Jewellery Show London 2026 Programme: Sessions Retailers Should Attend

The current official programme for Wednesday 2 September 2026 is:

All eight sessions are currently listed for the Innovation Theatre. The organiser is still inviting visitors to check back for programme and speaker updates, so timings should be confirmed again shortly before attending.

The first discussion of the day begins at 10:00 and looks at how perceptions of jewellery value are changing in an environment of strong precious-metal prices. The programme raises questions around reduced gold weight, alternative materials and how designers and businesses may respond when material costs affect what can be produced at familiar price points. Speakers currently listed include David Brough, Jayant Raniga, Himanshu Shah, Pippa Small, Cora Sheibani and Babette Wasserman.

For retailers, the subject goes much further than the wholesale price of gold. When the cost of producing jewellery rises, businesses have to decide whether to increase retail prices, adjust product weight, change the assortment or accept pressure on margin. Customers may also reassess what represents good value. A shopper who once compared two pieces largely on size may begin placing more weight on design, craftsmanship, brand or versatility when precious-metal prices increase.

That makes this a particularly useful opening session for owners and buyers. It should also give them something practical to take onto the exhibition floor. Instead of simply asking suppliers what is new, buyers can ask how collections are being adapted to changing material costs and whether those changes affect weight, design, pricing or replenishment.

At 10:40, the programme turns to counterfeit precious-metal jewellery and hallmarking. Scott Walter of the Edinburgh Assay Office and Will Evans of the London Assay Office are listed alongside David Brough for the discussion. The organiser frames the session around the growth of online purchasing and the challenge of counterfeit precious-metal products reaching consumers.

This is relevant even to retailers that have never considered counterfeit jewellery to be a direct part of their business. Established jewellers increasingly compete in search results, marketplaces and social feeds with sellers customers know very little about. The consumer looking at two visually similar gold products online may not immediately understand why one costs substantially more than the other.

Hallmarking therefore sits at the intersection of compliance and trust. Retailers need to understand their obligations, but there is also a communication opportunity. Explaining clearly what a hallmark means and why it matters can give customers another reason to distinguish a reputable jewellery business from an unknown online seller.

For ecommerce teams in particular, this session may be worth attending with the customer journey in mind. The useful question afterwards is not simply whether the business complies with hallmarking requirements, but whether customers can actually understand the reassurance that compliance provides.

The 11:20 session is likely to be one of the most relevant discussions for businesses that sell natural diamonds. The current speaker list includes representatives connected with the London Diamond Bourse, the Natural Diamond Council and Antwerp Cut, and the programme frames the discussion around improving the reach and effectiveness of natural diamond marketing while consumers have greater exposure to laboratory-grown alternatives.

The retail challenge here is interesting because basic product education is no longer difficult to find. A customer can learn what the 4Cs mean before walking into a store. They can compare specifications, certification terminology and prices across dozens of websites without speaking to a jeweller.

That changes what good diamond marketing needs to achieve. A retailer still has to explain the stone accurately, but it also needs to communicate why the diamond is relevant to this particular purchase and why the customer should trust this particular business. Provenance, rarity, design, service, expertise and the experience surrounding the purchase can all become part of the value proposition.

Retailers attending this session should listen for ideas they could realistically use rather than looking for a single industry-wide message. A successful independent jeweller, a bridal specialist and a large multi-category retailer may all need to speak about natural diamonds differently.

At 12:00, the programme asks how artificial intelligence could transform the UK jewellery and gemstone industry. The official description specifically points towards retail customer service, employment and operating systems across the supply chain. David Brough, Harriet Kelsall and Ana Thompson are currently shown on the session listing.

AI discussions can quickly become too broad to be useful. For a retailer, the better way to approach this session is to listen for processes rather than predictions. Could customer enquiries be handled more efficiently? Could staff retrieve product information faster? Could AI improve search and product discovery on an ecommerce site? Could it assist merchandising, reporting, marketing or internal administration?

A useful outcome does not require transforming the whole company. Finding one repetitive process that could be handled better may be more valuable than returning from a conference with a list of twenty AI tools nobody has time to implement.

