members and $1,599 for non-members. Early bird pricing of $979 for FPA members and $1,399 for non-members is available through January 31.

Conference Website: FPA NorCal 2026

Best Technology Conference: Technology Tools For Today (T3) Advisor Conference 2026

While historically, independent financial advisors had very few choices of technology to use in their advisory firms – since the 'best' technology was built by the biggest enterprises (wirehouses and the like) as proprietary software for their own advisors – in recent years, the technology landscape has blossomed, to the point that today the Kitces AdvisorTech Map tracks nearly 500 different technology solutions for financial advisors.

Yet, with more choices than ever comes more due diligence responsibility to vet and compare more vendors than ever, such that many advisory firms actually report it's more challenging to pick the 'right' technology solution today than it was a decade or two ago, when advisors were compelled to pick from often no more than two to three homegrown solutions in each major category. In other words, what was once a difficulty in just finding solutions (given that most advisor technology companies simply haven't been able to afford the exhibitor booths at traditional advisor conferences, where vendors selling $29/month software are often expected to pay the same exhibitor fees as trillion-dollar asset managers) has now turned into a difficulty in comparing solutions (where few advisors want to spend hours going through sales calls and demos with each of half a dozen vendors or more).

And helping advisors navigate through this landscape, since the beginning, is a newsletter-turned-conference originated by advisor-technology consultants Joel Bruckenstein and David Drucker, which they dubbed "Technology Tools for Today" (T3).

And after more than 20 years, the T3 Advisor Technology conference is still the leading conference for advisor technology… though to be accurate, it is arguably less of a 'conference' (where advisors attend sessions for educational content) and more of a 'trade show' where advisors come to see the latest wares in the exhibit hall, and attend sessions that are almost exclusively presented by the vendors/sponsors. Which, at most advisor conferences, would be a bad thing – vendors selling their wares from the stage instead of providing advisor education – but, in the case of T3, is exactly what advisors want: an opportunity to see, one vendor after another, showcases of their recent releases (what they've spent the past year building) and their roadmap (what they're working on in the coming years). Because that's the whole point of a trade show for advisor technology!

In that vein, the best way for advisors to approach the T3 conference is as a comparison-browsing trip – a chance to walk amongst the exhibit hall booths to see multiple leading providers in any particular category where the advisory firm needs a new solution, and get on-the-spot demos and walkthroughs to evaluate which few vendors they'd like to explore further with their team in a formal vetting process after returning home from the conference. And perhaps get the chance to see something entirely new that is debuting at T3 for the first time. Which can be done in a time-efficient manner by attending the T3 conference, as it's the largest gathering of independent technology providers all in one place for advisors to 'shop' efficiently!

For tech vendors that are deciding whether to participate, it's notable that even by 'trade show' standards, the T3 conference is still not a 'huge' buying audience for AdvisorTech companies looking for new users (historically, as much as half of the ~1,000 attendees are fellow software vendors, media representatives, and industry consultants). Though the conference does typically attract not only individual advisors but also technology decision-makers at larger advisor enterprises (e.g., mega-RIAs and independent broker-dealers) who present more of a seat-count opportunity than 'just' the raw attendee headcount of T3.

Still, in practice, the primary 'ROI' for software vendors that exhibit at T3 is measured not by the number of new users, but by the chance to gain better visibility amongst industry 'influencers' (as T3 has historically been very well covered by industry media and independent consultants who make enterprise recommendations), and the potential to establish relationships with other tech vendors that might be future integration partners (or even future strategic acquirers!).

Who Should Attend: Advisory firm owners (or their technology decision-makers in larger advisor enterprises) who are either independent or making the transition to independence and want an efficient way to see the full breadth of advisor technology solutions all in one place.

Details: March 9-12, 2025, in New Orleans, LA.

Cost: $1,150. Early-bird pricing of $1,100 is available through December 31st. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive $200 off the prevailing conference rate with the T3KITCES200 discount code, buy-one-get-one-free conference passes (through November 30th) using the T3KITCESBOGO discount code, or $50 off tickets to the one-day AI University event on March 9th (which is included with a full conference pass) with the T3KITCESAIU50 discount code!

Conference Website: T3 Advisor Technology Conference 2026

Best Tax Planning Conference: RTS Tax Summit 2026

Over the past decade, the ever-present pressure on financial advisors to show their value – increasingly showing value beyond 'just' the results of their managed accounts – has driven advisory firms toward expanding their financial planning capabilities, producing increasingly deep and comprehensive financial plans, and expanding their services beyond the 'traditional' insurance and investment realms further into the world of tax planning.

After all, one of the fundamental challenges of financial planning is that much of its value is very long term, and while it is truly valuable, it's difficult to tell clients, "You're going to pay me these fees for the next 30 years, but trust me you're totally going to appreciate it in the long run." (Even if it really is true!) Whereas the benefits of tax planning are often much more concrete… ("Mr. and Mrs. Client, I saved you $4,216 in taxes last year!"), leading more and more financial advisors to engage in proactive tax planning with clients. As exemplified by the rapid expansion of tax planning software in our recent AdvisorTech Research, and our Kitces Research on Advisor Productivity finding that nearly 1-in-6 advisors are now doing tax returns in-house.

Yet doing in-depth annual tax planning – or outright bringing tax preparation in-house – is a substantive shift for most advisory firms. It raises challenging (albeit navigable) questions of how far advisors can go in tax planning before delving into the domain of Tax Advice that requires separate licenses. It can shift the cadence of planning meetings to align with the tax planning cycle (e.g., a client service calendar that targets end-of-year tax planning across the entire client base in the fourth quarter). And it often requires new tax planning software and client deliverables.

