Startup & tech events in Chicago

27 events 10 this week

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The Chicago events worth planning around, at a glance.

US October 2026

October 2026

36 events

28 ClickHouse Chicago Meetup Group The Real-Time Roundup in Chicago 17:00 · Meetup
29 TechWalk | Chicago, 9/29 17:30 · Meetup NSCoder Night - Shipaton 2026 18:00 Women Founders & Creatives Happy Hour 18:30
30 Small Business Development Center (SBDC) On-Deck Pitch 10:00 · Pitch Fall 2026 Collaboratorium 17:00
1 Founder’s Therapy - Coffee Roundtable 09:00 · Meetup Business Acumen Series: Revenue & the Path to Profitability 10:00
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3 Chicago Neurodiverse Social Club Hack for Accessibility Hackathon (deadline 9/18) 08:30 · Hackathon
4 Chicago Founders Club Chicago Founders Run Club 09:00 · Meetup
Frontier CHI
5 Lunch and Learn with CEO of CCC Intelligent Solutions, Githesh Ramamurthy 12:00 · Meetup
6 Info Session: San Francisco VC Immersion Program 12:00 · Meetup Pizza with Polsky: College Student Programming Preview 17:00 BioTech Fermenter: Chicago's Biotechnology Meetup 18:30
7 Empathy: The Secret Weapon for Sales, Fundraising & Hiring w/ Mark Achler 09:00 · Workshop Mind the Product Chicago 2026 09:00 Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) Workshop: ETA @ Booth (Harper) 12:00 College New Venture Challenge (CNVC): Kickoff 17:00
8 Business Acumen: Build It Right - Operations, Systems and Scaling 10:00 · Workshop
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13 No. 76 Tech Pulse 2030- Chicago AI Founders Spotlight: Innovators Shaping the Future 16:30 · Meetup Google Agentic AI Builder Lab 17:30 AI Tinkerers Chicago: October Meetup ft. Antithesis 17:30 AI for Outlook + Lessons from creating an AI multimedia platform 17:30
14 Chicago Booth Angels Fall Pitch & Demo Day 2026 16:00 · Pitch
15 Founder’s Therapy - Coffee Roundtable 09:00 · Meetup Business Acumen: From Solo to Team - Hiring, HR and Managing People 10:00 Chicago AI Collective: AI Strategy & Happy Hour 17:30 1871 × Current × IHCC: Welcome to What’s Next 18:00
16 Chicago Frontier Hackathon: Build your Autonomous Code Factory 10:00 · Hackathon Grok Bot Meetup Chicago 17:30
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18 ChiBots the Chicago Area Robotics Group ChiBots October 2026 Meeting 13:00 · Meetup
SOCAP26: The Impact Economy Gathering
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20 Entrepreneurship Essentials (E2): AI Prototyping 101 with Cathy Kiriakos 12:00 · Workshop AI Collective Chicago - Fall Demo Night 🍂 17:30
21 Reinventing Industry: Future of Health 08:30 · Dinner
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24 Indie Video Game Developers Association IVGDA Chicago - Game Developers' Meetup 14:00 · Meetup
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27 Tiller: Structure, Gates, and State for Human + Agent Teams 18:00 · Meetup
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29 Founder’s Therapy - Coffee Roundtable 09:00 · Meetup Chicago, IL - Investor Ready Workshop 09:30 Business Acumen: B2B Growth - Finding Partners, Landing Contracts 10:00 Entrepreneurship Essentials (E2): Incorporation 101 for Startups with Scott Smedresman 12:00
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About Chicago · October 2026

Chicago's next eight weeks are mostly builder nights, with the big draw landing in December. The marquee is Q2B x Chicago Quantum Summit on Dec 8, where the quantum-to-business conference moves to town alongside UChicago, Argonne and Fermilab. Sooner, the Chicago Frontier Hackathon on Oct 16 targets agent-driven code, and 1871's Fintech Innovation Summit on Nov 12 is the one to hold time for.

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