Inside AU 2026: Session Highlights
There’s a lot happening at AU 2026, with hundreds of sessions, hands-on experiences, and new ways to learn packed into three days. We’ve pulled together some highlights to help you make the most of your time, from the latest Autodesk announcements and ideas you can put into practice to deeper dives into your industry and opportunities to connect with others. From keynotes and industry sessions to summits, meetups, and interactive experiences, here are a few things to put on your AU 2026 radar.
Day 1 Keynote
What if every person, team, and project had more capacity to deliver? Join Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost and CTO Raji Arasu in our Day 1 keynote, to discover how Autodesk is helping customers move faster, reduce repetitive work, improve predictability, and unlock new value across design, make, and operate.
Through live demonstrations, you'll see how Autodesk AI and Industry Clouds are helping individuals work smarter, teams collaborate more effectively, and organizations turn ideas into outcomes with greater speed and confidence. The keynote will also feature fireside chat between Andrew Anagnost and Clara Shih, founder of the New Work Foundation and a pioneering technology leader. Drawing on her experience leading AI initiatives at Salesforce and Meta, Clara will share insights on how agentic AI is transforming the way organizations work and how businesses can unlock new capacity by combining human expertise with AI.
Day 2 Keynote
Hear from Autodesk’s industry leaders in our Day 2 Keynote, as they bring Autodesk’s AI into sharper focus through the lens of your industries: design and manufacturing; architecture, engineering, construction; operations; and media and entertainment. Learn how the capabilities introduced on Day 1 translate into real-world productivity gains, more connected workflows, and new opportunities for you to create and build more.
Innovators Stage
Step into the Innovators Stage, where industry leaders, Autodesk experts, and innovators bring big ideas to life through sessions that go beyond the traditional presentation. Expect live debates, game shows, design competitions, audience polls, comedy, and lively conversations on AI, digital transformation, connected workflows, digital twins, and the future of Design and Make. Come to learn, compete, laugh, and get inspired while being part of the action.
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Expert Elite Sessions
Learn from Autodesk Expert Elites who bring deep product knowledge, technical expertise, and real-world experience to AU. These sessions span Revit, Civil 3D, Forma, Inventor, Fusion, AI, automation, XR, and more, with practical approaches shaped by the challenges experts encounter every day. Explore everything from advanced modeling and smarter asset strategies to AI-powered automation, immersive workflows, APIs, and connected data. Expert Elite Sessions are a chance to pick up proven techniques, discover new approaches, and learn directly from some of our most experienced product users.
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Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC)
Get an inside look at what’s next for AEC at AU 2026, from the vision and product roadmaps shaping the industry to hands-on experiences and expert-led summits. Hear from Autodesk leaders and product experts across Architecture, Civil Infrastructure, Water, MEP, Structures, AutoCAD, and Informed Design. Go deeper into Forma with sessions covering Data Management, Model Management, Preconstruction, Cost Management, and Forma Build, or zoom out with the AECO Vision & Strategy session for a broader view of where the industry is headed and some exciting product announcements. You can also go deeper at the Industrialized Construction Summit, with four sessions on bringing manufacturing principles into the built environment, or the Forma CS Summit, featuring customer experiences and practical insights you can bring back to your own projects and teams.
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Design and Manufacturing (D&M)
Discover how Fusion is evolving across design, manufacturing, AI, and connected product development. Product leaders will share the Fusion roadmap, including Autodesk Assistant and the role intelligent automation could play in how products are designed and made. Additionally, we recommend these two sessions: Prompting for Fusion gets practical with AI, covering prompting techniques that can accelerate scripting and add-in creation, while AI-Connected Workflows explores how Fusion, Claude, and MCP can work together to support more connected workflows across design, automation, documentation, and product development. At the PLM Summit, companies including Overhead Door, Humanetics, and Faith Technologies will share how they’re connecting data and processes to speed time to market, modernize change management, improve collaboration, and create a digital thread that can grow with the business.
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Media & Entertainment (M&E)
Stay ahead of changing creative workflows with sessions that get into the tools and techniques shaping 3D. The featured sessions below explore how artists are building universal pipeline assets with USD in Maya, combining Maya and Flow Studio for gameplay animation, creating AI-driven content for Maya and Revit, and experimenting with emerging techniques like Gaussian Splats in 3ds Max.
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Enroll in M&E meetup
Operations
Learn how Autodesk Operations is bringing design, make, and operate closer together at AU 2026. During the Day 2 Keynote, Stephen Hooper, Senior Vice President of Autodesk Operations, will share the vision behind Autodesk’s acquisition of MaintainX and what it means for customers, including how operational insight can inform decisions across the lifecycle. The Digital Factory Summit brings that vision into the real world, with Tesla sharing its approach to gigafactory development, industry leaders examining the role of digital twins in operations, and M2X Energy showing how FlexSim is helping move factory analysis beyond spreadsheets. Across additional Operations sessions, customers, practitioners, and Autodesk experts will share strategies for facilities, infrastructure, workplaces, manufacturing, and complex assets, with a focus on turning operational data into better maintenance, asset performance, visibility, reliability, and measurable business value.
Enroll for day 2 keynote
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Register for the Digital Factory Summit
Small Business
Running a small business? Make the most of your time at AU with more than 100 sessions, hands-on labs, meetups, and other experiences selected with small businesses in mind. At the Small Business Community Meetup, connect with independent creatives, studio owners, product builders, and designers to share experiences, exchange ideas, and build your network. You can also join one of three intimate Small Business Roundtables for Design & Manufacturing, AECO, or Media & Entertainment, where fewer than 50 attendees will have the chance for candid, two-way conversations with Autodesk leaders about what’s working, the challenges you’re facing, and what you’d like to see next.
Explore all AU for Small Business sessions
Sustainability
Learn how to turn sustainability goals into practical decisions across design, construction, and beyond. Explore how environmental performance can inform spatial decisions in Autodesk Forma, how teams can close carbon data gaps between design and preconstruction, and how design-to-make thinking is moving from the classroom to the jobsite. Explore practical strategies, technologies, and real-world approaches you can apply to drive more sustainable outcomes and visit the AU 2026 session catalog for the full lineup of sustainability-focused sessions.
Designing 3D Spaces using AI World Models
Go beyond the 2D outputs of today’s AI image and video models and explore how world models can enable richer 3D workflows. This session shows how World Labs’ Marble can create complete, visually rich 3D environments in minutes from just a handful of real images, concept sketches, 360 panoramas, or a 3D layout. You’ll see workflows that combine AI image models with Marble to rapidly build, edit, and visualize 3D worlds, along with ways to export the resulting 3D Gaussian splat files into other tools for further iteration.
Meetups
Make new connections at casual meetups built around the people, topics, and communities that bring AU together. Connect with peers around product and industry meetups spanning design and manufacturing, Revit, and more. Explore shared interests like sustainability and XR, or find your community through gatherings for first-time AU attendees, the Autodesk Women’s Network, Expert Elites, and other community groups. Come ready to exchange ideas, share experiences, and meet people who care about the same things you do.
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Start planning your AU agenda
This is just a starting point. With 500+ sessions spanning industries, roles, technologies, and interests, there are plenty of ways to shape an AU experience around what matters most to you. Build your agenda with the ideas you want to explore, the skills you want to strengthen, and the people you want to meet, and leave some room for the conversations and discoveries you didn’t plan for.
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