The golden rule of real estate – “location, location, location” – now tells only part of the investment story. Real estate is no longer a system that can be explained solely through the cost of capital and the balance between supply and demand. A new set of higher-order forces has entered the equation with full force: global geopolitics, cybersecurity, the energy transition, technological development, and the impact of nature on the long-term value of assets. These are precisely the themes around which the ULI Poland 2026 conference, “MATRIX OF REAL ESTATE,” has been built. The event will take place on 15–16 April at Fabryka Norblina in Warsaw. Property Forum is supporting the event as Media Partner.
“This year’s conference is a direct response to the need to understand the market’s new ‘Matrix.’ We want to equip industry leaders with the insight and tools needed to navigate a reality in which geopolitics, digital security, and the laws of nature now operate in the same league as financial indicators,” says Marcin Juszczyk, Chair of ULI Poland.
The event will open with Andrew Baum, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford, whose keynote, “Cycles, shocks and tech waves: what next?”, will take participants on a journey through the technological waves and macroeconomic shocks that are permanently reshaping the way real estate is understood as an asset class.
From the global chessboard to interest rates
Geopolitics will form another major pillar of the programme. One of the conference’s most distinguished guests will be Mark Brzezinski, former U.S. Ambassador to Poland. His keynote, followed by a fireside chat with Lejb Fogelman of Greenberg Traurig, will demonstrate that questions about the future of the industry now extend far beyond fund appetite. They reach directly into the broader political, economic and security framework within which capital must operate.
Another key item on the agenda will be the investment panel “Will 2026 be a Groundhog Day in the CEE investment markets?”, devoted to the condition of the investment market in Central and Eastern Europe and the question of whether 2026 will bring a return to familiar patterns or a genuinely new balance of power. The discussion will be introduced by Simon Durkin, CEO of ULI Europe.
The digital and energy risk frontier
The agenda of ULI Poland’s annual conference moves decisively into areas that, only a few years ago, many investors still viewed as peripheral. Sarah Armstrong-Smith, former Chief of Security at Microsoft, will speak about cyber threats, making it clear that this is no longer merely an IT issue, but a real risk affecting trust and decision-making at the highest levels of management.
One of the programme points that most clearly illustrates how energy security, infrastructure transformation and the development of the most demanding real estate sectors are increasingly intertwined within this new risk architecture is the “Atomic panel – energy transformation, data centers.” Among the participants will be Wojciech Wrochna, Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure and Secretary of State at the Ministry of Energy.
The city as a living ecosystem
A programme of this scale could not overlook the urban fabric itself and the people who shape it. Ditte Lysgaard Vind of Denmark’s BLOXHUB will speak about building urban resilience. A separate session, moderated by Adam Czerniak, Deputy President of National Real Estate Stock, will shed light on how demographic and social change is reshaping the housing sector. The conference will also host the long-awaited launch of the ULI Poland report “Urban Destinations projects in Poland.”
Bringing the entire event together will be a thought-provoking keynote by Kirsty Wilman, Chair of the Investment Committee and Chief Operating Officer at Rebalance Earth: “The Real Foundation – Nature’s Hidden Role in Real Estate Value.” The session captures the underlying logic of the entire gathering at Fabryka Norblina. Real estate is inseparable from a wider system of dependencies in which asset value is no longer determined solely by physical structures and market parameters, but also by resilience, cybersecurity, access to energy, and the quality of the natural environment.
The ULI Poland Conference 2026, “MATRIX OF REAL ESTATE,” will take place on 15 and 16 April 2026 at the Event Hall at Fabryka Norblina in Warsaw. The programme will also include site tours on the first day and a full conference session on the second day. Registration is now open on the event website: https://poland.uli.org/events/detail/E5CB6BFF-319D-49D8-91BE-CE757B4F2423/