There is also a reason retailers should pay attention to the limitations discussed. Jewellery purchases often involve trust, emotion and high-value decisions. Efficiency matters, but removing human expertise from the wrong part of the customer journey could make an experience worse rather than better.

After the midday break, the programme moves into security. The 13:20–14:05 Security and Crime Prevention Briefing focuses on organised crime groups targeting the jewellery trade. The current programme refers to input from the SaferGems intelligence initiative and Metropolitan Police Flying Squad officers, with Andy Fairbanks of UK Protection and Sarah Staff of SaferGems and SaferCash listed among the speakers.

For a physical jewellery retailer, this is not an abstract industry discussion. High-value inventory, staff routines, opening and closing procedures, suspicious behaviour and the movement of stock all create risks that ordinary retailers do not face in quite the same way.

Security procedures can also become invisible when they are followed every day. A team may know what it normally does without having recently questioned whether those procedures still reflect current methods used by organised criminals. Hearing about real patterns affecting the trade can provide a reason to review practices that have simply become routine.

Owners and store managers may therefore decide that this 45-minute session is more valuable than another 45 minutes of browsing products. A new collection may create sales opportunities. A security weakness can put the entire business and its people at risk.

The programme becomes particularly commercial again at 14:15 with Beyond the Safe: Rethinking Diamond Inventory in 2026. Ruth Faulkner, Managing Editor of Retail Jeweller, is currently listed for the session. The organiser describes the discussion around a long-standing assumption in the diamond business: that holding significant stock is essential for credibility and sales. It then asks whether that model still makes sense when capital, customer expectations and commercial resilience are considered.

This is an important question because diamonds create unusually specific inventory demands. A customer may want an oval rather than a round, a particular carat range, a narrow combination of colour and clarity, a specific certification route and a budget that cannot move much. Holding every possible combination is unrealistic, yet having too little available can also make it difficult to close a sale.

The strategic issue is therefore not simply how much stock to buy. It is deciding what the business genuinely needs to own and what it needs to be able to source reliably.

That distinction should be especially useful for buyers attending the Jewellery Show. Once the session finishes, supplier conversations can become much more precise. Instead of assessing only the stones currently available on a stand, ask how quickly a supplier can respond when a customer requests a specification you do not hold yourself. The depth and reliability of that sourcing relationship can influence how much capital the retailer needs to keep tied up in inventory.

At 14:55, the programme looks at the delivery of watches and jewellery. Charles Turner of Malca-Amit UK, Simon Dawes of TH March and Paul Smith of the National Association of Jewellers are currently listed for Luxury Delivered Securely: Raising the Standard for Watch & Jewellery Deliveries. The session is positioned around the tension between customers expecting speed and businesses needing to protect high-value products in transit.

This has become increasingly relevant as jewellery retailers expand online. Customers who are accustomed to fast ecommerce fulfilment do not necessarily lower those expectations because the parcel contains a diamond ring or luxury watch. Yet high-value jewellery cannot be treated exactly like an ordinary consumer delivery.

For retailers, delivery therefore forms part of both risk management and brand experience. Insurance, tracking, handover procedures, packaging, customer communication and failed deliveries can all affect how secure and premium the purchase feels after payment has been made.

An ecommerce business that spends heavily acquiring a customer but gives little thought to the final handover risks weakening the experience at exactly the point when trust matters most.

The final currently listed Day 1 session starts at 15:35 and is titled AI & Marketing, with Ashley Taylor of r3brand listed as the speaker.

It is worth distinguishing this from the earlier AI session. The midday discussion looks at the broader implications of AI across the jewellery and gemstone sector. The afternoon session is positioned specifically around marketing.

For retailers, that should make the conversation more immediate. AI is already changing how content can be produced, how customer data can be analysed and how people discover products online. Search itself is changing as consumers increasingly receive answers and recommendations through AI-assisted experiences rather than following the traditional path from keyword to blue link to website.

The risk is using AI simply because it makes more marketing possible. Producing twice as many product descriptions or social posts is not automatically useful if the material is generic, inaccurate or indistinguishable from everyone else’s.

Jewellery businesses should listen for ways AI can improve relevance, speed or insight while retaining the product knowledge and human judgement that make specialist retail credible.

This part needs to be handled carefully because the programme is still developing.

