No Boring Slide Decks: How Connect LDN Won 'Best Event 2026'

We have some exciting news to share. DTC Live has officially taken home the award for Best Event at the UK Agency Awards 2026 for our Connect LDN gathering in March 2026.

While a trophy is always a great milestone, this win is not really about us. It belongs to you, the fast-growing founders, operators, and partners who show up to our spaces ready to share, learn, and build.

In an industry flooded with mega-conferences, winning this award proves that there is a massive, undeniable appetite for spaces built unapologetically for brands. Here is a look at why this win matters for our community, what makes our Connect events different, and what it means for the future.

Why This Matters

If you have been with us for a while, you know where we came from. We started DTC Live because so many eCommerce events promised high-level strategy and delivered long, dry lectures and disguised sales pitches instead.

This award is a sign that our approach is resonating. For our community of brand leaders, it means we will keep holding ourselves to the same standard. Every time you step into a DTC Live event, the aim is the same: an environment free of fluff, full of active decision-makers, and curated to protect your time. You are part of a community that is constantly demanding better, and we are committed to delivering exactly that.

So what makes Connect different?

Putting on an event for hundreds of founders and operators is usually a job for a big, specialist agency. We ran Connect LDN ourselves, with a core team of just five people.

What we think made the difference is pretty simple: we skipped the usual conference playbook and built the whole day around actionable insights and real human connection. Three things shape every Connect:

• We protect the room. Tickets are free for brands, because this is for them. We're not chasing ticket sales, so instead we carefully curate the guest list. By keeping it focused on founders and operational heads, every conversation over coffee carries genuine commercial value.
• We keep the talks short and real. The day is built around short, snappy, 10-to-20-minute panels. Our speakers are open about the real problems and the real solutions, sharing their actual blueprints.
• We make business feel human. Networking should not feel like a chore. To break down stiff corporate barriers, we bring in entertainment like a live caricaturist or poet alongside great food and cocktails. It lets people drop their guard and build real peer-to-peer friendships outside the boardroom.

A few thank yous

Executing at this level takes an entire ecosystem.

To our speaker lineup: thank you for taking the stage, sharing real tactics, and engaging in honest conversations. That is the true spirit of this community.

To our vetted technology partners: thank you for understanding the assignment. You supported the event to build long-term relationships and solve real problems, rather than chasing fleeting introductions.

And finally, to our small but mighty internal team who mapped the strategy, hosted the stage, and ran the floor, your dedication to the brand experience is what makes DTC Live the gold standard.

Join Us

We're bringing the exact same energy into 2027, with more events and new locations on the way. If you are a scale-hungry brand looking for actionable insights that change the way you think about eCommerce, you'll want to be in the room.

Here's how to stay close:

1. Subscribe to the newsletter. Sign up here to keep up to date with everything we've got coming in 2027, plus actionable strategies, industry news, and first access to early-bird tickets.
2. Join the Slack community. Come and join us here to get personal invites to our smaller, more intimate events, trade notes with other brands, and stay in the loop on everything happening.