To fill this void, the RTS Tax Summit emerged in 2023 to help advisors engage more deeply in tax planning. Unlike other 'tax planning' conferences over the years – such as the AICPA ENGAGE conference – the RTS Tax Summit is unique in its focus not just on 'advanced tax planning' strategies, but the practical realities of trying to embed tax planning within an advisory firm (as opposed to AICPA's focus on tax planning for those who are already CPAs with an existing tax practice).

The Tax Summit is led by Steven Jarvis, a CPA who also runs Retirement Tax Services (RTS), a provider of outsourced tax preparation services for financial advisors (who want to offer tax preparation to clients as an extension of their client services without actually hiring CPAs or EAs in-house), in conjunction with Matthew Jarvis and Micah Shilanski of The Perfect RIA podcast. Which brings the event a very practitioner-oriented approach on how to actually 'do' tax planning for clients… including tax planning checklists, how to explain and position various popular tax strategies with clients, and panels with advisors who have expanded their tax planning, sharing how they hired and staffed for it.

Ultimately, the RTS Tax Summit isn't necessarily the most 'advanced' tax planning conference for those looking to nerd out on the deepest cutting-edge strategies for ultra-high-net-worth clientele (where AICPA ENGAGE or the new AICPA PFP Symposium may be a better fit), but it is the most practical for the typical advisory firm that's really proactively trying to figure out how to 'go deeper' and 'do more' when it comes to incorporating tax planning (which may or may not include full tax preparation) as part of their services to clients.

Who Should Attend: Financial advisors looking to go deeper in offering and systematizing tax planning as a part of their services to clients.

Details: September 27-30, 2026, in Phoenix, AZ.

Cost: Super Early Bird pricing of $1,592 is available for a limited time.

Conference Website: RTS Tax Summit 2026

Best Estate Planning Conference: Heckerling Institute 2026

The ongoing rise of the estate tax exemption since the early 2000s has caused a precipitous 95%+ decline in the number of households exposed to Federal estate taxes, exacerbated by the doubling of the estate tax exemption under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that was made permanent at $15M+ (per person, $30M for couples) in 2026 and beyond under OBBBA. To the point that 'Federal estate tax planning' itself is now an increasingly specialized niche.

Nonetheless, for advisors who do work with truly ultra-high-net-worth clients, Federal estate tax planning for clients who might face 7-, 8-, or even 9-figure estate tax liabilities remains as relevant as ever. Which continues to be a cat-and-mouse game of the most creative estate planning attorneys trying to come up with new ways to shelter significant wealth from tax exposure, the IRS challenging various strategies, and the estate planning community determining which tactics will withstand IRS scrutiny over time.

At the same time, the dearth of estate tax planning opportunities for estate planning attorneys themselves is leading to a shift in the entire nature and focus of estate planning itself, which for anyone but the most ultra-high-net-worth of clients is less and less about reducing estate tax exposure, and more and more about either the income tax planning opportunities in estate planning (i.e., how to maximize step-up in basis at death and the use of non-grantor trusts for income tax planning strategies), or the asset protection strategies that can be implemented as part of an estate plan.

For those who want to keep up on the latest in sophisticated estate planning strategies – from tax planning to asset protection – with a particular focus on the subset of ultra-high-net-worth clientele for whom such planning is still relevant, the Heckerling Institute is the conference for advanced estate planning. The event typically features a true all-star lineup of the leading attorneys in advanced estate planning, from Jonathan Blattmachr to Natalie Choate, Samuel Donaldson, Carlyn McCaffrey, Larry Brody, Gideon Rothschild, and more.

Notably, though, the conference is first and foremost an 'attorney-centric' conference (literally hosted under the University of Miami's law school), and while financial advisors are welcome, they should expect to hear a lot of speakers citing Internal Revenue Code sections and parsing verbatim the words of the latest Treasury Regulations. Which means that while Heckerling is the best conference out there for financial advisors serious about learning the latest cutting-edge strategies, it's not for the faint of heart!

Who Should Attend: Financial planners who have a niche/specialization around (advanced) estate planning, and who serve ultra-high-net-worth clientele where these issues are relevant. Realistically, attendees should, at a minimum, have CFP certification and, ideally, advanced educational designations/degrees as well; while not a 'requirement' for the conference, it will be hard to keep up with the sessions without a sound technical estate planning background.

Details: January 12–16, 2026, at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, FL.

Cost: $1,225.

Conference Website: Heckerling Institute 2026

Best Retirement Planning Conference: American College Horizons 2026

One of the most dominant shifts of the financial advisory industry over the past 20 years has been the evolution from transactional business models with customers to relationship models with advisory clients, epitomized by the broad industry transition from product commissions to AUM fees and the concomitant rise of independent and corporate RIAs along with dual-registrants at broker-dealers.

The good news is that the shift to recurring-revenue AUM fees has fundamentally changed the incentives of the advice business in positive ways; advisory firms now invest more into talent and services for existing clients instead of just hunting for the next new client (driving astronomically high client retention rates), the expanded depth of support teams is creating new (non-sales) career tracks for employee financial advisors, and advisory firms have scaled exponentially beyond what they ever could in the past (where, historically, a 'big' advisor was a Million-Dollar-Round-Table producer with $1M of commission revenue in a single year, and now the largest firms measure their AUM in the tens or hundreds of billions instead).

