Thank You for Making the River Summit & Festival 2026 Extraordinary
Thank you for joining us on 4th and 5th September at Henley Town Hall and Mill Meadows, our first year in Henley, and one we won't forget.
More than 300 people came together across two days. Politicians from three different parties, water company leaders, regulators, farmers, scientists, campaigners, artists and community members, all willing to sit in the same room and actually listen to one another. That's rarer than it should be, and we're grateful to everyone who joined us.
A full day across four spaces: the Queen Elizabeth II Hall, Council Chamber, Committee Room, and, new this year, the Testing the Waters Experience Area in the King's Arms Barn.
The main hall brought cross-party conversation in Water Time, hard questions put to regulators in Regulating Rivers for the Future, the world premiere of Beneath the Oars, and sessions on citizen science, river rights, and what "Power of People" really means when you put it into practice.
This year, for the first time, the Testing the Waters Consortium had a space entirely of its own. The King's Arms Barn became a working showcase of what 90+ independent members are actually doing on the ground: real-time sensors from HoTWater and Seneye, eDNA source tracking from Trace Biomonitoring, high-resolution Thames mapping from Xylem and Wilson Phillips, water companies presenting their own work alongside the citizen scientists holding them to account. It's one thing to talk about collaboration in a hall. It's another to watch it happening on a table in front of you.
