The inaugural Trust & Safety Festival Sydney is a global gathering designed to bring together the full ecosystem of professionals working to create a safer, more inclusive, and more resilient digital world.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 

Opening reception 

(by invitation only) 

Day 1 - Thursday October 8, 2026

Focus – Understanding the system à framing the problem à illuminating the strategic issues à looking ahead   

08:00 - Registration / Tea Coffee

09:00 - Opening remarks

09:10 - Keynote

09:30 - Keynote Panel: Defining the Trust & Safety Landscape 

             10:15  Coffee Break

10:30 - Panel Discussion: Real world harm and human impact

             How online harms manifest in real-world contexts, including the lived experience of affected                              individuals, such as technology-facilitated abuse and coercive control, and the challenges of                              translating human impact into policy and platform response.

11:15 - Panel Discussion: Policy & Regulation in Practice

             How policy is shaped, translated into regulation, and negotiated across consultation processes,                        rights frameworks, and competing public interests — including normative questions around the limits              of governmental power and whether legislation can, or should, influence ethics within companies.

              12:00 Lunch

13:00 - Panel Discussion: Enforcement, Compliance & Accountability

             Whether platforms can be meaningfully held to account in a distributed ecosystem, including the                      practical challenges and limitations of enforcement across layered infrastructures.

13:45 - Panel Discussion: Technology, AI & Risk

             How emerging technologies, particularly AI, are reshaping the trust and safety landscape, including                  new forms of risk, system-level vulnerabilities, and the challenges of governing increasingly complex              and autonomous systems.

              14:30 Coffee Break

14:45 - Panel Discussion: Designing for Trust & Safety: Leadership, Structure & Accountability

15:30 - Panel Discussion: Trust & Safety in a Fragmenting World: Global & Geopolitical Dynamics

16:15 - Panel Discussion: Keynote Panel: Where Is Trust & Safety Heading?

17:00 - End of sessions

Evening reception 

(by invitation only) 

Day 2 - Friday October 9, 2026

Focus – Paradigm challenge à driving action à giving practitioners the tools

08:30 - Registration / Tea Coffee

09:00 - Opening Keynote: Challenging the Current Model

09:30 - Panel Discussion: From Insight to Action on Cybersecurity

              10:15 - Coffee Break

10:30 - Parallel Tracks

Room 1: Panel Discussion: Implementation in Practice: Early Lessons from the Field

                 What is actually working in trust and safety today, drawing on real-world implementation experience, including                    the role of data, evidence, and evaluation in understanding effectiveness, identifying gaps, and informing future                  approaches.

Room 2: Workshop: Future Risk Scenarios & Response

                 Scenario-based, interactive workshop. Participants work through a live cross-sector risk scenario in small                            groups, with expert interventions providing policy, technical, and societal perspectives.

11:15 - Parallel Tracks

Room 1: Panel Discussion: What Comes Next for Society?

                What the evolution of trust and safety systems means for society more broadly, including the                              implications for rights, participation, public trust, and the relationship between individuals,                                  institutions, and digital platforms in an increasingly mediated world.

Room 2: Workshop: Designing safer systems

                 Interactive, practical workshop. Participants work through real-world design challenges to explore                    how safety, trust, and control can be embedded into products and systems from the outset.

                 12:00 Lunch

13:00 - Parallel Tracks

Room 1: Panel Discussion: Governance in a Complex Ecosystem

                How trust and safety is governed across interconnected systems involving platforms, governments,                 and third parties, including the challenges of accountability, coordination, and consistency in a                           fragmented and multi-jurisdictional environment.

Room 2: Workshop: Running Trust & Safety Inside an Organisation How Do We Do This?

                Case-based, interactive workshop. Participants work through real organisational scenarios to                           explore how trust and safety functions are structured, resourced, and embedded into day-to-day                       operations, including escalation, accountability, and cross-functional coordination.

13:45 - Parallel Tracks

Room 1: Panel Discussion: Inside the Platform: Engineering and Operating Safety Systems Strategic focus                 A technical view of trust and safety inside platforms, focusing on product design, engineering                           decisions, and system-level trade-offs rather than policy or regulatory perspectives.

Room 2: Workshop: Governance in Practice

                Scenario-based, interactive workshop. Participants work through governance and compliance                           scenarios to explore how policy is translated into operational practice, including trade-offs,                                 accountability, and cross-jurisdictional complexity.

                 14:30 Coffee Break

14:45 - Panel Discussion: Measuring Impact & Effectiveness

15:30 - Panel Discussion: Industry Response: Operationalising Trust & Safety at Scale

16:15 - Keynote Panel: The Next Decade of Trust & Safety 

17:00 - Closing remarks

Closing reception 

(by invitation only) 

Last updated 14 May 2026