Guidance for main stage session ideas
For the first time, we are inviting organisations from across the sector to submit ideas for main stage sessions at NHS Health and Care Expo 2027.
NHS Health and Care Expo is introducing a Festival of Ideas as the heart of its main stage programme. This is a deliberate, significant shift in ambition, and it matters that you understand why.
Traditionally, the main stage sessions at our conference have been led by policy updates, populated by familiar faces. Delegates leave updated and informed but not always challenged.
The Festival of Ideas sets out to change the status quo. Its purpose is to create sessions that make people lean forward in their seats. These are sessions built around uncomfortable questions, unexpected voices, genuine disagreement, and thinking that lands beyond the NHS.
This does not mean abandoning relevance or practicality. Every session should leave delegates with something they can do back in their own organisations, but the path there runs through provocation, not just policy.
The single most important question to hold in your mind:
"If a thoughtful person with no professional connection to the NHS stumbled into this session, would they find it worth staying for?"
We have a limited number of main stage sessions across the two days, and want to make each of these as impactful as possible. For that reason, we want to know what you'd like to hear. You have until 15 January 2027 at 5pm to submit any ideas to us.
To submit your idea, please read the details below and then fill out our form.
Please note that there is no expectation you would contribute to developing and delivering this session if the idea is progressed. However, you can let us know if you'd be willing to be involved via the form you complete.
Please also note:
- We are running an open call out to the sector to develop and deliver 40-minute panel sessions in smaller rooms (ranging from 130 to 300 delegate capacity). This submission process is also open until 15 January at 5pm. If you want to design and deliver your own session (as opposed to submitting an idea), more information to apply via this route can be found in our guidance for policy discussion and good practice sharing submissions.
- This call for ideas is not intended for commercial organisations or organisations with a large turnover.[1] We have a range of sponsored packages available if you are interested in being involved in the NHS Health and Care Expo 2027 programme. Please contact our Partnerships and Sponsorship team via supporters@thenhsalliance.org for more details.
What we're looking for
This guidance is specifically for main stage sessions at NHS Health and Care Expo 2027. Other session formats will be commissioned via other routes.
The Festival of Ideas is a set of principles that should shape every decision throughout a session's development, from who is invited to speak, to what question is being discussed, to how the 40-minute slot is structured.
Start with a provocation, not a topic
The session should be built around an uncomfortable truth, a genuine dilemma, or a contested assumption, not a subject area. "Women's health" is a topic. "Why is women's health easy to praise and hard to fund?" is a provocation.
Ask yourself: what is the thing that people in this sector quietly believe but rarely say out loud? That's your starting point.
Every session needs a 'so what?' beyond the NHS
The session should have something to say to someone who doesn't work in health. Not because we are trying to attract a general audience, but because the best ideas are the ones that connect NHS challenges to wider societal questions.
If your idea is only relevant to NHS insiders, it probably isn't a Festival of Ideas session yet.
Someone must be willing to disagree
Consensus panels are the enemy of interesting sessions. Every Festival of Ideas session needs a voice that will genuinely push back, challenge the dominant view, or represent an uncomfortable counter-position.
Format follows content
A panel discussion is only one option among many. Think about whether a structured debate, a fireside chat or ask me anything, a deliberative exercise, a live challenge format, or a performance followed by discussion would serve your idea better.
Whatever format you suggest, explain why it is the right container for the conversation you want to see.
The audience is not an afterthought
Think about how the audience can be part of the session, not just recipients of it. Live polls, deliberation exercises, voting - any of these can work. What will not work is treating Q&A as an add-on at the end.
Speakers
For the Festival of Ideas, we expect to see speakers that move beyond typical healthcare conference voices. An ideal session would include a mix of:
- An NHS or healthcare voice – clinicians, managers or system leaders – bearing in mind diversity of role, seniority and geography
- Leaders from beyond the NHS – for example from tech, business, academia, arts, local government or non-health-related charities
- International or wildcard speakers – people who will say things that NHS audiences genuinely haven't heard before
We want to see ideas where speakers are likely to disagree with each other, bring new perspectives and have a genuine debate.
[1] The NHS Health and Care Expo team classes large turnover as over £50 million for charities, and over £10 million for social enterprises. This call for submissions is not intended for companies; any submissions from commercials will be redirected to the NHS Alliance’s Partnerships and Sponsorship colleagues to discuss sponsored opportunities to deliver content.