The caveat, however, is that the Assets Under Management (AUM) model really only works for those with "A" to "M" in the first place. Which means the rise of the AUM model has occurred alongside an increased focus on working with pre-retirees and retirees… because, for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks, "that's where the (AUM) money is". Such that there has been a growing demand for advanced education on retirement planning (particularly on the decumulation stage of retirement), and the emergence of two new retirement-centric designations (the RICP and the RMA) over the past 15 years.

And now the American College (which offers the RICP designation) has launched its own decumulation-stage retirement-planning-centric conference, dubbed "Horizons".

Given the reality that 'retirement' is a ubiquitous topic at nearly any financial planning conference, Horizons has sought to differentiate itself by the depth and quality of its speaker lineup. The 2025 agenda was a veritable 'who's who' of retirement planning experts, including Wade Pfau, Michael Finke, and David Blanchett, along with Ed Slott, Jeff Levine, Jamie Hopkins, and more (including yours-truly), and the American College seems committed to maintaining this differentiated positioning of top-end speaker quality.

Drawing a page from the Future Proof experience focus, the Horizons conference also aims to make the conference more engaging than 'just' a series of top retirement planning speakers in a hotel ballroom; while the event is not outside (a la Future Proof Festival), the middle day of the conference is, by design, an offsite day providing organized excursions with fellow attendees to build community while enjoying some local experiences in Orlando, and the opening morning of the first conference day includes a Scholarship Golf Classic event.

Who Should Attend: Experienced financial planners who want to go deeper into retirement planning – particularly the decumulation stage of working with retirees – and are looking for a conference that offers not only thought leaders sharing the latest research and retirement planning strategies but also meaningful opportunities to network with other retirement-planning-centric advisors.

Details: May 4–6, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, FL.

Cost: $999. Early bird pricing of $799 is available through December 31. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive extended early bird pricing through May 3 with the KITCES discount code!

Conference Website: American College Horizons 2026

Best Conference For New Financial Planners: FPA NexGen 2026

As financial advisor career tracks slowly but steadily continue to shift from 'eat what you kill' business development roles from day one, to roles where advisors join existing advisory firms or teams as paraplanners or associate advisors, the industry's ability to attract and retain young talent has never been better. The bad news, however, is that starting out from day one as an employee advisor often means far less flexibility and control of your time and a loss of access to the broader financial advisor community as more time is simply spent within the firm's own four walls and not out at various networking meetings.

To fill this void of lost community and networking opportunities for young advisors, NexGen was first born 21 years ago. Now part of the Financial Planning Association (FPA), the FPA NexGen community includes more than 2,000 financial planners who are still in the first decade of their careers, who share their experiences and provide support to each other through a combination of a private message forum and an annual conference called the FPA NexGen Gathering.

Notably, though, the FPA NexGen Gathering conference is not like traditional financial advisor conferences that are focused on technical sessions for earning CE credits (there are only a handful on the agenda) or practice management (since more and more NexGen advisors are employees, not independent practitioners or business owners at the early stage of their careers).

Instead, the content of NexGen is focused on what actually matters to NexGen advisors – which is primarily about personal and career development: effectively growing yourself and your career, learning how to better engage with clients, and navigating the dynamics of trying to climb the ladder and 'make partner' as an employee at an independent advisory firm. The conference is built around "Cohort" groups that come together to talk about whatever they most want to talk about that's relevant to what they're dealing with in their own jobs, in a very organic 'build the agenda you want to see' conference experience.

The FPA NexGen Gathering is a must-attend event for all those new financial planners trying to survive and thrive in their early years, and who want to find a community of like-minded peers all looking to build long-term successful financial planning careers. In fact, the bonds formed in NexGen are so tight that many members stay connected to their NexGen peers years later by forming study/mastermind groups (once they 'graduate' out of the community's early-career requirements).

Who Should Attend: The NexGen Gathering is best suited for financial advisors in their 20s. While the conference itself does not have an age limit (unlike the overall NexGen membership), the reality is that its membership is predominantly 20-something advisors who are still starting their careers, though the event does attract some career-changers in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, who are also navigating their early-career experience.

Details: August 18–20, 2026, in Dallas, TX.

Cost: $595 for FPA members and $795 for nonmembers. Early-bird pricing of $495 for FPA members and $695 for nonmembers once registration opens. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive $20 off with the 26GAT20NEV discount code!

Conference Website: FPA NexGen 2026

Best Advisor Marketing Conference: SWAY 2026

As financial advisory firms grow, what typically starts out as a successful founder-led growth strategy can become increasingly challenging to scale. That $10M of new AUM might have been 50% growth on top of the firm's existing $20M of AUM, but it's only 20% growth when the firm gets to $50M of AUM, and it falls below 10% growth as the firm crosses $100M of AUM. The growth rates only get worse as the firm continues to size up and the impact of the founder's original marketing success continues to diminish on a relative basis. For which it's hard for the advisor to turn up the growth dial, because there are now so many existing clients to serve there just isn't more time to go out and do more business development!

Different firms handle this challenge in different ways. Some focus more on asking existing clients for referrals to mine their current base of clients. Others try to hire additional advisors who can also bring in clients or at least teach their existing advisors to do more business development. If the firm is unsuccessful in getting its current advisors to drive growth, it may centralize marketing in an attempt to 'make the phone ring' for all of its advisors with more inbound marketing strategies.

