TechCrunch Disrupt, one of the world’s best-known startup conferences, returns to Moscone West in San Francisco on October 13–15 — a couple of weeks earlier than its usual late-October slot. The organizers expect more than 10,000 founders, investors, and startup operators, with over 200 sessions and 250+ speakers spread across six industry stages, up from five last year.
Alongside the main Disrupt Stage, the program includes the Builders Stage focused on practical company-building and the Smart Money Stage covering fintech, payments, and fraud, plus stages dedicated to AI agents and infrastructure, the AI datacenter boom, and automation and robotics.
Who is speaking this year?
The first headliners have already been confirmed:
- Arvind Jain (Glean) — founder and CEO of the enterprise AI search company
- Jeff Lawson — co-founder of Twilio
- Robby Stein (Google) — VP of Product for Google Search, with a session on going from MVP to billions of users
- Arsalan Tavakoli-Shiraji (Databricks) — co-founder and SVP of Field Engineering
The recently revealed Builders Stage agenda gives a taste of the year’s preoccupations: sessions include “What Happens When OpenAI Ships Your Roadmap,” “Hiring When AI Is a Co-Founder” with Gusto’s Josh Reeves, and “The 90-Day GTM: Why $0–$10M ARR Is the New Baseline” featuring Lovable’s Ryan Meadows and Theory Ventures’ Tomasz Tunguz. More speakers will be announced through October.
Startup Battlefield 200
The heart of Disrupt remains Startup Battlefield 200: two hundred selected startups exhibit for free, and twenty of them pitch live for the $100,000 equity-free grand prize. Applications for the 2026 edition close on June 8, and selected companies will be notified by the end of August. Battlefield alumni — over 1,700 companies including Dropbox, Discord, and Cloudflare — have collectively raised more than $32 billion.
At last year’s edition, held on October 27–29, 2025, the Battlefield Cup went to Glīd, a logistics startup building hybrid-electric vehicles that move shipping containers to rail without forklifts. It beat out finalists including gene-therapy startup Nephrogen and textile-recycling company MacroCycle.
Tickets
Tickets are on sale on the TechCrunch website. As of early June, an Attendee pass costs $559 (regular price $889), a Founder pass $579, and an Investor pass $799, with discounted student, non-profit, and expo-only options also available. Groups of four or more get an additional 15–30% off. Full refunds are available until July 31, 2026.