Two hundred and fifty-plus sessions is not a reading problem. It's a filtering problem, and the people who get the most out of Automation Fair are the ones who figure that out before they open the catalog rather than three hours in.
The Automation Fair 2026 session catalog is live, it shows remaining seats per session, and it lets you register the moment you complete your event registration. Here's how it's organized, and how to cut it down to a week that fits.
Every session carries a two-letter prefix and a number. The prefix tells you the format before you read a word of the description, which is the fastest filter available:
| Code | Session type | What it is | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| CV | Customer Voices | End users presenting their own deployments, outcomes and mistakes | General Access |
| IE | Insights & Education | Rockwell-led product, portfolio and strategy content | General Access |
| IV | Industry Viewpoints | Sector-level challenges and priorities | General Access |
| PS | Partner Solutions | PartnerNetwork members on integrations and complementary offerings | General Access |
| IL | Hands-on / Product Intro Lab | Working labs on real hardware and software | See note below |
| SM | Summit | Half-day topic communities | General Access |
| OT | Off-site Tour | Host facility visits | General Access |
Session type reference. Product Intro Labs are included with General Access; the 500+ hours of advanced-level labs and technical training require the General Access + Advanced Training Pass.
The codes are stable across the week. Same code, same content — just a different slot on a different day.
This is the single most useful thing to know about the catalog: a large share of sessions run more than once. IE01, the “What's New and What's Next from Rockwell Automation” portfolio overview, runs on all four days. IE28 on the new PowerFlex 535 compact drive runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. IE02 on the PowerFlex drives portfolio runs three times.
So when two sessions you want land in the same slot, check for a repeat before you agonize. Customer Voices sessions are the ones that generally don't repeat — those are the true conflicts, and they're worth protecting first.
Rockwell groups sessions into six featured tracks that cut across session type. If you only have the appetite for one filter, use this one.
| Featured track | Example session codes |
|---|---|
| Executive Insights | SM03, IV08, IE57, PS07, CV03 |
| Optimizing Operations with AI & Edge-to-Cloud Data | SM02, CV27, IE07, IV12, PS06, IE75 |
| Optimizing Process Control & System Performance | SM01, IV11, IE49, PS36, CV13 |
| Production Logistics | SM04, OT06, IE58, CV17, IV14 |
| Securing OT & Industrial Systems | SM02, CV05, IV15, IE16, PS28 |
| What's Next for Industrial Automation | OT04, IV03, IE01, PS48, CV31 |
Featured tracks and the example sessions Rockwell lists against each. Source: Automation Fair 2026 tracks page.
Alongside those, seven industry tracks narrow by vertical: Automotive & Tire, Food & Beverage, Life Sciences, Mining & Metals, New & Traditional Energy, OEM/Machine Builders, and Water/Wastewater, each carrying four or five sessions.
The catalog filters on day, pass type, session type, featured track, session topic, industry, job function, job level, software, hardware, services, product brands and primary business outcome, plus full-text search across titles and descriptions.
Most of those are noise. Two are not. Filter by hardware or product brand to find sessions about the platforms you already own — that's how you get from 250 sessions to a dozen. Then filter by day to resolve conflicts. Job function and job level sound useful and mostly aren't; they sort by who Rockwell thinks you are rather than what you run.
A partial list, drawn from the published catalog, of sessions that go deeper than a product-page summary:
General Access covers keynotes, Customer Voices, Industry Viewpoints, Insights & Education, Partner Solutions, Product Intro Labs, summits and off-site tours. The General Access + Advanced Training Pass adds the 500-plus hours of advanced-level hands-on labs and technical training — and it's the only pass that earns Professional Development Hour credits, which are valid in the United States and Canada.
The scheduling consequence is visible above: Advanced Training gives you a longer working day on Monday and Thursday, when it starts at 8:00am against 9:00am for General Access sessions. If you bought the training pass, those bookend mornings are where you get your money back.
The workable order is: filter by the hardware and software you actually run, pull out the Customer Voices sessions first because they don't repeat, slot the rest around them, and remember that seats are limited and first come, first served. The catalog shows remaining seats — believe it.
If you'd like help mapping the Automation Fair 2026 session catalog to your installed base — which sessions cover the platforms on your floor and which are safe to skip — the HESCO team is glad to go through it with you. Get in touch.