By Members, For Members: How CASA26 Works
CASA26 belongs to the people in the room. Here’s how that works in practice — passes, partners, sponsorship, and the room itself.
Tobacco Theater, Amsterdam · 20–23 September 2026
CASA26 belongs to the people in the room. That isn’t a slogan, it’s the operating model. Our members pay for it, our members fill most of the seats, and — more to the point — our members are the stage. The operators, platforms and builders actually doing this work, rather than headliners booked in for the occasion. Almost everything else about how CASA runs follows from that one fact.
It’s why the sessions are built around the questions members are actually stuck on rather than the ones that make a good press release. It’s why the speakers are mostly peers rather than hired keynotes. And it’s why the room stays at around 150 people: not to keep anyone out, but because past a certain size a community stops being a community and becomes an audience.
It also explains the thing people ask us about most, which is passes.
The short version on passes
Anyone can buy a pass to CASA26 at €1,599, and we’re not going to stop you.
But members don’t pay that. Passes come with membership — they’re already yours, and they’re free. Additional passes for your colleagues are half price. Partners and analysts who contribute to the programme come as our guests.
That’s not a discount scheme. It’s what it looks like when the people paying for something are the same people who show up to it.
Membership is the ticket
Every CPaaSAA membership includes CASA26 passes. The number scales with your level:
| Membership level | Passes included |
|---|---|
| Connect | 1 |
| Grow | 2 |
| Accelerate | 3 |
And if you want more of your team in the room, every member buys additional passes at 50% off — at every level, with no cap.
That is the answer to the question we get most often. You’re not limited to one pass. You have one pass on the house, and every pass after that at roughly €800 — half what the market pays. If four of your people belong at CASA26, bring four.
Most members do exactly that. The typical member team is two or three people — the strategist, the commercial lead, and the product or technical lead — because CASA covers all three registers in the same week. Strategy sessions that don’t dissolve into slideware, commercial conversations with the people who actually sign, and enough technical depth that your architect isn’t bored. Sending one person means choosing which of those you’re going to miss.
Compare that to how the rest of this industry runs its events. You buy at list price, or you go asking a sponsor for a spare ticket, or you sponsor the thing yourself. At CASA, membership already did that work. It’s a perk with a number attached to it, not a loyalty badge.
The room itself
This is a leadership room. Around 150 people, senior, and there by decision rather than by registration. That seniority is the reason the discussions go somewhere — nobody in the room needs to check with head office before having an opinion.
It also means your competitors are in there with you. That’s deliberate, and it’s the part people are most sceptical about until they’ve done it once. The industry’s real questions — where value settles, what the commercial model for Network APIs actually is, what AI does to the CPaaS stack — are not questions any single company answers alone. You get further in a room of peers than in a room of customers.
What makes that work is how we run it. Discussions are open and nobody gets put on the spot. No gotcha panels, no forced positions, no ambushing an operator with a question they can’t answer in public. People say more when they know they won’t be made to regret it, and that candour is the thing members come back for.
We’re explicit about where the line sits, so nobody has to wonder mid-sentence:
- Keynotes and stage panels are recorded. That footage goes to speakers, sponsors and members afterwards, and it’s some of the most useful content any of us produce all year.
- Working sessions and roundtables run under Chatham House Rule and are not recorded. No cameras, no attribution, no notes leaving the room with your name on them.
You’ll always know which room you’re in.
Partners, analysts and advisors
The room only works because of who’s in it, and a serious share of that room is analysts, advisors, consultants and press. They sharpen the debate, they push back on the comfortable answers, and they carry the conversation out into the market afterwards. That’s worth a great deal to everyone else in the building.
So we treat it as an exchange rather than a favour:
- Contribute to the programme — keynote, moderate, sit on a panel, run a session — and your pass is on us.
- Come as a participant and it’s 50% off, the same as members pay for their extra passes.
This isn’t us paying people to show up. Nobody gets a free seat for having a title. The free pass is attached to contribution, because contribution is what makes CASA worth attending. And the 50% recognises that analysts and advisors are part of this ecosystem, not an audience for it.
Sponsorship: the other route in
Sponsorship is the third door, and it’s open to members and non-members alike. Every package carries passes on top of whatever your membership already gives you, so the two stack.
Members get a standing discount on sponsorship: 10% for Grow, 25% for Accelerate.
What you’re actually buying is not a logo. It’s stage time in front of 150 senior decision-makers, and it’s content — every keynote and panel is recorded, and that footage does far more work in the twelve months after September than it does during the three days themselves.
And if you’re none of the above
Buy a pass at €1,599. We’d rather you joined as a member — the economics are better and the community is the point — but the door isn’t locked.
The one thing we do reserve is the right to shape the room. A handful of seats each year go out as direct invitations — telco leaders, founders, investors we specifically want in a given session — and we ask the same question about every name, member or not: does this person make the room better?
If you know someone who does, tell us. Member recommendations carry real weight.
What we’re building it with
CASA26 is shaped with our strategic partners — GSMA, our partners at Sandbox, and McKinsey — who are actively designing sessions and opening their networks to bring the right telcos, investors and innovators into the room.
That partnership is why the week extends beyond the main summit. Wednesday is a dedicated Telco Day with around 40 operators in focused roundtables, and Sunday opens with a curated session hosted with our partners at Sandbox, bringing investors together with startups and scaleups. More telcos than last year, in the same building, with more happening around the edges.
Questions on passes, extra passes or upgrading your membership — talk to the CPaaSAA team.
Questions on sponsorship or programme placement — talk to Rob directly.
