Nvidia GTC 2026 starts March 16 with a free Jensen Huang keynote stream

In short: Nvidia’s GTC 2026 conference starts March 16 in San Jose, and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote will stream free online at 11 a.m. PT.

What happened

Nvidia said its annual GTC conference begins Monday, March 16, 2026. The event runs through March 19 and takes place mostly at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, with additional events at venues around downtown San Jose, including the SAP Center and the San Jose Civic.

The opening keynote will be given by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at 11 a.m. PT at the SAP Center. People can attend in person, and anyone can watch a free livestream on nvidia.com. Nvidia also listed a “pregame show” starting at 8 a.m. PT on March 16, with leaders from Perplexity, LangChain, Mistral, Skild AI, and OpenEvidence.

Nvidia says the conference draws more than 27,000 attendees and will include over 500 sessions, more than 700 talks, and over 300 exhibits. Topics include “agentic AI” (AI that can take steps toward a goal, like a helper that can plan tasks), “inference” (when an AI uses what it learned to answer a new question), and “AI factories” (large setups for building and running AI).

Passes are sold out, but Nvidia says “Exhibits Only” passes are still available, with a 20% discount code, GTC26-20. Registration details are at nvidia.com/gtc.

Why it matters

GTC is one of the biggest public gatherings focused on AI and the computers that run it. For non-experts, the keynote and sessions can be a quick way to understand what companies want AI to do next, from business tools to energy and climate uses.

Source: TechCrunch AI