The Jewellery Show’s current conference page says the Day 1 programme is live and asks visitors to keep checking for further programme and speaker updates. It also currently displays two entries for Thursday 3 September. The first, at 12:00–12:30, still has a session title to be announced and currently lists José Alberto López Montemayor of Rhino Artisan and Rafael del Molino of 2Shapes. The second, scheduled for 14:45–15:15, is Certified Brilliance: EVA Diamonds’ Standard for Lab-Grown Luxury & Global Partnership.

That means buyers should not treat the present Day 2 listing as a finished timetable. If Thursday is your main day at the show, check the official programme again shortly before travelling. New sessions, speakers or timetable changes may still be added.

The easiest way to choose is to begin with the business problem rather than the speaker list.

A retailer dealing with pressure from precious-metal costs may find the opening discussion immediately relevant. A business heavily invested in natural diamond sales has an obvious reason to consider the natural diamond marketing session, while a diamond buyer concerned about working capital may find the inventory discussion more commercially useful. Physical store operators have a strong reason to pay attention to the crime-prevention briefing, while ecommerce businesses can connect the hallmarking, AI, delivery and marketing sessions to different stages of their customer journey.

The same principle applies when several people from one company attend. There is little benefit in sending the entire team to the same session simply because the topic sounds important. A buyer can continue meeting suppliers while an ecommerce manager attends a digital session and a senior manager sits in on security. Comparing notes afterwards can give the business much broader coverage of the show.

The programme should support the buying day rather than consume it.

One of the easiest ways to make a Jewellery Show visit less productive is to plan too much. A buyer can identify four useful conference sessions, arrange six supplier meetings, shortlist another ten exhibitors and still expect to spend time walking the rest of the show. In practice, that often means rushing between appointments and not giving the most important conversations enough attention.

A better approach is to decide which parts of the day genuinely need to be fixed before arriving. Two important supplier appointments and one programme session connected to a current business challenge may be more valuable than trying to attend every interesting talk. Shortlisted exhibitors can then be fitted around those priorities, while some time should remain deliberately open for finding businesses or products that were not on the original plan.

All of the programme entries currently published are listed for the Innovation Theatre, while the 2026 exhibitor directory includes a broad mix of jewellery, diamond, gemstone, technology and trade-service businesses. Uniglo Diamonds (Antwerp), for example, remains confirmed at Stand B41.

Allow sensible gaps between a conference session and a meeting that matters. The objective is not to prove that you covered the largest possible amount of Olympia in one day. It is to leave with better information, better supplier conversations and clearer decisions than you had when you arrived.

The value of the conference programme does not have to end when a session finishes. Some of the best questions to ask exhibitors may come directly from what you have just heard.

After the discussion about precious-metal prices, a retailer could ask a jewellery manufacturer how it is protecting commercially important price points. After the natural diamond marketing session, the conversation might shift towards which diamond shapes, sizes or qualities customers are requesting most often. The inventory session naturally raises questions about sourcing speed and how reliably a supplier can fulfil specifications that the retailer does not want to own permanently.

This is where the programme and exhibition floor start working together rather than competing for time.

For buyers who are reviewing diamond supply, Uniglo Diamonds (Antwerp) will be at Stand B41. A useful meeting would start with actual requirements: the shapes or specifications that are difficult to source, the types of diamonds customers repeatedly request, or the inventory gaps the retailer would rather support through a supplier relationship than fill with additional stock.

The strongest Jewellery Show itinerary is unlikely to be the one containing the most sessions.

The useful sessions are the ones that connect with something the business needs to understand now. If precious-metal pricing is changing the assortment, there is a discussion for that. If the business depends on natural diamond sales, marketing and inventory deserve attention. If you operate a physical store, security should be difficult to dismiss. If ecommerce is growing quickly, hallmarking, AI and secure delivery all touch different parts of the customer experience.

Choose those discussions first, then protect enough time to buy.

A conference session should sharpen the questions you ask when you return to the exhibition floor. If it does that, thirty minutes away from the showcases has probably been time well spent.

For retailers reviewing their diamond sourcing at the show, Uniglo Diamonds (Antwerp) will be at Stand B41. Arrange a meeting around your priority programme sessions and bring the diamond requirements you want to discuss.