Quantum Track @ Future Forward 2026
5 Free Seats for Researchers & Founders
A dedicated quantum track, presented by FFG. Inside Austria's largest innovation conference.
📍 weXelerate, Praterstraße 1, 1020 Vienna
🗓 26 November 2026, full day
🎟 5 complimentary Full-Day tickets (worth €299) — application-based
The short version
Future Forward is weXelerate's annual innovation conference: 1,000+ attendees, 40% of them CEOs and founders, 40 startups pitching live, 200+ curated 1:1 meetings, an expo floor, and an afterparty. It is the densest concentration of Austrian and Central European industry, capital and corporate decision-makers in one building, on one day.
This year, quantum gets its own track — presented by FFG.
We are giving away 5 Full-Day tickets to researchers and early-stage founders in quantum technologies. You get the entire conference: main stage, expo, matchmaking, pitching arena, afterparty. The one condition is that you show up to the quantum sessions and actually contribute — your perspective is the reason we are reserving these seats in the first place.
Why we are doing this
In AI, Europe is playing catch-up. In quantum, we are not — yet.
Austria has world-class research, a growing startup scene, and industrial companies that have already started experimenting. That advantage has a shelf life. The same pattern that cost Europe its position in AI is available again, and the window to avoid it is roughly the next three years.
The gap is not research quality. It is the distance between the people doing the research and the people who could buy, fund or build on it. Closing that gap requires putting both in the same room. That is what a 1,000-person conference is good for — and what a quantum track inside it is good for.
Which means the track only works if researchers are actually in it. Hence these seats.
The quantum track
Inside the Workbench — Live from the Quantum Ideation Days
Teams come straight from two days of working side by side with companies on real industrial challenges across computing, sensing and communication, and present while the ink is still wet. How a business problem changes shape once physicists take it apart, which challenges genuinely suited quantum, and which were solved better classically. Nobody has had time to polish the slides.
Quantum Without the Physics — What It Can Actually Do
Forty-five minutes, no formulas, no vendor pitch. Computing, sensing and communication — what each is used for, what people are building, and why encryption is the one area with a deadline already on the calendar. Less useful for what you learn, more useful for hearing how your field gets explained to the people you might one day sell to.
Matchmaking Lab — "I Have a Laser. Who Needs One?"
Fishbowl format, a few seats in the middle. Researchers put a capability on the table, companies put a problem next to it, and we see what connects, what is missing, and what would have to exist — funding, talent, procurement, people willing to leave the lab. This is the one you come for. Step in with a technology, a problem, or the piece of the puzzle you can contribute.
The rest of the day is yours
Between and after the quantum sessions you have full access to everything else: the main stage, 40 live startup pitches in front of investors, the expo floor, the b2match matchmaking app (browse the attendee list and book 1:1 meetings weeks in advance), and the afterparty from 18:00.
Roughly 40% of the room are CEOs and founders. About a third are established companies, another third startups. Around 3% are investors and VCs — which sounds small until you remember it is a room of a thousand people.
Who qualifies for a free seat
The tickets are reserved for people who are close enough to the technology that the room learns something from having them in it. Concretely:
Researchers in quantum technologies — PhD students, PostDocs, senior researchers working in quantum computing, sensing, communication, or enabling technologies (photonics, cryogenics, control electronics, materials, software stack)
Technical people outside academia working on quantum-adjacent hardware or software who could realistically end up building a company around it
Early-stage quantum founders — pre-incorporation is fine, pre-idea is fine, a company that exists mostly as a shared document is fine
You do not need a company, a business model, or a pitch deck.
Not for: consultants, service providers and vendors looking for leads. There are other tickets for that.
How to apply
Register your interest here on Luma. One minute.
We send you a short video interview link. Three or four questions — answer by video, audio or text, in English or German. About ten minutes.
Where we see the strongest fit, we confirm your seat and issue your Full-Day ticket.
The interview is not an exam. We are putting together one specific room and we want to know what you are working on, so we can point the right people at you on the day rather than leaving it to chance.
The condition attached to the ticket: attend the quantum sessions and participate — bring your view, disagree out loud, tell the room when a proposed application does not survive contact with physics. That is the trade. Everything else about the day is unconditional.
Seats confirmed on a rolling basis but not before end of September.
Questions: ecosystem@wexelerate.com