---
# How the Speaking Industry Got Weird This Year: 26 Contradictions for 2026

**URL:** https://jimcarroll.com/2026/05/how-the-speaking-industry-got-weird-this-year-26-contradictions-for-2026/
Date: 2026-05-04
Author: JimCarroll
Post Type: post
Summary: I sent out my monthly bureau blast to the 250 agents at the 40 or so speaker bureaus who have booked me at one time or another over the last 33 years. It’s below. It’s weird. I’ve taken to opening many of my recent keynotes in the last few months with the observation: “The future […]
Categories: Blog
Featured Image: https://jimcarroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Futurist-Jim-Carroll.jpg
---

I sent out my monthly bureau blast to the 250 agents at the 40 or so speaker bureaus who have booked me at one time or another over the last 33 years. It's below. It's weird.

![](https://jimcarroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Futurist-Jim-Carroll.jpg)

I've taken to opening many of my recent keynotes in the last few months with the observation: "*The future is weird."*

It's certainly weird when I'm speaking at a healthcare conference about the future of medical science, at the same time that medical science is attacked as a conspiracy. An energy conference talking about fast-moving renewable technologies - yet renewable technology is being cancelled with billion-dollar payouts. The future of high-tech farming to boost yields, at the same time that crops can't be sold to China.

It's pretty weird being a futurist right now because the future is, well, weird.

I'm sure you agree: 2026 is pretty wild so far. War, geopolitical uncertainty, a stock market that is up while consumer confidence crashes, and workforce job losses as companies scream about a talent war.

Weird.

And here's what's also weird - the industry in which we work.

Think about what we are faced with. DEI still sells, but it's not DEI anymore. Everyone is saying that the keynote is dead, but everyone keeps booking keynotes. Bureaus are in the midst of a consolidation phase, but insiders will privately say consolidation isn't working.

I've been thinking about all these contradictions for the last few months, and finally decided to try to piece them together. I spent some time going through the spring newsletters from several major bureaus, as well as meetings-industry trade publications — *Skift Meetings, Northstar/Cvent PULSE, Amex GBT's Forecast.* Working through this (*yes, with a little bit of help from AI*), and I come away convinced we are living through the best of times and the worst of times.

Read through the list, and see if you agree. I'm sure you find yourself smack-dab in the middle of many of these contradictions of 2026.

**1. We've stopped booking DEI speakers. We're booking more DEI speakers than ever.** The label was quietly retired across most bureau listings in favor of new words and phrases like "*Belonging,*" "*Human-Centered Performance*," and — my favorite — "*Equitable AI.*" Same talent, new labels. The industry is good at flying under the radar if anything!

**2. Audiences are exhausted by AI keynotes. Planners are booking AI keynotes at record rates.** *AI fatigue is real, but AI demand is not slowing*. But it's moved into a new phase - the speakers winning aren't doing software demos, they're treating AI as a leadership issue. The bar moved. The topic didn't.

**3. Lead times have collapsed. Yet top speakers are booked 18 months out.** Many bureaus and meeting planners are reporting that most mid-tier engagements now land in 4–8 week windows. Yet top names are sold out through year-end. The lesson? It's a frantic hustle in the middle, and yet reputation is an easy sell at the top.

**4. Bureaus are consolidating. Bureau insiders say consolidation isn't working.** Big bureaus are seeing the impact of big equity as private equity money keeps flowing in. Meanwhile, the agents inside those deals will tell you off the record that the synergies aren't materializing, the relationships are getting lost in the merger, and the speakers and meeting planners who work with the legacy bureaus aren't finding the new entities any easier to work with.

**5. Audiences want speakers to provide economic and political certainty. Yet the economy and politics are more volatile and unpredictable than ever before.** Tariffs change weekly. Wars start on a Friday. AI capability shifts faster than any keynote can describe it. It's an economic downturn on Tuesday and a growth economy on Thursday. Economic and political speakers booking the most dates purport to provide a pathway to deal with this reality, but often offer up a wild guess. Why does it sell? It seems every audience needs a thesis that they can take back to the office Monday morning. *Volatility is the new normal, and volatility sells keynotes.*

**6. Speakers are selling AI clones of themselves while new contract terms restrict AI cloning.** Did you see the lawsuit Taylor Swift just filed to protect her likeness? The same challenge is emerging in our industry. Check out TJ Walker's Digital Speaker Exchange - a startup to represent synthetic speakers exclusively. At the same time, the NO FAKES Act is moving through Congress. How will this unfold?

