The BIO International Convention is widely recognized as the world’s largest biotechnology event — a gathering of thousands of companies, researchers, investors, and patient advocates from across the global life sciences community. For many, BIO is synonymous with its partnering system, where tens of thousands of one-on-one meetings between pharmaceutical companies and biotech developers drive licensing deals and co-development agreements. But a significant and often underappreciated dimension of the convention is the range of experiences that are open to every registered attendee, regardless of registration tier — programs and environments that offer access to the energy, innovation, and conversations that define what BIO is.
In 2026, BIO has organized a set of flagship experiences that any attendee can explore, discover, and participate in throughout the convention. From the main Exhibition floor to early-stage company showcases, live storytelling sessions, and bioprocess-focused programming, these open experiences collectively offer a comprehensive view of where biotech is headed and who is driving it forward.
Why Open-Access Experiences Matter at BIO
Large scientific and industry conventions can be stratified environments — where premium access tiers determine who gets into which sessions, which networking events, and which corners of the program. BIO 2026 has deliberately structured a set of its most dynamic programming to be available to all registered attendees, creating a shared floor where a first-year graduate student, a startup founder, a pharma business development executive, and a patient advocate can find themselves in the same space, encountering the same ideas and the same companies.
This open structure reflects a core conviction of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization: that the conversations and connections most likely to drive biotech forward are not always the ones that happen in closed partnering suites. Sometimes they happen at an exhibition booth, during a startup pitch, or while listening to a patient tell their story on an open stage. Making these experiences universally accessible ensures that the breadth of the BIO community — and the breadth of biotech itself — is represented in the convention’s most visible programming.
The Exhibition
The BIO 2026 Exhibition is the physical heart of the convention — a sprawling floor where companies of every size and type, from global pharmaceutical leaders to early-stage biotechs to research tool providers, present their technologies, products, and programs to the attending community.
The Exhibition is open to all registered attendees and offers one of the most efficient ways to survey the breadth of the biotech landscape in a short period of time. Walking the floor provides exposure to the full range of what the industry is working on — novel therapeutic modalities, platform technologies, analytical instruments, contract manufacturing services, digital health tools, and much more — across disease areas and scientific disciplines.
For attendees seeking specific connections, the Exhibition also serves as an informal networking environment where conversations with company representatives can lead to collaborations, partnerships, and relationships that extend well beyond the convention itself.
Exhibition Reception
The Exhibition Reception extends the energy of the Exhibition floor into a dedicated networking occasion — providing a structured social context for the informal conversations and connections that define the BIO experience. Open to all attendees, the reception brings together the full diversity of the BIO community in the Exhibition environment, creating an opportunity to connect with companies and colleagues in a more relaxed setting than the formal convention programming allows.
For attendees who find that the most productive conversations at large conferences happen away from scheduled sessions, the Exhibition Reception is one of BIO 2026’s most valuable open-access offerings.
Company Presentations
The Company Presentations program gives biotechnology and life science companies a dedicated platform to present their science, pipeline, and business strategy to an audience of potential partners, investors, collaborators, and peers. Presentations are open to all attendees and span a wide range of company stages, from early-stage biotechs presenting their platform technologies for the first time to established companies announcing new programs or partnership opportunities.
For attendees evaluating the landscape of a specific therapeutic area, technology platform, or disease focus, the Company Presentations program offers a curated, time-efficient way to hear directly from the companies driving progress in those areas. For presenting companies, it represents an opportunity to build visibility and generate awareness among the broad BIO 2026 audience in a way that complements their one-on-one partnering meetings.
Global Innovation Hubs
The Global Innovation Hubs bring together regional biotech ecosystems from around the world, showcasing the geographic diversity of innovation that defines the global biotech industry. National and regional delegations — representing biotechnology clusters from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond — present their local ecosystems, highlight their most promising companies, and create connections between local innovation and global capital, partnerships, and markets.
For attendees interested in international collaboration, technology licensing across borders, or simply understanding where biotech innovation is emerging globally, the Global Innovation Hubs offer an unparalleled concentrated view of the world’s biotech geography in a single convention space. The hubs are open to all attendees and represent one of the most internationally minded components of the BIO 2026 program.
