Christchurch software firm Jade brings its Velocity Summit back to Te Pae for 2026

Jade Velocity Summit 2026 is a one-day business and technology conference confirmed for 11 September 2026 at Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre, running two parallel programmes — a business stream and a technology stream — under the banner of harnessing technology to drive New Zealand forward. The official event site, jadevelocity.co.nz, has moved from a waitlist holding page to a live 2026 programme with a published agenda, confirmed speakers and a logistics page.

A Christchurch software company with a long local lineage

The summit is run by Jade Software Corporation, a Christchurch-founded enterprise software company whose roots trace to 1978, when founder Sir Gil Simpson and Peter Hoskins developed the Linc programming environment later used across thousands of organisations on Burroughs, later Unisys, mainframes. Jade itself was established in 1993 and today employs roughly 250 staff, about 200 of them in Christchurch, with further teams in Dunedin, Auckland, Sydney and York in the UK, according to an NZ Herald profile of chief executive Justin Mercer published ahead of the event.

The same report notes the company has been fully owned by UK-based Skipton Building Society since 2017 and reported $45.3 million revenue and $2.9 million pre-tax profit for its most recent full year, with its platform underpinning systems for Fonterra's supplier registry, The Warehouse Group and Woolworths NZ.

What is on, and who is speaking

The first Jade Velocity Summit was held on 29 August 2025, also at Te Pae, and was attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — a fact Jade highlighted on its own corporate blog, framing the appearance as recognition of the summit's stated purpose of exploring technology's role in national economic growth.

For 2026, Jade's published agenda runs from 9am registration to a 4pm to 5pm networking close. The business stream features Air New Zealand chief executive Nikhil Ravishankar, former Fonterra chief executive Miles Hurrell, Gallagher Group chief executive Kahl Betham, Dawn Aerospace co-founder Stefan Powell and MFAT deputy secretary Vangelis Vitalis. The technology stream features Jade's own chief technology officer Dean Cooper, Rokt's Simon Curran and technology commentator Ben Kepes, among others. Jade's official messaging states that demand is expected to exceed capacity and has put registration behind a waitlist.

Te Pae, and how delegates get there

Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre sits on Oxford Terrace in the rebuilt central city, on the Avon River / Ōtākaro. Jade's own event logistics page describes the venue as central and easy to access by public transport, bike or on foot, and directs out-of-town delegates to a Christchurch City Council parking map for those driving.

Jade has arranged delegate accommodation with three central-city hotels — Hotel Montreal, Novotel Cathedral Square and Ibis Christchurch — all inside the walkable central cluster around the convention centre. For a single-day event drawing national speakers and out-of-region attendees, that concentration reinforces Te Pae's role as an anchor for delegate movement in the rebuilt CBD, where the hotel stock sits within a few blocks of the venue rather than dispersed across the city.

Why it matters in NZ MICE

JV26 is a useful Canterbury marker. A homegrown, Christchurch-headquartered software exporter with a 45-year lineage back to the city's earliest enterprise-computing firms is using the flagship Te Pae venue to convene national business and government figures, rather than staging its flagship event in Auckland.

Mercer has framed the ambition explicitly as re-establishing Jade as a company of national significance and doubling the size of its community of customers, partners and staff. Corporate summits of this kind — single-day, single-host, high-profile speaker list — are a category convention centres outside Auckland compete hard for, and a second consecutive edition at the same venue suggests the format is holding.