What’s Behind Forrester’s Pivot to Smaller Events

In January 2026, Forrester announced a strategic update to its global events portfolio. The company introduced a shorter, more intimate Forum event type lasting one to one-and-a-half days, alongside its longer and larger flagship summits.

According to Tavar James, the company's vice president of global events, the redesign is based on attendee feedback. "We heard our event attendees loud and clear that more content isn't the answer — relevance is," he said in the announcement.

Declining Events Revenue

Forrester’s event strategy shift comes amid a significant contraction in event revenue. After recovering from the pandemic to a peak of $30.7 million in 2022, it has declined each year: $28.2 million in 2023, $18.5 million in 2024, and $13.1 million in 2025, a 57% drop over three years.

The revenue decline isn’t exclusive to events. The company’s revenue fell from $537.8 million in 2022 to $396.9 million in 2025, a 26% contraction, meaning events revenue shrank at roughly twice the rate of the broader business.

Events have lost ground as a share of the company's total revenue. In 2022 and 2023, they represented 5.7-5.9% of Forrester's total revenues, roughly in line with pre-pandemic levels. By 2024, that figure slipped to 4.3%, and in 2025 to 3.3%.

Forrester CEO George Colony made it clear on the February earnings call, describing the shortcoming as an “instability of our events portfolio.” He framed the shift to smaller gatherings as a way to “prioritize more intimate in-person connection and peer networking.”

This was a significant shift from a year earlier, when Colony said, “In 2025, we are investing in events to drive higher audiences and expanded experiences.” He also mentioned the company was “shifting marketing dollars to expand the event’s audience” and “expanding the experience and content to make events must-attend.”

What Attendees Want

Forrester said its attendees’ travel budgets have tightened and they can’t commit to three- and four-day events. “Accordingly, we’re moving away from longer multi-day events that require substantial travel for our clients, and we’re shifting towards shorter, more intimate forums held closer to where our clients are based,” Colony said. 

In an exclusive Skift Meetings interview, James framed the time away from the office as an “accessibility” challenge. "They're getting what they expect from a Forrester event. It's just too hard for people to get there," he said. "That's why we pivoted from one big event to this more bi-coastal or multi-city model — just to make it easier for people to get to."

James said cost was a factor. Tickets for larger Forrester events were above $4,000, meaning a trip could hit $10,000. He added, “It’s just not reality anymore for people to be spending that type of money, no matter how good the event is.”

The Smaller Events Solution

James frames the strategic direction as horizontal rather than vertical, focusing on more events, not bigger ones. "We intentionally want our forums to be smaller. We want people to have that intimate environment because that's what people like, and we heard that overwhelmingly last year across some of our events," James said. 

The revised portfolio has three tiers. Summits remain flagship, with 1,500+ attendees. Forums are the new format, running 300–500 people, one to one-and-a-half days, with programming around peer connection and hands-on learning rather than content density. Field events for 50–200 are typically half a day and are also expanding, with around 30 more planned for the remainder of 2026.

"We've seen an increase in more immersive experiences, more rounds and workshops, because we're learning that people don't want the stoic, sterile, academic way of learning anymore," he said. "People want to learn hands-on. They want to learn with their peers."

The new forum event format has precedent at Forrester; it ran a similar tier years ago before consolidating around larger summits. James was deliberate about not framing the return as a downsized summit. His instruction to his programming team was clear: “We’re not taking a summit and trying to cram it into a forum.” Instead, he challenged them to rethink the format from the ground up, “start with what our attendees want and expect from a Forrester event and then let’s build from there.”

Staying in Major Cities

A less obvious strategy element is the destination logic. Smaller B2B events are often linked to secondary markets — budget-friendly cities, perfectly capable of hosting intimate, high-quality gatherings. Forrester has moved in the opposite direction. Forrester's CX East and CX West Forums sold out all sponsorship inventory, which James partly attributes to the city choices.

"Yes, it's more expensive," he said of operating in major markets. "But you have more interest from a ticket revenue perspective and from a sponsorship revenue perspective." He describes the first year in these cities as a gradual process, establishing the P&L before adjusting the model for long-term viability. "When you're operating in a P&L environment, you want things to be big because you want to drum up as much revenue as possible," James said. "But there are multiple ways to achieve those goals, and it doesn't necessarily mean the big event."

Forrester is betting that its pivot toward smaller, more frequent, harder-to-skip events can do what its bigger ones stopped doing. Early signs are positive, with James saying forums are nearing sellout. “It's doing what it needs to do for the business from a financial perspective,” he said. Whether that reverses the revenue slide remains an open question.