But arguably, in many cases, the best way to scale the growth rate of the firm is simply to further scale the personal brand and success of the founder who got it there in the first place, shifting from time-based (e.g., networking) strategies to more scalable content-based (e.g., blogging/podcasting/video) strategies that can, over time, provide compounding growth results for the same investment of the founder's time.

Enter the SWAY conference. Hosted by advisor marketing expert Sheri Fitts, the focus of SWAY is on how to build and scale one's personal brand to generate more scaling marketing results with the increasingly limited time that successful advisors have to market in the first place. As unlike most other marketing strategies for advisory firms as they grow – where it's all about shifting business development to other team members (whether it's other advisors in the firm, or a centralized marketing department) – scaling personal branding is all about keeping the founding advisor at the center of the firm's marketing and growth strategy and simply driving more results from the same container of work.

Accordingly, content at SWAY is heavily focused on "finding your voice" to build your personal brand (however it is that you want to show up, by whatever written/audio/video channel you prefer) and establishing yourself as a recognized person (e.g., an "influencer") with your ideal clientele, within a community of other advisors who are all trying to build in the same way around themselves.

Notably, because the SWAY conference has more interactive workshops (you'll actually do some of the work to begin building and refining your personal brand!), attendance is limited to the first 150 who register. So, for those who are interested, don't wait to register!

Details: August 2–4, 2026, in Boulder, CO.

Cost: $1,297. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive 10% off through December 31st with the NEV2026 discount code!

Conference Website: SWAY 2026

Best Conference Experience: Future Proof Festival 2026

While the nature of the content, the focus of the speakers, and the composition of the advisor attendees will vary from one advisor conference to the next, the experience of most conferences is quite similar – hosted in a large hotel ballroom or perhaps the wing of a convention center, with rows (and rows, and rows) of seating that face the speakers on stage, coffee breaks in the hallway, a buffet in a cavernous exhibit hall encircled by exhibitors, and nary a jot of sunlight unless you choose to take a break away from the conference activities and walk outside for a few minutes.

And then there's Future Proof. Which doesn't even represent itself as a financial advisor conference, but instead as a 'wealth festival' hosted not just in Huntington Beach, California, but on Huntington Beach… literally, outdoors, just a few dozen feet from the rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean. (Technically, the event activities are draped on top of the beach parking lot, so advisors don't have to walk in the sand to get around. 😊) Where sessions are all presented under the warm (but typically not overly hot in September) California sun from five different outdoor content stages, lunch is delivered via local food trucks, and advisors only ever have to walk back across the street to go indoors to the hotel when it's time to go to sleep.

Notably, though, Future Proof isn't just a 'traditional advisor conference held outdoors'. It is by design a substantively more networking-oriented conference. Sessions are relatively short (most are 30 minutes), with futurist-oriented topics (apropos of the name, to help you "Future Proof" your practice) and designed to spark conversation more so than bring answers. (And with shortened sessions, there is little-to-no CE at all.) Interspersed throughout the day are interviews with interesting talking heads of the industry (from Jeff Gundlach debating the bond market to Peter Mallouk sharing the evolution of his firm, to yours-truly sharing some of our latest Kitces Research data), along with other forms of music and entertainment in what is intended to be much more of a 'festival' than a conference in the first place.

Also unique at Future Proof are "Breakthru" meetings, where advisors, in advance of the conference, can provide an indication of the kinds of other advisors they'd like to meet while they're there and 'match' with others who are looking for someone similar. If both people mutually agree, they are set up to meet at a series of meetup tables for a 15-minute connection (all facilitated by a Breakthru app designed by the conference organizers to make it easier to match and meet and offering suggestions for those who aren't sure who to meet up with). Because all meetings are by mutual agreement (both parties have to say they're interested in connecting), are only 15 minutes long (relatively low stakes; if it's not a good connection, just move on quickly), and are 1:1 (not overwhelming for the introverts who don't like big social crowds), advisors who attended have been incredibly upbeat about making better peer connections at Future Proof than through the 'traditional' approach of just talking to people during meals or in hallways and hoping to meet someone with whom they could connect.

In addition to using Breakthru to meet with other advisors, Future Proof also provides the option to use the app for vendor meetups (an alternative to walking the rows of exhibitor booths that also make an appearance at Future Proof). And advisors who want to meet with exhibitors can agree to a set number of meetings to get their conference registration fees reduced (or, for leaders at large firms who represent significant buying opportunities for the vendors, waived entirely) in exchange for the facilitated introductions.

Ultimately, though, Future Proof is such an 'un-conference' conference for financial advisors that it's remarkably hard to describe beyond saying it's simply a great experience. Attending is less about the session content (though there are some sessions advisors will probably drift in and out of) and more about the social dynamic of interacting with a wide range of fellow advisors in a comfortable, sunny (and lovely outdoor not-conference-room-stuffy) environment, with a conference space (and Breakthru app) that help to facilitate good connections even for those of us who don't like big social settings.

Come to Future Proof expecting to have interesting conversations with other advisors, enjoy the feeling of the warm California sun, and leave feeling refreshed after having spent a few days getting fresh air to go with the fresh conversations and fresh ideas. It's an experience unto itself.

Who Should Attend: Financial advisors who want to get away from the 'traditional' conference and feel it would be refreshing to connect with others in a warm outdoor environment, where the primary focus is on networking and conversation with other advisors who are similarly energized.

