Organizers have canceled the 2026 Grace Hopper Celebration, the annual conference that has drawn tens of thousands of women and nonbinary technologists for three decades, just two weeks before it was scheduled to open at the Anaheim Convention Center. AnitaB.org, the nonprofit behind the event, says it simply did not have the money to move forward.
The organization said in a statement that both individual registrations and sponsorship commitments came in significantly below our expectations, leaving it without the funds required to hold the gathering, according to AnitaB.org. The Celebration had been set for October 27 through 30 at the Anaheim Convention Center, and its cancellation just two weeks before the start was first detailed by Tom's Hardware. Bloomberg, which first reported on the cancellation's broader implications in a piece by Jeff Green and Emily Flitter, frames the collapse of the event as one example of a retreat from diversity initiatives reshaping opportunities for women in tech.
A Conference Built Around Jobs, Mentors and Technical Skills
The Grace Hopper Celebration is an annual event that brings together women and nonbinary technologists in computing and technology from around the world, according to the event's own help center. It typically features keynote speakers, technical sessions, workshops, a career fair, and networking opportunities, the same source notes. Attendees have long used the gathering to seek jobs, mentors and professional connections, and the event has served as a platform for tech companies to demonstrate their commitment to advancing women in the field.
This year's program had been promoted as a place to build technical skills, develop AI fluency, meet employers and connect with peers and leaders, per Forbes. More than 700 organizations typically take part each year, the Tom's Hardware report notes, and corporate sponsors have included Capital One, CVS Health, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intuit and Morgan Stanley, according to the Forbes piece.
What Happens To Registrants and Employers Now
AnitaB.org said it will contact registrants about registration fees by October 26, per its press release. Employers who had interviews scheduled through the career fair are being notified, and the organization is asking them to continue those conversations directly where possible. Companies participating in the GHC 26 Resume Hub will continue to have access to resumes submitted by attendees, the nonprofit said.
Not every piece of the Grace Hopper program is affected. Grace Hopper Celebration India is still scheduled to take place in Bangalore from January 20 through 22, 2027, according to the same AnitaB.org statement.
Attendance and Finances Had Already Been Sliding
The cancellation follows a sharp decline in participation. Attendance fell from 29,000 in 2023 to 17,000 in 2024, counting both in-person and virtual attendees, per the Tom's Hardware report. AnitaB.org reported a $14.6 million loss in 2024 on revenue of $27.5 million against expenses of $42.1 million, the same report states, with the Celebration's own expenses of $26.9 million outpacing its $22.4 million in revenue that year by $4.5 million.
A Broader Pullback On Women's Career Programs
The Celebration's collapse lands amid wider signs that employers are pulling back from efforts aimed at advancing women in tech. Only half of companies surveyed in McKinsey's 2025 Women in the Workplace report said they were prioritizing women's career advancement, and the study found that some companies have already scaled back programs beneficial to women, including remote work, formal sponsorship and targeted career development, according to McKinsey. That research, which drew on pipeline data from 124 organizations employing roughly three million people and surveyed about 10,000 employees, also found that women overall are less likely than men to have a sponsor, particularly at the entry level.
The stakes are especially visible in fields tied to artificial intelligence. Women made up 27.5% of U.S. workers in computer and mathematical occupations in 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures cited by Forbes, and Stanford's 2026 AI Index found that women remain underrepresented among AI researchers and developers across countries, with no country reaching gender parity, the same Forbes report notes.
