NOVEMBER 23-27, 2026
London Search Week
London Search Week is coming back.
Following the success of the first edition, we’re already planning next year’s programme and are now accepting event proposals and sponsorship applications for a week packed with search, AI, and information retrieval events across the city.
Interested in running an event, contributing an idea, or supporting the initiative? Get in touch — we’d love to build it together.
Scheduled Events
MON 23RD NOVEMBER
- 6:00 – 9:00 PM London Information Retrieval & AI Meetup
Details coming soon…
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A free evening event aimed at enthusiasts and professionals curious to explore and discuss the latest trends in the field. The event will be structured around 3 technical talks, each followed by a Q&A session, and will end with a networking session.
FIRST TALK
Using Tensor and Rank Profile Math to Combine Dense and Sparse Signals
Radu Gheorghe | Software Engineer @ Vespa.ai
From Infection Prevention to Knowledge Extraction: Showcasing Information Retrieval in the Medical Domain
Gregor Donabauer | PhD student and Research Officer @University of Regensburg
Professional Search in the Age of Large Language Models
Samy Ateia | PhD student @University of Regensburg + Freelance Software Engineer
TUE 24TH NOVEMBER
- 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Search Solutions – Tutorial Day
Details coming soon…
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Full-day tutorial
FIRST PART
Lexical, Dense and Sparse Vector Search with Vespa.ai
Radu Gheorghe | Software Engineer @ Vespa.ai
SECOND PART
Search Quality Evaluation in the Era of LLMs and Vector Search
Alessandro Benedetti | Director @ Sease
THIRD PART
What Does it Really Mean to Add GenAI to Open Source Enterprise Search?
Cédric Ulmer | CEO @France Labs
WED 25TH NOVEMBER
- 09:30 AM – 9:00 PM Search Solutions – Conference Day
Details coming soon…
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Search Solutions is the premier UK forum for the presentation of the latest innovations in search and information retrieval.
Session 1: Evaluation
10:00am – Alessandro Benedetti (Sease) “Search Quality Evaluation in the Era of Large Language Models: Dataset Generator”
10:20am – Gianna Cipponeri “Evaluating Citation Quality and Context Faithfulness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Product-Specific Framework”
10:40am – Panel questions and answers
Session 2: Focus on the User
11:15am – Orland Hoeber (University of Regina) “Support Human Intelligence – An Alternative to Retrieval Augmented Generation in Academic Digital Library Search”
11:35am – Mark Harwood (Ex Elastic Developer) “Plasticine Not Porcelain: Shaping Embeddings Through Interactive Clustering”
11:55am – 5 Stephann Makri and Andrew MacFarlane (City St. George’s, University of London) “The Internet is Hard. Is Words”: Investigating Information Difficulties Experienced by People with Aphasia and Strategies for Combatting them”
12:15pm – Panel questions and answers
Session 3: Search Effectiveness
1:30pm – Sean MacAvaney (University of Glasgow) “Re-Thinking Re-Ranking”
1:50pm – Cedric Ulmer (France Labs) “Adding GenAI to Datafari Community Edition – what and why”
2:10pm – Panel questions and answers
Session 4: Professional Search
2:45pm – Adam Roegiest (Zuva) “Information Retrieval Evaluation in the Real-World: A Legal Tech Perspective”
3:05pm – Jon Brassey (Trip Database) “Harnessing AI for Faster, Smarter Clinical Decision Support: The Evolution of Trip Database”
3:25pm – Marianne Lykke (Aalborg University) “Role of metadata and taxonomies in professional contexts”
3:45pm – Panel questions and answers
4:30pm – Panel session
5:15pm – BCS Search Industry Awards
6:00pm – AGM (free to attend)
THU 26TH NOVEMBER
Details coming soon…
FRI 27TH NOVEMBER
Details coming soon…
Event Organizers & Sponsors
The London search week events would not be possible without the efforts of these professionals and organizations.