750 HR professionals, executives and innovation leaders, upwards of 120 speakers are coming together
North America's most exciting HR festival is coming once again – and you are invited.
Registration is now open for HRFest Canada 2026, a two-day festival, set on Nov. 10 and 11 at Rebel in Toronto.
Rather than a single plenary room and a row of breakout sessions, the festival spreads programming across five stages — The Hangar, The Leaders Forum, The Vault, The Lab and The Loft — each built around a distinct mode of learning.
The agenda includes live debates, lightning labs, panels, live podcast recordings and what the organizers call "legal hot seats."
Inside the stages
The Hangar is billed as "the heartbeat of HRFest," the main stage for keynote panels, live podcasts and the big debates — spanning next-generation talent, AI adoption, legal risk and wellbeing ROI — featuring, the organizers say, "the voices making the calls."
The Vault takes a sharper, practitioner-first angle. Described as "built for practitioners who want the real story," it tackles what AI is actually doing to the HR function, live legal Q&A, skills-based hiring realities and trauma-sensitive leadership — what the organizers frame as "the sessions that say what other conferences won't."
The Lab is "hands-on and deliberately small," a working space for comp-structure diagnostics, M&A integration checklists and people-analytics storytelling, with a promise of "tools you can use on Monday, not just slides to file away." The Loft targets mid-career professionals weighing their next move, with sessions on CFO budget conversations, promotion strategy and live career coaching.
Senior practitioners, meanwhile, have a dedicated HR Leaders Summit addressing operating-model resets, board-level decision-making and how leaders translate people priorities into financial outcomes.
Scale, speakers and the 2026 agenda
HRFest Canada brings together more than 750 HR professionals, executives and innovation leaders and upwards of 120 speakers.
There would also be 40-plus networking activities and experiences.
The early speaker line-up draws from major Canadian and global employers, including:
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Erin Gordon, VP HR at Lindt & Sprüngli Canada
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Carina Vassilieva, CHRO at Apotex
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Abhishek Sarathy, Associate VP, DIB at Canadian Tire Corporation
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Kalifa Oliver, Global Director of EX Analytics Strategy at Ford Motor Company.
The main theme of the festival is the issues dominating HR planning for 2026: AI implementation and ethics, leadership at the top, legal risk and compliance, workforce planning under hiring freezes, wellbeing tied to hard metrics such as retention and absenteeism, and total rewards.
On AI, the sessions will confront the uncomfortable question of "which HR roles AI is quietly reshaping."
This is one HR spectacle you can’t miss. Secure your slots today!
