Sheffield Innovation Spine launch the city’s first Open Doors Innovation Festival

Explore Sheffield’s urban innovation district on Tuesday, 20 October 2026. This city-wide festival invites curious minds to experience local innovation firsthand, hosted in partnership with the University.

Open Doors festival graphic

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, 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.

As a partner in the Sheffield Spine the University of Sheffield is for the first time ever opening its Siemens Digital Innovaton Zone (DIZ) and its Emerge servce to the public.  

Univeristy of Sheffield academics from the Centre for Machine Intelligence will also be giving two exclusive talks in the DIZ on the 20th October: 

  • Dr Youssef Nader (AI encode fellow) will talk about his award winning work on the use of AI to read ancient carbonized scrolls, 4:30 pm to 4:45pm 
  • Dr Ning Ma (Senior lecturer, School of Computer Science) will talk about his work on the use of AI, acoustic and speech signals in healthcare, 4:45 pm to 5.00pm.

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 see how the university is digtally upskilling students of the future. 
  • 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.

Tom Wolfenden, CEO, Sheffield Technology Park, 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!”

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.