Where AI Meets Learning: Inside Learning Technologies 2026 at ExCeL London

There are events you attend and events that attend to you. The Learning Technologies Exhibition & Conference 2026 at ExCeL London was, without question, the latter. I’ll be honest with you. I did not know entirely what to expect walking into ExCeL London for the Conference even though I had heard about the event, of course. You can’t spend any serious amount of time in L&D circles without hearing about it. But hearing about something and actually standing in the middle of it are two very different experiences.

This was my first time attending. And I was there not as a visitor, but as one of two AI coaches with the responsibility of answering any questions delegates might have regarding the AI apprenticeships on offer at The Tess Group, one of only 37 approved AI apprenticeship providers in the UK. Two exhibition halls, over 200 exhibitors and more than 15,000 L&D and HR professionals over two days. And right at the heart of nearly every conversation on that floor, artificial intelligence, what it actually means for people at work and what organisations need to do about it.

Let me tell you how it went.

The Venue: ExCeL London Does What It Says on the Tin

ExCeL London is a world-class facility and it showed. The scale of the venue is immediately striking and genuinely impressive. It does not try to be anything other than what it is, a large, well-run, professional space that knows how to handle events at scale. Two vast exhibition halls, laid out sensibly. Clear signage. Multiple seminar theatres running concurrently. Bitesize learning zones dotted across the floor. The kind of logistics that, when they work well, you barely notice.

What I did not quite anticipate was the atmosphere. There is something particular about being in a room, or in this case, two very large rooms where everyone present is there for the same reason. The same professional curiosity. The same set of questions. I did not feel like a newcomer trying to find my footing. I felt, very quickly, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The Organisation: Credit Where It’s Due

Running an event of this size well is not a given, so allow me to give credit where it’s genuinely due: the team behind the conference did an excellent job. Co-located with HR Technologies UK, the combined event attracted a huge footprint of visitors without ever feeling chaotic. Free seminars across ten-plus theatres ran to time. Exhibitor setup was smooth. Registration was painless.

As a first-time exhibitor, I was paying close attention to all of this. The briefing beforehand had been clear, our stand was ready when it needed to be, and by the time the doors opened on day one, there was nothing to figure out. We could just get on with the work. That might sound like a low bar. But anyone who has stood on an exhibition floor trying to solve a logistics problem while delegates are already walking past will tell you, it is not a low bar at all.

The People I Got to Work With

I want to talk about the team, because that was without a doubt one of the highlights of the whole experience for me.

I have spent enough time in professional environments to know the difference between people who are committed to a mission and people who are simply working for an organisation. Rod Doyle and Lisa O’Reilly, the directors of The Tess Group, are firmly in the first category. They have built something that has trained over 10,000 learners, holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 689 verified reviews, and delivers a 59% distinction rate against a national average of roughly 20%. Those figures do not come from a slick marketing strategy. They come from people who genuinely care whether the learning works.

Watching them on the stand was instructive in its own right. Rod and Lisa engaged every delegate, whether that person was clearly ready to engage or simply browsing, with the same quality of attention and the same genuine interest in their situation. No switching off between conversations. No going through the motions. That kind of consistency, maintained across a full day on your feet in a busy exhibition hall, tells you a great deal about who someone is.

My colleague Tajinder Singh was a pleasure to work alongside on day one. When you are sharing a booth, you need someone who reads the room, picks up conversations naturally and makes sure no visitor slips through the cracks without feeling properly attended to. Tajinder did all of that and did it without any fuss.

And then there is Kaley Bannister. I had to step away after day one due to family commitments and could not be there for day two. Kaley, our team lead, stepped in. Now, stepping into a fast-moving exhibition environment for the second day of a conference, holding the standard the team had set the day before, fielding questions from delegates you have not already warmed up, keeping the energy going, that is not a small thing. It requires confidence, preparation and the kind of quiet leadership that does not look for applause. Kaley delivered all of it. I am genuinely grateful and I think it says a lot about who she is.

The Questions People Were Actually Asking

I want to address something about AI conversations that I think is worth saying plainly. There is a version of the AI discussion that exists in conference keynotes and LinkedIn posts. Sweeping statements about the future of work, grand proclamations about transformation, lots of language that sounds impressive and commits to very little. That is not what was happening on the floor of Learning Technologies 2026, at least not with the people we were engaging with.

The people who came to our stand had practical questions. Real ones. How does the funding actually work? Does the Apprenticeship Levy cover this? Who in my organisation would be eligible? How long does it take? What do my people actually walk away with? These are the questions of someone who has a workforce to upskill, a budget to account for and a decision to make. I have a great deal of respect for that kind of directness.

