By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

The main M&A conferences 2027 has on the calendar so far are the AM&AA Winter Conference (January 28 to 29, Fort Lauderdale), ACG CapCon27 (March 10 to 11, San Diego), SMBash (April 21 to 22, Irving, Texas), the Exit Planning Summit (May 2 to 4, San Diego), DealMAX (May 3 to 5, Las Vegas) and the IBBA Conference (May 21 to 23, Orlando). The school ETA summits and both M&A Source Deal Markets have not posted 2027 dates yet.

You are building next year’s travel budget. You have a list of rooms and a credit card. What you do not have is a plan for the 30 days after each one, which is where the deal actually comes from.

This page is the calendar and that plan. Every date below comes from the official event page, as cited on our event guides, and the AM&AA and Booth Kellogg sites were checked again on October 28, 2026. Where no 2027 date is posted, it says so. If you are still deciding which rooms deserve the money, start with which M&A conferences are worth it.

What is the M&A conferences 2027 calendar?

Here it is, in date order, with the host and the follow up guide for each room.

Event	Host	2027 date	City	Our guide
AM&AA Winter Conference	Alliance of Merger and Acquisition Advisors	Jan 28 to 29	Fort Lauderdale	AM&AA Winter follow up
ACG NY DealMaker Series	ACG New York (eligible roles only)	Feb 25 and May 26	New York	ACG dealmaker events
MIT ETA Summit	MIT ETA club	Held each spring. Check the official site	Cambridge	Wharton and MIT follow up
CapCon27	ACG San Diego	Mar 10 to 11	San Diego	ACG CapCon follow up
DealCon Miami 2027	Tom Shipley and Matt Bodnar	Mar 30 to Apr 2	Miami	DealCon follow up
Wharton ETA Summit	The Wharton School	Check the official site (2026 was Apr 2 to 3)	Philadelphia	Wharton and MIT follow up
SMBash	Not named on the official site	Apr 21 to 22	Irving, Texas	SMBash follow up
M&A Source Spring Conference and Deal Market	M&A Source	Check the official site	Check the official site	Deal Market follow up
Exit Planning Summit	Exit Planning Institute	May 2 to 4	San Diego	Exit Planning Summit follow up
DealMAX 2027	ACG	May 3 to 5	Las Vegas	DealMAX follow up, preparing for DealMAX
IBBA Conference	IBBA	May 21 to 23	Orlando	IBBA follow up
AM&AA Summer Conference	Alliance of Merger and Acquisition Advisors	Check the official site	Check the official site	AM&AA Summer follow up
SEETA Conference	Duke Fuqua, UNC Kenan Flagler, UVA Darden, Georgetown McDonough	Check the official site (2026 was Sep 18 to 19)	Check the official site	Best ETA conferences
Stanford Search Fund CEO Conference	Stanford GSB	Check the official site	Stanford	Stanford follow up
IESE International Search Fund Conference	IESE Business School	Check the official site (2026 was Oct 15 to 16)	Barcelona	Best ETA conferences
Booth Kellogg ETA Conference	Chicago Booth ETA Group, Polsky Center, Kellogg	Check the official site (2026 is Oct 30)	Chicago	Booth Kellogg follow up
M&A Source Fall Conference and Deal Market	M&A Source	Check the official site (2026 is Nov 2 to 4, Houston)	Check the official site	Deal Market follow up

Two things jump out. The year is front loaded: every room with a confirmed 2027 date lands between late January and late May. And May is crowded. The Exit Planning Summit and DealMAX overlap on May 3 and 4, in two different cities, and the IBBA Conference follows about two weeks later.

Which 2027 M&A conference fits your seat at the table?

Pick the room where the people who send you deals already go. This is the short version.

If you are	Your scarce relationship	Rooms to look at first
Lower middle market buyer or PE	Bankers, lenders	DealMAX, AM&AA Winter, CapCon27
Self funded searcher	Brokers, SBA lenders	SMBash, IBBA
Traditional searcher	Investors	Booth Kellogg, the school summits, IESE
Business broker	Buyers, co brokers	IBBA, M&A Source Deal Market
Buyer who wants owner referrals	Exit planners, CPAs, wealth managers	Exit Planning Summit
First time acquirer from operating life	Sellers, capital, serial acquirers	DealCon

What should the follow up plan look like each quarter?

Each quarter has a job: set up the next room while you finish working the last one. Here is how I would run it.

Q1, January to March: the warm up rooms. AM&AA Winter, the February ACG NY edition, CapCon27 and DealCon all land here. Text every live conversation within 48 hours. Then book one coffee per room before DealMAX, so May is a second meeting, not a first one. Second meetings are where names turn into relationships.

Q2, April to May: the crush. SMBash, the Exit Planning Summit, DealMAX, IBBA and the May ACG NY edition. You will meet more people in eight weeks than you can remember. Two rules. Capture each person in 10 seconds while you are still standing with them. And if you hit two rooms back to back, do the 48 hour texts from the first one before you board for the second.

Q3, June to September: where the deals actually show up. Few big rooms, lots of mandates. This is the 30 and 60 day touch window for everyone from spring. A banker you met at DealMAX builds a short list in July. A broker from IBBA gets a listing in August. The person who texted in June, with a real reason, is the one who gets called.

Q4, October to December: fall ETA and the reset. Booth Kellogg, IESE and the fall M&A Source Deal Market, if 2027 follows 2026. Follow up from those, then audit the year. Which ten people from spring rooms have you not touched since? Text them before the holidays, and before you register for 2028.

The pattern under all four: the conference is a day or three. The relationship is the 30 days after. For the full system behind that, see the conference follow up system.

The system that does this for you

Seventeen rooms is a lot of names. The hard part is not meeting them. It is remembering, in July, which lender from Las Vegas asked for your buy box.

FRONT OF MIND does that part. Capture in seconds: say a name and a sentence out loud, snap a business card or badge, or take a selfie together, and it is filed under the event. Each morning it opens on your 10 minutes for today, and each person has one line on why today: you met at an event days ago and never followed up, they posted, their company was in the news, or they are going cold. Every draft is a text style message, 40 words max, and nothing sends without your tap.

It runs in your phone’s browser and can be saved to your home screen. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them, and you can export or delete anytime. Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who from your last conference comes up first. See how it works

See how it works