Details: September 14–17, 2026, in Huntington Beach, CA.

Cost: Pricing to be announced. When registration opens, Nerd's Eye View readers will be able to receive 20% off financial advisor passes and 10% off industry passes by going through this link!

Conference Website: Future Proof Festival 2026

Best Practice Management Events: Match To Your Firm Stage

When a new tax law is passed, 'everyone' who is a financial advisor must learn the latest rules. In fact, the expectation that financial advisors as professionals will stay up to date on the latest tax laws and other planning techniques is the very essence of why we have 'Continuing Education' (CE) obligations. And as any advisor conference can attest, most advisors really want to be certain they receive CE credit for the time they do spend learning the latest.

Except for a subset of financial advisors, the reality is that learning the latest tax laws (or retirement strategies, or investment ideas) is not actually their greatest 'Return On Investment' opportunity when going to a conference. For those who own their own firms, there comes a point where content that helps you work on the business – and advance the overall goals of the business and the team and all the clients who are served – is worth far more than 'just' continuing education content that helps you with your own individual clients.

Of course, not all financial advisors are business owners – and, in fact, with the fevered pace of industry Mergers and Acquisitions, the ongoing scaling of advisory firms with employee advisors, and the rise of various advisor networks and platforms and outsourcing providers, there is arguably less aggregate demand for practice management content than ever. Which is why practice management sessions are usually the least attended of any conference.

However, the reality is that for those who are running their own practices, businesses, or growing enterprises, the economic impact of good guidance that can 'merely' allow the business to grow 1% faster or be 1% more profitable can add up quickly to substantial dollars. Especially because growing and scaling an advisory firm full of human beings is genuinely difficult, with unique challenges that arise at various stages of growth. Such that the need for practice management conferences becomes hyper-specialized by the particular stage of the advisor's growth, and the fact that content often needs to be longer than just a two- or three-day conference (and in fact, many of the industry's leading practice management programs span a year-long engagement!).

Accordingly, the practice management events below are highlighted in the context of where the advisory firm and its owner are in the progression of growing and sizing up their business, with the most relevant conference at each stage of firm evolution!

Limitless Advisor For (High-Margin) Lifestyle Practices

For most financial advisors, the goal at the end of the day is simply to serve clients well, get paid for the work we do and the value we deliver, and use the financial success of the business to lead a life we enjoy for ourselves. Except, unfortunately, many financial advisors get 'stuck' in a trap, as Bill Bachrach has famously quipped, of "doing too much work, for too many clients, for too little money", and are uncertain about how to get unstuck.

Enter Limitless Advisor. Developed by practice management coach Stephanie Bogan, the Limitless Lifestyle coaching program is a year-long engagement, with two 2-day coaching camps – one in the spring and one in the fall – punctuated by quarterly virtual summits and ongoing coaching calls you can join, all built around how to make a highly leveraged solo practice that aims for $1M of revenue with 50%+ EBOC (owner's take-home income) and the ability to still take off 100 days per year (or whatever your personal definition of financial and time-off 'success' might be!).

Notably, while "lifestyle practice" is used as a negative term in some parts of the industry, Limitless celebrates the fact that many high-income lifestyle practices have a better take-home income than the partners at $1B+ advisory firms… with a fraction of the stress and hours worked along the way. Which means that 'high margin' – in the context of a lifestyle practice – is about both profit margins (having a high take-home income) and high 'personal' margins (not working an undue number of business hours to get there!). At least for those who are able to follow the higher-margin path that Limitless teaches.

Who Should Attend: Experienced solo financial advisors with $300k+ of revenue who have 'hit a wall' and want to figure out how to scale themselves to create a higher-margin practice with more time off and without necessarily needing to hire a big team. (A separate "Limitless Leaders" program is available for firms with $1M to $5M of revenue who are expanding their multi-advisor teams and need to get over the next wall of hiring and expanding.)

Details: Year-long program with in-person and virtual.

Cost: $18,000 for the full-year Lifestyle program (including all meetings and events). Nerd's Eye View readers receive $3,000 off with the KITCES26 discount code until December 19th!

Conference Website: Limitless Lifestyle 2026

ClientWise Business Builders Academy For Going From Practice To Business

While many financial advisors can and do build wildly successful solo practices to support their lifestyles, for some of us, there is a desire for the business to become 'bigger than just me'. Yet regardless of whether it's to have a broader reach and impact, to establish an 'enduring advisory business' that lives beyond us, or simply to grow a larger firm to create more enterprise value and achieve our personal financial goals, there is a fundamental shift that occurs when we stop trying to simply add clients for ourselves and instead build a business that serves clients, for which we are the owner and leader.

In fact, arguably the biggest challenges to making Michael Gerber's "E-Myth" from being a technician working in the business to an owner working primarily on the business aren't even the tools and tactics to pursue… it's the mindset changes it takes to get comfortable re-visioning your own role and relationship with the business. After all, best practices in expanding the team of advisors don't really matter if you aren't comfortable letting go of some client relationships in the first place. And as a result, often the events and platforms that best teach advisors how to make the transition come from the realm of business coaches, like ClientWise and their Business Builders Academy.

Notably, though, Business Builders Academy is not 'just' a conference. Instead, similar to how Limitless works with solo advisors (which has a Limitless Leaders tier for firms with $1M to $5M of revenue), ClientWise's offering is also a year-long program that encompasses in-person two-day workshops, coupled with monthly webinars… all of which are built around a cohort of similar-sized advisor peers (with groups at <$1.5M revenue, $1.5M to $3M, and $3M to $7.5M, and separate offerings for larger multi-partner ensembles) who the advisor progresses through the program with, supported and facilitated by one of ClientWise's business coaches.

