Venture Capital Forum 2026

15:00-15:50: Round 1

1. Defence / Dual use

2. Technology & Tech-enabled businesses

3. SpaceTech

16:00-16:50: Round 2

1. Deep Tech

2. Sustainability & planetary health

3. HealthTech

This keynote delves into the EIF data’s extensive data and draws on real investment experiences to give practical insights into the state of the European VC ecosystem and where it is heading.

Networking reception. All delegates are invited to attend.

A prime networking experience in an exceptional setting. LP delegates & Invest Europe Member GP delegates are invited to attend.

Open exclusively to CEO/Managing Partners GP delegates.

The maturing of the European VC universe, as well as the drive to scale up funds and extend strategies, is leading to new and intensifying considerations for GPs. High on the list is the topic of succession, including the development and retention of teams with the skills and longevity to take GPs in the future. Our GP-only session discusses the issues surrounding succession planning and provides a forum for exchanging ideas and best practices when it comes to transferring control to a younger generation of VC professionals.

Amid ongoing global challenges, Europe’s venture capital scene saw signs of recovery in 2025. Invest Europe data showed a return to strong investment levels and resilience in exits, although the number of funds raising capital and the amount raised contracted amid global uncertainty. While AI continues to capture attention and capital, European start-ups in sectors such as deep tech, defence and biotech are developing ground-breaking technology and vying for focus and investment. This session analyses recent European VC activity data and performance, and discusses opportunities and challenges for VCs and investors as Europe pursues its own innovative path.

Public-backed investors are sizeable and important investors in European VC funds. In 2024, government agencies accounted for around a quarter of the €22 billion raised. While they are hallmark of European VC and a backbone of many VC funds, individual investor’s approaches vary. We investigate the role of sovereign and state-backed institutions in VC across Europe. How do their mandates and deployment approaches vary in support of early and later-stage opportunities? What instruments and strategies are they employing to invest in start-ups? And how can VC firms and their LPs benefit from government agencies’ essential investment and ability to crowd in private institutional investors?

Global LPs continue to reshape allocations to private markets, increasingly targeting Europe as a safe haven of stability and predictability in an uncertain world. Our panel looks at the implications for investor allocations to European VC. What criteria are LPs using to select funds, set ticket sizes, target specific geographies and choose between established firms and emerging managers? Is access to co-investment or secondary opportunities a ‘must have’ or a ‘nice to have’? What are the barriers to scaling European VC funds and overall ecosystem? And what conditions and regulatory environment are needed to drive more institutional capital into European VC?

Through the up and downs of markets, European venture capital fund returns have consistently outperformed their North American peers over timeframes up to 15 years, according to Invest Europe benchmark data analysis. Our panel takes a deep dive into the figures to find where risk-adjusted performance is strongest across early, late and growth investment stages. And we investigate capital deployment considerations affecting European VC performance, including loss ratios, time to liquidity, and capital intensity of investments. How do these factors influence returns, notably the increasingly important metric of distributions to paid-in capital (DPI)? We also look at portfolio construction issues around diversification and the VC skill sets needed to deliver outperformance, as we address the central question: where should capital be deployed today?

As the VC industry expands and matures, the role of GPs is evolving. From a source of capital for start-ups and a conduit for investors into fast-growing businesses, managers are becoming providers of operational excellence for scaling businesses with multiple offerings for companies and investors alike. Our panel discusses some of the most important themes shaping GP capabilities today. How are VCs leveraging AI to source and diligence investments, and deliver portfolio efficiencies and opportunities? What is the role of new fund models, such as evergreen and semi-liquid vehicles? Is there room for VC platform strategies in the European market? And what value-add skills are VCs developing to enhance single investments and entire portfolios?

While a growing cohort of mature VC-backed companies publicly discuss the potential for record-breaking exits, market uncertainty and volatility continue to impact the environment for many start-ups. M&A, traditionally the strongest route for start-up exits, is constrained by corporate investment caution, while IPOs show tentative signs of recovery in both the US and Europe. As start-ups stay private for longer, our panel looks at where liquidity will really come from for investors. How are secondaries and continuation vehicles shaping the VC market? And what is the outlook for structured exits?

To close the conference, Invest Europe Chair Sander Slootweg will sit down with Tim van Hauwermeiren, founder, former CEO and current Chair of Argenx, to explore the company's extraordinary journey from VC-backed startup to one of Europe's leading biotech success stories. Looking beyond Argenx, they will discuss what it takes to build global champions from Europe, why Europe must back ambitious founders for the long term, and the importance of supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs to scale world-class companies from Europe.