Sheffield Innovation Spine launch the city’s first Open Doors Innovation Festival
Updated: 2 days ago
A city-wide festival for curious people to experience Sheffield's urban innovation district on 20 October 2026.
What: Open Doors Innovation Festival
When: Tuesday 20 October 2026, 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM
Where: Across seven innovation venues along Sheffield Innovation Spine
Admission: Free, open to all
Action: Download the official Spine Guide App to navigate the interactive Open Doors route and join the trail
The official fringe partner to TECH SY’s Northern Tech Summit on 21-22 October 2026, Sheffield Innovation Spine have launched the first Open Doors Innovation Festival for anyone interested in local tech and innovation, taking place the day before the summit.
Sheffield is opening its doors to the public for a city-centre-wide festival celebrating the groundbreaking ideas, technology, and people shaping the region’s future.
On Tuesday 20 October 2026, the inaugural Open Doors Innovation Festival will officially launch across Sheffield Innovation Spine, giving residents, students, visitors, and workers behind-the-scenes access to the city centre’s specialist innovation spaces and the people that bring them to life.
Functioning much like a classic 'Open Studios' or 'Open Gardens' event, Open Doors invites people with curious minds to step inside seven landmark venues. Visitors will meet the scientists, student entrepreneurs, technical experts, and deep-tech founders solving real-world challenges right here in South Yorkshire.
A Trail of Immersive Experiences and Hands-On Demos
Throughout the day, participants can follow an interactive walking route using the official event app, unlocking exclusive stories from Sheffield’s innovators and collecting leaderboard points along the way. Venue highlights include:
Sheffield Hallam University (Strines Building): Step inside the 360-degree 'Igloo' immersive environment to experience place-inspired films, and tour the 144-camera photogrammetry suite used to create 3D models for gaming, fashion, and biomechanics.
Electric Works: Meet local tech entrepreneurs and business advisers—and experience the venue’s famous three-storey helter-skelter slide, known locally as "7 seconds of pure exhilaration".
Sheffield Technology Parks (Cooper Building): Try out live inventions in the tech incubator and explore labs housing early-stage startups.
Royal Academy of Engineering (UKSE Innovation Centre): Meet Dr Rachel Smith, Senior Enterprise Manager, to learn how national engineering networks support local innovators building global, green and growing businesses.
University of Sheffield (Ella Armitage & Engineering Heartspace): Explore the Emerge Startup Studio product showcase, step inside the Siemens Digital Innovation Zone "living lab," and help test next-generation products spinning out of the university.
Pennine Five: Tour deep-tech labs, get live product demos from scale-ups like Exciting Instruments and FourJaw, record a Vox Pop in the podcast studio, and take in panoramic city views from the top of Block One.
To take part, visitors are encouraged to download the Spine Guide app ahead of time and navigate to ‘Open Doors’ - updating it to access the latest version when using it on 20 October.
The app serves as a digital guide, offering location-based unlockable content and a selection of new, previously unheard, founder stories. As explorers move along the Spine trail, they can "tap" in at venue checkpoints to earn points, unlock hidden content, and compete with friends on the festival leaderboard.
Leaderboard entrants aged over 16 can ‘opt in’ and enter into a prize draw with the chance to win a £100 city centre gift card donated by Sheffield Business Improvement District (BID). The gift card can be used in Sheffield city centre hospitality venues and retail stores.
How to Get Involved
Open Doors is free, fully accessible, and open to everyone. To join the event on Tuesday 20 October, download the app today for Android or register your interest for iOS by visiting https://www.sheffieldinnovationspine.com/open-doors.
South Yorkshire’s tech and startup sector is worth £3.7 billion having grown 15x bigger over the past decade, with over 1,000 companies employing nearly 23,000 people. The region is pioneering new technologies in advanced manufacturing, health, energy, transportation and climate tech, with successful spinouts emerging from our university research and alumni.
TECH SY has been reporting on and championing tech in the region for two years, supporting founders directly through pilot programmes, and working with collaborators like the Sheffield Innovation Spine to help build a strong, connected tech community. South Yorkshire was ranked as the UK’s top Rising Star this year by Dealroom’s Global Tech Ecosystem Index, so the Open Doors festival celebrates Sheffield as a growing hub of innovation and showcases some of the stories and people behind the figures.
Tracey Johnson, Project Director of TECH SY, said:
"TECH SY have been collaborating with the Sheffield Innovation Spine since the project’s inception, so we’re excited to support their Open Doors Innovation Festival in the city ahead of our Northern Tech Summit.
We hope this exciting week of activity in Sheffield will showcase the game-changing tech talent we have in South Yorkshire, make innovation open to everyone, and inspire the next generation of startups and problem-solvers.”
Tom Wolfenden, CEO of Sheffield Technology Parks, said:
"Sheffield Innovation Spine is a hot spot for well-paid jobs, opportunity and collaboration in the centre of Sheffield. Open Doors on 20 October will give people, who until now, might not know much about what happens here, the opportunity to peek inside and learn more about our founders, problem solvers, and the wider innovation community.
“This type of event is important because the Spine is a place where people live, work and visit and it’s important that communities across the city understand that it belongs to them and that it can create real value for our city, by stimulating investment, new developments and job opportunities.
“The Spine is a live urban innovation district - celebrating people doing incredible things and we are excited to be working with venues across the city to open up spaces and share what we’re doing with curious residents, students, workers and visitors. Download the app and follow the route of the Spine on 20 October - come on in!”
Spanning 190 acres across five mixed-use neighbourhoods, Sheffield Innovation Spine, the city centre's energised urban innovation district, is home to university spinouts, scaling tech firms, and specialist workspaces.
Sheffield Innovation Spine is the official fringe partner for TECH SY’s Northern Tech Summit, and Open Doors is a Northern Tech Summit Fringe event. TECH SY is working with local authorities, universities, founders, funders and wider partners to scale up the tech ecosystem in South Yorkshire. TECH SY is funded by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority and delivered through Barnsley Council, home of the UK’s first Tech Town.
Open Doors is delivered through a unique collaboration between organisations, communities and venues with a shared purpose; to champion inclusive innovation, inspire and connect people with opportunities across Sheffield’s urban innovation district. It is delivered by TECH SY, University of Sheffield, Business Sheffield, Electric Works, Sheffield Hallam University, Emerge, Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub, Pennine Five, Sheffield Technology Parks, Llama Digital and convened by Sheffield Innovation Spine.
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