Core topics that are covered throughout the year include hiring and team development, managing the business and its operations, and organizing business priorities, in addition to exploring how the firm can best scale up its marketing, client acquisition, and client engagement/advice delivery as the advisor looks to scale the clientele far beyond 'just' themselves and their personal support team.

Who Should Attend: Leaders of multi-advisor firms with $3M to $10M of revenue who are trying to transform from a founder-centric business to a multi-advisor (and especially multi-partner) ensemble firm.

Details: Year-long program with in-person workshops and virtual webinars.

Cost: Contact organization for pricing information.

Conference Website: ClientWise Business Builders Academy 2026

Veres' Insider's Forum For Mid-Sized RIAs

As advisory firms continue to grow and size up their revenue and their headcount, the greater size of the firm brings more dollars to invest into resources to better support the advisors, do more for clients… and potentially create more headaches for the advisory firm leaders as the business becomes increasingly complex. And at this size, the "Mo Money Mo Problems" challenges are not as easy to navigate because now the advisory firm has more advisors, and often more partners, which means more stakeholders to get on board for any potential changes.

For advisors in this "mid-sized advisory firm" growth stage, Bob Veres' "Inside Information" newsletter has long been a practice management go-to for independent RIAs in particular. Covering everything from emerging technology that helps advisory firms run more efficiently to new business management and team structures to better scale, Veres has spent more than 30 years studying and writing about best practices for financial advisors.

And several years ago, he launched the Insider's Forum conference to further extend the practice management learning from newsletter to in-person event. Unlike most conferences that accept a wide range of speakers and vendors, though, Veres not only rigorously vets the particular consultants who speak, but also includes a number of successful advisors who can speak from experience about actually implementing their ideas (not just hypotheticals of what advisors 'should' do, but what they have actually done). And Veres also hand-picks the vendors for the exhibit hall to specifically be relevant for his target audience: mid-sized advisory firms and the C-level leadership who run them.

Who Should Attend: C-level executives from advisory firms with at least $3M revenue who are navigating the challenges of how to systematize and scale their multi-advisor firms.

Details: September 16–18, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency in Denver, CO.

Cost: $1,250 for the first registration from each firm and $1,000 for each additional attendee. Super early bird pricing of $1,150 for the first registration ($950 for additional attendees from the same firm) is available through March 20 and early bird pricing of $1,200 for the first registrant ($975 for additional attendees) is available through June 19. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive $75 off the first registrant's fee with the KITCESBVIF discount code!  

Conference Website: Veres Insider's Forum 2026

DeVoe Elevate For Developing Next-Generation Talent

Like any professional services business, once a financial advisory firm grows materially beyond the ability of 'just' its founder to serve clients and becomes a multi-advisor business, it will ultimately live or die by its ability to attract, develop, and retain high-quality talent. As while technology may provide incremental efficiencies, we can't automate all of the people out of the business, or we'd 'just' be a technology company selling software for a monthly fee. Consumers hire financial advisors – and the firms they work for – to receive services beyond and between what technology alone can automate or provide.

To help address these challenges, practice management consultant David DeVoe created the DeVoe Elevate conference, with a specific focus on helping advisory firm leaders figure out how best to manage the people in their business and develop their human capital.

Accordingly, the entire agenda is focused on developing advisor talent, with sessions like "People Power: How RIAs Build And Keep Great Teams", "Building Culture: How Elite Leaders Build A Team And Influence Behavior", and "Structuring Incentives That Drive Growth", delivered by a combination of leading industry consultants, and panels of successful advisory firm leaders sharing what they themselves have done to be successful in attracting, developing, and retaining talent.

Who Should Attend: C-level executives from advisory firms with at least $5M revenue who are tackling their human capital challenges as they size up their enterprises toward becoming multi-billion AUM firms.

Details: May 6-8, 2026, in Austin, Texas.

Cost: TBD.

Conference Website: DeVoe Elevate 2026

G2 Institute For Next-Generation Leaders

The founders of advisory firms are truly unique people. Like most entrepreneurs, they typically have a high tolerance for risk (to even take the chance of starting the business!). They have to be comfortable with the constantly changing demands on their time as the business asks for (and takes!) what it needs from them to be successful. All while carrying the load of going out to find and bring in all the revenue, and (at least in the early years) providing all of the servicing to the clients as well.

Which creates a significant gap whenever the next generation of leaders comes along in the same advisory firm. As, almost by definition, the next-generation "G2" leadership has not followed the path of the G1 founder – what the G1 founder had to build from scratch with their own two hands, the G2 leader joined once it was already established. In fact, the irony is that if the G2 leader had the risk tolerance and desire to build a business from scratch themselves, they probably wouldn't be working for the G1 founder in the first place!

As a result, G1 founders often struggle greatly to teach G2 successors to be successful, as G2 tends to have very different interests and preferences in how to run the business. Which isn't necessarily bad – in fact, as the business becomes more established, it can help to systematize and scale the business to not have the constantly adaptive highly risk-tolerant approach that many founders take. But it does mean that G2 needs a place to learn, in a way that G1 can't always provide.

