The Wire

Emergence 2026: iMIS world gets one flagship conference

By Sarah Macintosh · 28 July 2026

The iMIS world will have a single flagship conference for the first time this autumn. ASI’s iNNOVATIONS event and the iUG Annual Conference are merging into Emergence 2026, running 2–5 November in Arlington, Virginia.

For the thousands of organisations that run their membership operations on iMIS — including a substantial UK contingent of professional bodies, trade associations and charities — the merger concentrates the vendor’s roadmap and the user community’s collective experience into one room, one week, one agenda.

What is Emergence 2026?

Emergence 2026 is the new combined flagship conference for the iMIS ecosystem, created by merging ASI’s own iNNOVATIONS event with the annual conference of iUG, the iMIS Users Group. It takes place from 2 to 5 November 2026 in Arlington, Virginia, with details published at imisemergence.com.

Until now, the ecosystem’s calendar has been split between the vendor’s showcase and the community’s gathering. iUG — the users group formerly known as NiUG, a name long-standing iMIS administrators will still catch themselves using — has historically run its own annual conference, independent of ASI’s iNNOVATIONS. Emergence folds the two together for the first time.

What does the merger mean for the iMIS community?

One event now carries the weight of two. The practical upside is obvious: a single trip puts delegates in front of ASI’s product leadership and the peer network of iMIS-running organisations at the same time. The open question is how the community’s independent voice fares inside a combined format.

That question matters more than it might sound. Users-group conferences have traditionally been where administrators compare notes candidly — on upgrades that went sideways as much as ones that went well — while vendor conferences set the vision. A merged event has to hold both registers at once. How the ecosystem’s balance of vendor and community evolves is a thread we follow in our AMS market briefing.

What should UK delegates expect?

Expect AI and the EMS roadmap to anchor the agenda. ASI has spent the past cycle building out its “AI Built with Purpose” features — the staff-facing iMIS Assistant and the AI Content Creator in RiSE — and a first combined flagship is the natural stage for showing where its Engagement Management System goes next.

ASI arrives with momentum to present: iMIS has been named a G2 Leader in association management software for nine consecutive years as of Spring 2026, and the company publishes the sector’s long-running Membership Performance Benchmark Report, now in its eleventh edition. For UK teams weighing the trip, the calculation is whether four days in Arlington — a short hop from Washington DC — buys a year’s worth of roadmap clarity and peer intelligence. For a preview of the AI tooling conversation delegates will walk into, our map of AI in the iMIS ecosystem covers the field.

What happens next

Registration and programme details are live at imisemergence.com, with the event itself opening on 2 November. The signals worth watching from Arlington: what ASI commits to on the EMS roadmap, how much of the AI agenda moves from features to platform, and whether the combined format gives the user community a louder voice or a quieter one. We will report from the other side.