The Next Web (TNW), the annual Amsterdam tech conference bought by the Financial Times in 2019, is shutting down.
TNW, the company behind the event, alongside a coworking space and a digital media publication of the same name, plans to wind down its events and media business by the end of September “following a strategic review”, the FT has confirmed to Sifted.
“This decision was communicated to affected staff in June and we are supporting them through this transition,” said the FT.
TNW held its last event in June this year at NDSM, a former shipyard on Amsterdam’s waterfront, with over 5,800 registered attendees and over 200 speakers.
TNW’s coworking business, which offers private offices alongside coworking memberships in central Amsterdam, will “operate as usual”, an FT spokesperson confirmed.
Rocky road
It’s not the outcome the FT, which acquired a majority stake in TNW in 2019, would have wanted.
In a post announcing the acquisition, the FT extolled the company’s events business: “TNW is an established and profitable business that produces one of the largest and most critically acclaimed tech startup events in Europe.”
TNW’s media team has been shrinking since the departure of several members of its editorial team at the end of last year.
The FT did not confirm how many other roles would be impacted by the decision to shut TNW’s event and media business.
20 years on
TNW conference was founded in 2006 by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and Patrick de Laive. It grew from 280 attendees at its first event, held in a church in Amsterdam, to 17,500 attendees by 2019.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference moved online — but in 2021 it was back with 4,500 in-person attendees and 20,000 virtual attendees. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, it had 10,000 attendees, before dropping to 4,500 attendees this year.