To fill this void, practice management guru Philip Palaveev of the Ensemble Practice created his G2 Leadership Institute, to help those next-generation leaders who didn't choose to take the entrepreneurial journey from scratch but want to become leaders of an established, successful, growing business that still needs help and new leadership to get to the next level from here.

Similar to Limitless Lifestyle or ClientWise's Business Builders Academy, Palaveev's G2 Leadership Institute is an extended coaching program (it actually runs for two full years), with a combination of monthly learning sessions, two in-person gatherings each year, and MBA-style group work with fellow G2 leaders working through case studies of real-world business challenges. All built to help next-generation leaders get more opportunities to develop, learn, and practice their leadership skills.

Details: Two-year program with semi-annual in-person and monthly virtual sessions.

Cost: $14,000 for the full 2-year program (including all meetings and events).

Conference Website: G2 Leadership Institute

Up-And-Coming Conferences Of Note

Notwithstanding the fact that there are a lot of advisor conferences out there – so many that we need to make an annual Best Conferences list to sort through them all, and a Master Conference List to organize them – there are still more new conferences emerging. In the current environment, though, this isn't entirely surprising – the more that advisors and their teams and firms continue to specialize in their roles and offerings and target clientele, the more opportunity there will be for new conferences to emerge to provide a specialized event for the needs of that particular group.

To that end, we highlight a few emerging up-and-coming conferences, most of which are too new to give a formal 'review' as an ongoing event (some will debut for the first time in 2026!), but given their clear focus, may still be of interest for particular advisors who are a fit for their specialized content.

AICPA PFP Symposium For Tax-Centric Financial Advisors

While financial advisors have been increasingly migrating toward a deeper level of estate and tax planning advice, the CPA world has also been migrating increasingly toward financial planning. Which isn't entirely new – in practice, many of the largest RIAs today were formed by former CPAs who broke out of the High-Net-Worth (HNW) planning divisions of Big-8 accounting firms back in the 1980s and 1990s to form their own wealth management firms.

In fact, the growth of this 'other world' of CPA financial planners  long ago spawned their own membership association – the Personal Financial Planning (PFP) section of the AICPA. Which, for many years, ran its own "Advanced Financial Planning" conference known as the AICPA PFP conference, before it was folded in 2017 into the broader AICPA ENGAGE conference.

But now for 2026, the old Advanced PFP Conference is being revived as the "PFP Symposium" event in 2026.

Because it is created and operated by CPA financial planners (under the AICPA's PFP section), attendees can expect an agenda with a deep technical focus, filled with more advanced income and estate tax planning topics (as the base knowledge required just to become a CPA forms a high bar for a continuing education conference to build upon!).

Notably, there is no requirement that advisors be CPAs to attend; however, anticipate that all the content will come from a very tax-centric approach to financial planning (as most AICPA PFP members are practicing CPAs who have expanded from tax into the wealth management business).

Details: January 21–23, 2026, in San Diego, CA.

Cost: $2,125. Early bird pricing of $1,975 is available until November 17th. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive $100 off with the PFPSYM26 discount code! 

Conference Website: AICPA PFP Symposium 2026

Future Proof Citywide For Leveraging AI In Your Advisory Firm

This past year, the makers of the incredibly popular Future Proof Festival (based on the West Coast in Southern California) expanded into a new event, dubbed "Future Proof Citywide" on the East Coast (in South Florida). Though the intention of Citywide was not simply to be "another version of Future Proof on the East Coast", it was, by design, more oriented toward the investment ecosystem (from advisory firms to asset managers, family offices to PE firms raising capital, and more).

However, with the ongoing rise of all things Artificial Intelligence, the organizers have announced that Citywide 2026 will be focused much more directly on all things AI-related to financial advisors across four dimensions: 1) Investing in AI (how AI is shaping investment portfolios, from Nvidia to AI-focused ETFs to AI-designed portfolios); 2) Building with AI (for technologists crafting new advisor software using AI to advisory firms building their own internal AI applications); 3) Growing with AI (which explores how the use of AI will reshape the way advisory firms hire, shape their teams, and attract and service clients); and 4) Living with AI (about how the incorporation of AI can shape everything from leadership to team performance to its broader societal impact).

Notably, beyond its AI theme, Citywide will still espouse all the elements that have made Future Proof so popular: the event will be outdoors again (on the beaches of Miami) and will include the Breakthru Meetings and content style of Future Proof Festival – but with a distinctly AI-centric theme that Future Proof is collectively calling the first "AI-Native Conference" for advisors.

Details: March 8–11, 2026, in Miami, FL.

Cost: Currently $545 for financial advisors at firms with more than $50 million AUM and $300 for firms with less than $50 million (prices are subject to change). Nerd's Eye View readers can receive 20% off financial advisor passes and 10% off industry passes by going through this link!.

Conference Website: Future Proof Citywide AI Conference 2026

G2 Growth Academy For Next-Generation Advisors Learning Business Development

Historically, financial advisors had to be effective at prospecting from the very beginning just to survive; as the saying went, "It doesn't matter how good you are at financial planning if you can't find any clients who will pay you for it." Those who didn't learn to excel at business development in their few years were the key driver of the industry's historical attrition rate of losing 80%+ of new advisors in the first three years.

The good news of the industry's shift to recurring-revenue models like AUM (and more recently subscription) fees is that it created an alternative non-business-development career track: firms with founders who were good at business development (or that had a centralized marketing process) could attract clients and hand them off to employee advisors, who had to be good advice and service providers but didn't necessarily need to have any business development skills at all.