So here are the honest answers. The AI & Automation Practitioner Level 4 Apprenticeship (ST1512) is a 15-month programme — deliverable in as little as 12 months with concentrated effort — fully funded through the Apprenticeship Levy up to £18,000 per learner. For organisations that do not pay the Levy, the government covers 95% of the cost. No coding required. Designed for early-to-mid-career professionals in any department, HR, Finance, Operations, Marketing, Administration. The lot.

The part that tends to stop people mid-conversation is the qualifications. Most providers deliver one qualification alongside the apprenticeship standard. The Tess Group embeds up to five. Yes, you read that right — five. The Microsoft AI Business Professional certification (AB-730), NCFE Level 3 certificates in Cyber Security and Data Analysis, an AI Prompt Engineering qualification and BCS certification from the British Computer Society. All fully funded. No hidden costs. No upgrade fees. When I explained that, the response was almost always a raised eyebrow followed by a genuine lean in. Every time.

We left day one with a number of warm leads, professionals who left their details and were looking forward to having further conversations with the team — another area where credit goes to Rod and Lisa. Those conversations did not feel transactional. They felt like the start of something. Which is exactly the point.

What I Saw Walking the Floor

When the pace at our stand allowed it, I made a point of getting out and walking the floor. I wanted to see what everyone else was doing. And I was not disappointed.

The range of solutions on display was remarkable. AI-powered learning experience platforms. Intelligent content authoring tools. Advanced learning management systems. Immersive simulations. Walking, talking and coffee-making robots, yes, actual robots. The kind of things that, if you had described them to an L&D professional a decade ago, would have sounded like science fiction. They were just there, on the floor, being demonstrated.

But here is what struck me more than any single piece of technology. AI is no longer a theme at the edges of the L&D conversation. It is the conversation. Every exhibitor, in one form or another, was either showing AI-enabled tools or helping organisations work out how to embed intelligent solutions into how their people learn and work. The question is no longer “Is AI relevant to us?” The question, the only question, really, is how fast you move and how well you prepare your people for the journey.

I spoke with people from financial services, healthcare, logistics, the public sector, higher education, consulting and more. Different industries, different pressures, different starting points. But the same underlying concern running through nearly every conversation: how do we build real AI capability across our people without it feeling like upheaval? This is not just a technology question. This is a learning and development question. And it is one our industry is finally in a position to answer properly.

A Personal Reflection

I have spent a long time in L&D. Designing it, delivering it, consulting on it, arguing for it to be taken seriously as a strategic function and not just a tick-box exercise. I have written about what it means to design learning that actually delivers value for a multi-generational workforce. I have coached leaders, developed curricula and sat across from senior executives trying to explain why activity is not the same thing as impact.

All of that history was very present for me on the floor at ExCeL. Because what I kept seeing, in booth after booth and conversation after conversation, was the thing I have always believed: that the gap between knowledge and application is where most learning initiatives fail. People know AI is important. Organisations know they need to respond. The challenge is translating that into something structured, credentialled, practical and sustained. Not a one-day workshop. Not a recorded webinar. Something that actually changes how people work.

That is why I believe so strongly in what we are doing at The Tess Group. This apprenticeship is not about awareness. It is not about giving people a badge to put on their email signature. It is a 15-month commitment through which learners build practical skills, apply them to real problems in their own organisation, and emerge genuinely more capable — not just more informed. There is a difference. A significant one.

Stepping further into the AI coaching and apprenticeship space has felt, to me, like a natural next chapter. Not a departure from what I have always done, but a deepening of it. The core question has not changed: how do you ensure that learning delivers real, measurable value to real people in real organisations? The context has just become more urgent. And frankly, more exciting.

The Future Is Not Waiting

I left ExCeL London energised in a way I had not entirely expected. Not just because of the scale of the event or the quality of the people I met, but because of what the whole thing confirmed. The organisations that will thrive in the years ahead are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones with people who know how to use AI well. That is a skills question. And skills questions have answers.

If you are an HR or L&D professional thinking about how to build genuine AI capability across your workforce — not just in your tech team, but in every department — then our AI apprenticeships are worth a serious look. If you’re weighing the Level 4 practitioner route against the Level 6 Machine Learning Engineer route, take the 15-question fit assessment. If you want to see what your existing levy budget will cover, the levy calculator takes two minutes.

If you are an individual who wants to build skills that are practical, recognised and immediately applicable to the work you are doing right now, it is worth a serious look. And if you are a senior leader trying to work out how your organisation moves from talking about AI to actually embedding it, you already know the answer. You just need the right support to get there.

Find out more at tessgroup.co.uk and if you’d like to talk it through directly, feel free to reach out via our contact details. We surely are looking forward to the conversation.

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