Start-Up Stadium
Start-Up Stadium is one of the most high-energy and forward-looking experiences at BIO 2026 — a dedicated showcase for early-stage biotechnology companies that are presenting their science and vision to an audience that includes investors, potential partners, and industry observers looking for the next wave of biotech innovation.
The format combines structured company presentations with the informality of a live pitch environment, creating a setting where the conviction and scientific clarity of a founding team can be as compelling as the stage of their pipeline. Companies selected for Start-Up Stadium are at various stages of early development — from pre-clinical platform companies to seed-stage therapeutics developers — and the range of therapeutic modalities, target areas, and technological approaches represented reflects the breadth of where new biotech formation is happening.
For attendees — whether investors, pharma business developers, academic scientists, or fellow entrepreneurs — Start-Up Stadium offers early visibility into companies and technologies that may not yet have generated public attention but are building toward meaningful scientific and commercial impact. Open to all registered attendees, it is one of the places at BIO 2026 where the most future-oriented conversations are most likely to start.
Storytelling Stage
The Storytelling Stage at Booth #3035 is perhaps the most distinctive of BIO 2026’s open-access experiences — and the one most directly connected to the human stakes of what the biotech industry does. Unlike the Exhibition, the Company Presentations, or Start-Up Stadium, the Storytelling Stage is not primarily about science or business. It is about people.
Across three days of programming — June 22, 23, and 24 — the Storytelling Stage brings together patients, caregivers, advocates, founders, researchers, and community leaders to share the stories that give the biotech industry its purpose. Sessions cover rare disease families navigating diagnostic odysseys, founders recounting the obstacles that nearly ended the companies that now serve underserved patients, advocates representing communities that biotech has historically overlooked, and researchers describing the moments when a scientific discovery changed the trajectory of a disease.
The Storytelling Stage is a deliberate reminder, in the middle of a convention that runs on deal flow and data, that at the center of every pipeline, every partnership, and every regulatory filing, there is a patient waiting. Open to all attendees with no additional registration or ticketing required, it invites anyone walking the convention floor to sit down for twenty minutes and reconnect with the reason the work matters.
BioProcess Theater
The BioProcess Theater brings focused, application-specific programming to attendees working in biomanufacturing, process development, and the operational science that underlies therapeutic production. Sessions cover the latest advances in upstream and downstream bioprocessing — including cell culture optimization, purification platform development, analytical characterization of biologics, and the integration of continuous manufacturing approaches — in a theater-style format that is open to all convention attendees.
For scientists and engineers working in contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), biopharmaceutical development teams, and bioprocessing technology companies, the BioProcess Theater offers relevant, technically substantive programming that complements the broader convention agenda. It represents the operationally focused side of the biotech ecosystem — the science and engineering required to translate biological discoveries into medicines that can be manufactured reliably at scale.
Double Helix and Helix Sponsors
BIO 2026’s open-access experiences are made possible in part through the support of the convention’s premier sponsors — organizations that share BIO’s commitment to advancing biotechnology and the patients it serves.
Double Helix Sponsors for BIO 2026 include Amgen, Eli Lilly, Genentech, Merck, Sanofi, and VWR Part of Avantor — six of the most significant organizations in the global pharmaceutical and life sciences supply landscape. Helix Sponsors include Boehringer Ingelheim and Novo Nordisk. The support of these organizations enables BIO to maintain the open-access programming that makes the convention’s most dynamic experiences available to every attendee, regardless of registration level.
Registration for BIO 2026
All of the experiences described above are accessible to every registered BIO 2026 attendee. Registration is available at three access levels — Basic, General, and Premier — with Basic Access providing entry to the Exhibition, Company Presentations, and Start-Up Stadium. BIO members receive significant savings on registration fees at all levels; for organizations not yet members, BIO membership offers a range of benefits that extend well beyond registration discounts.
BIO 2026 takes place June 22–25 in Boston, Massachusetts — one of the world’s foremost biotech hubs and an environment that extends the energy of the convention into a city whose own scientific and entrepreneurial ecosystem is deeply connected to the global biotech community that BIO convenes.
For researchers, clinicians, investors, entrepreneurs, patient advocates, and anyone with a stake in the future of biotechnology, the open-access experiences at BIO 2026 offer a point of entry into the conversations, companies, and ideas that are driving the industry forward — no premium access tier required.