If you’ve been paying attention to the retail industry over the past year (and I know you have) you already know that things are moving faster than almost anyone can track. Tariffs. Trade disruptions. Generative AI. Agentic AI. The rise of AI-driven search. It’s a lot. And it’s exactly why I was so glad to sit down with Adam Plom, Vice President and Head of Content for Shoptalk Europe, to get a preview of what’s coming when the industry converges in Barcelona, June 9–11.
What Makes Shop Talk Europe Different
Before we got into the agenda, I asked Adam what makes Shoptalk Europe stand out on the global conference circuit. His answer wasn’t what I expected. He led with fun, and then backed it up with substance.
Shoptalk Europe is genuinely pan-European, pulling together major retail players from across the continent, not just a handful of national markets. And like the Shoptalk brand globally, it brings the full ecosystem together: retailers, grocers, brands, startups, tech providers, investors, and media, all under one roof. This year, that roof covers roughly 4,500 attendees, with one in three at the C-suite level.
The content program, Adam’s domain, spans 60 sessions with 180 speakers, the majority at VP level or above. That’s a serious editorial event.
Why This Year Feels Different
Adam was honest that if I’d asked him two weeks earlier what he was most excited about, his answer would have been different. Fresh off Shoptalk Spring in Las Vegas and a roadshow event in Amsterdam, he said something that stuck with me: this year feels needed.
The industry is facing an unprecedented rate of change, and Adam acknowledged that phrase gets overused, but insisted it genuinely applies right now. War. Last year’s show was on the cusp of the tariff wave. This year’s show is squarely in the middle of it.
But beyond the macro pressures, Adam pointed to a shift in tone. Retailers and brands are more willing than ever to share openly, i.e. what they’re trying with AI, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and crucially, what they don’t yet know. That kind of intellectual honesty is rare in conference settings, and it sounds like it’s going to show up in Barcelona.
There’s also an undercurrent that Adam found genuinely interesting to articulate to an American audience: a growing sense of European sovereignty. Or said another way, there is a “Europe for growth” sentiment among retailers and tech players that’s showing up in one-on-one conversations. Whether that makes it onto the main stage remains to be seen, and Adam sounded genuinely curious to find out.
How You Build a Conference Agenda in a World That Won’t Hold Still
One of the more fascinating parts of our conversation was Adam pulling back the curtain on how the Shoptalk content team actually builds the program. The moment the show wraps in one year, the research for the next begins. Summer research calls. Desktop research. Editorial debates. A program that gets finalized months before the show and then has to survive contact with a world that keeps changing.
Adam was candid that writing a program in September for a June show is “quite funny” when you consider how much shifts between those two points. But what protects the Shoptalk program, he argued, is that it’s editorially driven. There’s no pay-to-play content forcing topics onto the agenda. That integrity, he said, is what makes the program hold up even as the world changes around it.
This year, that process led to two new structural additions: 1) A dedicated AI track and 2) A dedicated media and marketing stage covering retail media, social commerce, and AI-driven content and creative. Both felt necessary, but both required a balancing act.
What AI Will (and Won’t) Look Like in Barcelona
This is where it got really interesting for me. I pushed Adam on the AI question directly. Specifically, I asked him, “When we say AI at Shoptalk Europe, what will we actually be talking about?”
The overall event theme this year is “Where AI and Human Ingenuity Meet,” which tells you a lot about the editorial intent. The goal isn’t to go wall-to-wall AI and pretend that’s all retailers care about. The European audience, Adam said, has been emphatic. They want AI, but not at the expense of in-store content, emotional consumer connections, data foundations, and the human workforce conversation.
That said, here’s what’s on the agenda when it comes to AI specifically:
Agentic Commerce is front and center. Multiple sessions are dedicated to what’s real, what’s here now, and where this is heading, from both a retailer/brand perspective and a platform perspective.
AI Search and LLM Visibility is getting serious attention. Retailers and brands are actively working on product data, PR strategies, influencer campaigns, anything to ensure they show up prominently in LLM-based search results. Shoptalk Europe is digging into that shift.
Use Cases Across the Business are the backbone of the AI programming. Whether it’s CX, e-commerce, marketing, operations, or supply chain, the content will be anchored in what retailers and brands have actually done and what results they’ve gotten. No speculation theater.
Data Readiness gets its own session, because not every retailer in the room is operating at the same maturity level. The “garbage in, garbage out” conversation feels more urgent than ever.
The Human Workforce angle rounds it out. What happens to roles, how organizations build internal AI capabilities, what disappears, what transforms, what emerges.
That’s a well-rounded agenda. And it matches what I’ve been hearing from practitioners across the industry. No one wants to hear about what AI might do. They want to know what it’s doing right now and how to get value from it.
See You in Barcelona
I’ll be honest, by the end of this conversation, I was ready to book my flight. Shoptalk Europe 2026 looks like it’s going to hit at exactly the right moment, with exactly the right conversations. If you’re in retail and you’re trying to make sense of where this industry is headed, June 9–11 in Barcelona should be on your calendar.
In the meantime, give this episode a listen. Adam does a great job of setting the table for what’s coming, and if you want to hear more from the people shaping retail’s future, make sure you’re subscribed to Omni Talk.
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Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.