Except as advisory firms grow, it eventually becomes difficult to maintain the firm's growth rate if it's driven by only a small number of founders/partners at the top; or, conversely, for firms to sustain an expanding base of partners, at least some of those employee advisors have to learn business development. Which has turned out to be a great struggle for most firms, both because the advisors they hired often went there specifically to not have to do business development, and because the founders themselves were often business development 'naturals' who may have been very successful but don't necessarily know how to teach it to others.

Which is why Philip Palaveev, of the G2 Leadership Institute, is now launching a "G2 Growth Academy" to teach next-generation advisors how to do business development. The program itself, similar to other practice management deep-dives, is not an individual conference but a year-long program, with monthly coaching sessions and specific assignments to practice various elements of business development (e.g., deliver a presentation, write an article, record a video) and receive direct feedback. With a stated goal of doubling the number of leads being generated by each participant and lifting their current new-revenue-generation by at least 50%.

Because of its intimate setting, the G2 Growth Academy will be limited in size in its first year (to only 15 participants), so interested advisors should sign up sooner rather than later!

Details: One-year program with monthly virtual sessions and one in-person gathering in May (in Seattle, WA).

Cost: $20,000.

Conference Website: G2 Growth Academy

Wealth.com EstateCon For Incorporating Estate Planning Into Your Practice

While changes to the tax laws have narrowed the scope of Federal estate tax planning, the reality is that estate planning itself remains as relevant as ever, because every client needs to ensure an orderly wind-down of their assets to the intended heirs (and not to those unintended ones they don't wish to be inheritors), and to provide continuity of their affairs in the event of disability or incapacitation. In other words, every client needs to be certain they have at least a core set of estate documents (Wills and/or Revocable Trusts, Powers of Attorney for financial and health care matters, etc.), and financial advisors still often have a key role to identify such gaps and encourage clients to implement documents that they may not have in place (or need to be updated).

In turn, this shift from estate tax planning to estate planning has powered the growth of a new crop of estate document providers, from Trust & Will to EncorEstate to Wealth.com, that all aim to work with financial advisors and their clients to ensure that proper estate planning documents are in place. Unlike historical 'estate planning software', these providers don't aim to simply help advisors plan for what happens to their clients' assets; they actually do the drafting work to put those documents in place.

And so it's not entirely surprising that one of the providers, Wealth.com, has decided to create its own "EstateCon" conference to advance education with respect to estate planning in particular. Unlike the Heckerling Institute – which has a strong focus on high-net-worth clients and is very attorney-centric – Wealth.com's EstateCon appears to be much more focused on financial advisors themselves, featuring topics from estate planning strategies to more practical steps to help ensure that clients really get their documents in place.

As is the case for many vendor-run conferences, some advisors will be skeptical about whether Wealth.com's EstateCon will be focused too much on Wealth.com's own services. But the reality is that there is no definitive Estate Planning Conference for financial advisors, and those who seek to go deeper – but don't necessarily want Heckerling depth – have never had a conference of their own to attend. In that regard, Wealth.com is arguably filling a void (at least to the extent that there are advisors still focusing heavily on estate planning beyond highly advanced strategies for ultra-HNW clients).

Details: January 26–28, 2026, at the Omni Montelucia in Scottsdale, AZ.

Cost: $549. Nerd's Eye View readers can receive a 15% discount with the KITCES2026 discount code! 

Conference Website: Wealth.com EstateCon 2026

Going 'Home' To Your Advisor Community

While many financial advisors decide to go to a conference to solve a particular problem – whether it's an educational gap or a practice management/business need – sometimes the reality is that the reason to attend is little more than spending time with 'your people': the community of advisors that you belong to and wish to (re-)connect with. Which makes the conference less of a conference, per se, and more about 'going home' to your community.

For most advisors, their 'home' conference is the annual conference of their RIA custodian or broker-dealer platform (which is why events like Schwab IMPACT and LPL Focus are some of the largest conferences in the industry), or the advisor platform they work with (e.g., XYPN LIVE or Dynasty Partners Summit). With the added benefit that not only is it an opportunity to talk to and network (and perhaps to commiserate) with fellow advisors using the same platform, but it's also an opportunity for the advisors on those respective platforms to see the latest services and capabilities their platforms are rolling out, hear what senior leadership are focused on (or have a chance to ask questions and express concerns), and meet home office staff as well. Not to mention that because advisors with a shared platform tend to have a similar business model and often a similar 'profile' (which makes them a fit for that platform), the other advisors in attendance tend to be reasonably similar and good to network with.

In turn, the rise of vendor conferences is also creating a new kind of 'home' community conference, at least where the technology platform forms a major hub around which the advisor's practice is built. Examples include the Envestnet Advisor Summit, Orion Ascent, Nitrogen's Fearless Investing Summit, and eMoney's Advisor Conference. Which again offer opportunities for good networking (advisors using similar systems tend to share other commonalities that give them good chances to share best practices), as well as for hearing the latest and greatest from their vendors and key leadership.

And so, for advisors who otherwise aren't certain what conference to attend in 2026, might consider "there's no place like home" as the conference of choice. Or alternatively, multi-advisor firms may wish to divide and conquer, with one advisor going to their home conference and another going to something new for 2026!?

So what do you plan to attend? Do you have any conference favorites that I didn't include in the list? Please share in the comments section below!

Disclosure: Michael Kitces is a co-founder and partner of the XY Planning Network, which operates one of the "best conferences" on this list.

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