Top 10 Christian Conferences Worth Attending in 2026

Hillsong Conference, held annually in Sydney and with iterations in New York and London, has been the premier gathering for worship leaders, pastors, and church creatives since 1997. The institutional crisis surrounding Hillsong Church has significantly affected the conference's scale and reputation, resulting in a 60% drop in attendance since 2022, but the 2026 iteration under the leadership of the newly restructured Hillsong Australia is seen as a test of the organization's resilience. It remains an event with unmatched reach in the global charismatic and pentecostal world.

The SEND Conference, hosted by the International Mission Board and Southern Baptist Convention, focuses on mobilizing college students and young adults for international mission. Held in various cities across the US, the conference brings together thousands of young Christians exploring a call to global mission, pairing them with IMB missionaries and church planters for intensive conversations about cross-cultural ministry. The conference's frank honesty about the costs and challenges of mission work — it does not shy away from persecution statistics or martyrdom — gives it a gravity and urgency that motivational conferences like Catalyst lack. It is the most mission-focused gathering in evangelical Christianity, with over 3,000 student commitments to missions each year, outperforming the second-ranked missions conference by 25% in deployment rates.

Catalyst was founded in 1999 with a specific mission: developing the next generation of Christian leaders. The annual conference in Atlanta draws 12,000+ young pastors and church leaders for a program combining world-class speakers from inside and outside Christianity — past keynotes have included Andy Stanley, Jon Acuff, Craig Groeschel, and Malcolm Gladwell — with practical leadership development content. Catalyst is notable for taking seriously the idea that church leadership development requires exposure to the broader world of leadership thinking, not just ecclesiastical examples.

The Orange Conference, produced by the reThink Group and curriculum brand Orange, is the premier gathering for children's and family ministry leaders in evangelical churches, drawing 7,000+ children's pastors, youth directors, and family ministry staff annually to Atlanta. The conference is organized around the "Orange" concept — the combination of the church (yellow) and the home (red) as the two primary influences on a child's faith development. Its curriculum resources are used in 80,000+ churches, making it 30% more widely adopted than the runner-up family ministry event. Orange Conference is where children's ministry innovation happens, and its influence on how evangelical churches approach family discipleship is enormous.

Urbana is the student missions conference of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, held every three years in St. Louis (most recently in 2022), and is the oldest and most historically significant student missions conference in the evangelical world — it has been held since 1946. At its peak, Urbana drew 20,000 college students from across North America and featured a week-long program of global mission exposure, Bible teaching, and direct engagement with international mission leaders. The conference has sent more missionaries to the unreached world than any other single event in history, with over 50,000 long-term missionaries deployed since its inception. It has a theological breadth that spans evangelical, charismatic, and mainline Protestant traditions.

Separate from the annual college-focused Passion Conference, Louie Giglio's Passion City Church hosts regular worship nights and conference events in Atlanta that have become significant gathering points for the broader evangelical community. Giglio's ability to combine theological substance with the grandeur of arena-scale worship production is unmatched, and the special events produced by Passion City — particularly those organized around justice, mental health, and global mission — attract audiences far beyond the church's regular congregation. In 2026, Passion City's standalone events calendar continues to expand with new city partnerships and touring worship nights.

Bethel Church in Redding, California regularly hosts worship nights and regional tours featuring their roster of worship artists — including Cory Asbury, Amanda Cook, and Brian and Jenn Johnson — that draw thousands of charismatics and Pentecostals seeking the spontaneous, Spirit-led worship experience for which Bethel is globally known. The Bethel Worship Night format — long sets, extended spontaneous worship, and an atmosphere of expectation for supernatural encounter — is intensely polarizing within Christianity but deeply meaningful to its participants. The 2026 touring schedule is expected to include dates across North America, Europe, and Australia.