IT Arena 2024 brought together more than 100 speakers and over 5,500 attendees from 30 countries, including startup founders, tech executives, developers, marketers, journalists, and more. This record-breaking turnout marks the highest attendance in IT Arena’s 11-year history. The event was dedicated to the theme of New Dawn, symbolizing a new phase in technology development. The key topics discussed included AI technologies, cybersecurity, and defense tech.

For the second time, IT Arena was held across three historic locations in downtown Lviv: the Lviv National Opera, the Maria Zankovetska Drama Theatre, and the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum. In the Opera’s Mirror Hall, the Lviv IT Cluster Executive Lounge hosted founders, CEOs, and business owners for private discussions and press events. On the third day, participants had the option to attend meetups at some of the city’s top restaurants and pubs.

Across all venues, attendees explored over 120 booths from various tech companies and startups, where they could learn about products, engage in interactive activities, and win prizes. Attendees had a chance to use the IT Arena app to navigate the agenda and venues.

IT Arena marked its tenth anniversary, honoring the past decade of technological advancements. The event united 3364 attendees from more than 30 countries, over 100 speakers, and an equal number of media representatives from around the world and Ukraine. In 2023, IT Arena featured 50 meetups in the city’s top restaurants and pubs, and historical venues with heightened security measures.

In recent years, despite all the challenges posed by the pandemic and full-scale war, IT Arena has not only persevered but also outgrown its previous venue, the Arena Lviv Stadium. This year, the conference stunned guests with new locations in three historical buildings in the heart of Lviv.

Despite the ongoing war, IT Arena 2022 took place in Lviv. On September 30-October 1, the event brought together tech professionals, government officials, cybersecurity and digitalization experts and representatives of the country’s two biggest charity funds to support Ukraine in these uncertain times and lay the foundation for rebuilding the country after the victory. Due to safety concerns, IT Arena 2022 scaled down and was visited by up to 1,000 attendees. The international media presence at IT Arena 2022 included The Economist, TNW, Spider’s Web and others. The event took place in two locations in Lviv – a former glass factory revitalized into a creative space !FEST Republic and Lviv National Opera.

The eighth edition of IT Arena took place on October 7-9, 2021. This time, the event took place in a new hybrid format, combining the best of online and offline events, providing participants a chance to connect from any place in the world and visit meetups and afterparties. In total, IT Arena 2021 united 5345 attendees from all over the world. 172 companies have used the platform’s B2B matchmaking opportunities. During the online part, online access to IT Arena platform for two devices, a desktop platform and a mobile app, allowed to switch between the conference talks, ask questions to speakers, and network with other participants. And the offline part of IT Arena united attendees at a great number of offline events and meetups, boosting the power of in-person communication and networking.

October 8-10, 2020 marked the seventh edition of IT Arena. This time, following the ongoing pandemic and travel restrictions, the event took place in a new digital format: providing participants with a safe virtual experience and a chance to connect from any place in the world. In total, IT Arena 2020 united 4076 online attendees tuning in from 28 countries. 93 companies have used the platform’s B2B matchmaking opportunities. All participants could simultaneously access the event from two devices. The mobile and desktop mediums allowed conveniently switching between the conference talks, asking questions to speakers, and networking with other participants. IT Arena 2020 revolved around the theme of the speed of change, raising a question to all participants ‘Are we ready to embrace changes and withstand new challenges?

On September 27-29, 2019 IT Arena united 3816 attendees from over 30 countries to discuss products, businesses, startups, and technologies that might be used with a harmful aim such as hacking, spying, data theft, and information manipulation. This year the conference was held under an ambitious motto “The Humanity of Technology”, which aimed to draw attention to how we, humans, can influence the world of technology on a daily basis. The total of 91 speakers, including representatives from Microsoft, Spotify, Audi, UiPath, Uber Freight, The Number 1 Agency attended the event.

IT Arena is growing! 2018 marked the 5th anniversary of the conference – a benchmark not all tech events make through. On September 28-30, 2018 IT Arena brought together a record number of attendees – over 3300. The conference program was divided into 4 tracks: business, technology, product, and startup to cover the key aspects of the IT industry. 100 top experts from global companies, including Facebook, Tesla, Google, eBay, Samsung, etc. shared their experience from IT Arena stage.

The 4th edition of IT Arena gathered the biggest number of attendees yet – 2300+. In 2017, the conference has traditionally focused on 3 thematic tracks (product, technology, and business), and united speakers from the world’s leading companies, top management of Ukrainian and foreign IT companies, local and international media representatives, investors, startups, and tech experts.

Launched in 2014 as a local event, IT Arena has quickly grown as one of the biggest tech conferences in Eastern Europe. In 2016 nearly 1800 participants, including developers, entrepreneurs, business analysts, designers and startuppers from 12 countries and almost every region of Ukraine have united to discuss the latest tech tendencies. Representatives of some of the world leading companies were included in the conference lineup: IBM, Philips, AlmazCapital, Twitter, Spotify, Uber, Microsoft etc.

The second IT Arena, held on October 2-4 2015, brought together about 1400 participants including hundreds of IT professionals, top managers, designers, investors, entrepreneurs and startuppers. The number of the attendees exceeded the expectations of organizers – the conference almost doubled in size compared to 2014.
In 2015, the conference consisted of 3 simultaneous streams: Product, Technology and Business. Attendees could visit discussions conducted in English, Ukrainian or Russian and listen to speakers coming from 10 countries (USA, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Estonia, Russia, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine). The selection of speakers was decent and included representatives from IBM Design, Amazon, FitBit, Epson, Facebook, SAP, HP, Petcube and Microsoft.

The first IT Arena took place on October 2-4 2014. Being a meeting ground for 800 participants, including IT professionals from all directions (software engineers, designers, QAs), CEOs, young entrepreneurs and startups the conference became the biggest tech event in Western Europe.