**7. The Middle East is at war. The Middle East is the hottest event region in the world.** LEAP Riyadh. LEAP East Hong Kong. Saudi Vision 2030. D33 Dubai. Huge events in a region at war. Or is it at war? Is it over? Is it still underway? Is the region safe, or not? Who knows. What we do know is that force-majeure clauses are being rewritten in real time,  and the calendars in the region keep filling.

**8. The keynote market has never been bigger. The keynote format is losing its best talent.** Sitting CEOs, top scientists, working academics, and top speakers are increasingly saying no to the 60-minute keynote. They'd rather do an interview, a private dinner, or work through a panel. The keynote format is still winning the market, and yet everyone complains about it. Weird.

**9. Speaker fees are stable on paper. Speaker fees are decreasing in practice.** Published rates have barely moved. (Mine haven't.) But there's no doubt that mid-tier speakers are being squeezed by budget challenges. The story behind all this is that everyone is prepared to negotiate - to a point. We just don't talk about it much.

**10. Industry optimism is at a five-year high. Industry pessimism is at a five-year high.** Amex's Global Business Travel group pegs meetings-pro optimism at 85%. At the same time, the March Northstar/Cvent PULSE says pessimists outnumber optimists for the first time in years. Both are credible. Bureaus and speakers? We're wildly optimistic at one moment, and drop-dead pessimistic at the next.

**11. Event budgets are up. Speaker budgets are down.** Cvent says event budgets are climbing 5–14%. Cost-per-attendee is climbing the same. To counter, planners are protecting venue costs and F&B, and are hacking away at speaker fees. Even so, they want more for less. Oh, and at the same time, many will still book the $100,000 headliner. Weird.

**12. The bureau business is a relationship business. The bureau's business is neglecting its relationships.** In 2026, it's pretty clear that agents chase whoever's hot. The speaker who's delivered for the agency for a decade gets fewer callbacks than the LinkedIn creator who broke last quarter. The bias to 'hot' new names is now structural. *At the same time, the roster that built the agency's reputation is the part of the agency most likely to be ghosted. *Out of sight, out of mind — but is that strategically wise?

**13. A 60-minute keynote wins the booking. A 60-second clip drives the next ten.** There is no such thing as an '*attention span*' anymore. Bureaus pitch the deep expertise of the speaker delivering the talk, but planners hire from a short LinkedIn clip. Speakers are now optimizing for shareable moments — a punchline, a quotable phrase, a hook the audience will post — because that's what gets the next gig. The 60-minute craft is being shaped by the 60-second metric.

**14. The bureau business runs on long relationships. Nobody at the bureau has been there long enough to remember.** Turnover at every level. The agent who booked you in 2022 is now at a competitor or out of the industry entirely. The new agent inherited the file but not the context or experience. Speakers are introducing themselves to their own bureaus every six months. Institutional memory used to be the bureau's competitive advantage. Now it's the speaker's burden.

**15. Speaker bureaus do the work speaker bureaus have always done. Speaker agents now do the work that speaker bureaus used to do.** A new tier has emerged — the solo or boutique speaker agent, often a former bureau insider, working two or three speakers exclusively and offering the white-glove attention bureaus used to be known for. Clients are confused. Bureaus aren't sure whether to compete with agents or partner with them. The lines between roles got blurry just as the booking process got more complicated. Speakers without agents don't know what's what anymore. Weird.
**16. Clients want fireside chats because they're cheaper. Top speakers charge keynote fees for fireside chats because they're harder.** The conversational format used to be the budget option: no slides, less prep, lower stakes. Now, top speakers price interview-style sessions at keynote rates because it takes a lot of work! Nailing a 30-minute Q&A in front of a live audience is more demanding than delivering a polished, prepared talk. The format flipped. The budget didn't.

**17. Meeting planners want shorter sessions. Sponsors are paying for longer ones.** Freeman's April research: only 27% of attendees return year-over-year. Average session time is down to 35 minutes. Why? People seem to be tuning out of long-form content formats. Yet at the same time, sponsors still pay for keynote-plus-breakout-plus-panel plus longer sessions.

**18. Organizations are saying one thing in public. They're booking another thing in private.** Climate change disappeared from corporate homepages, yet climate-strategy keynotes are filling private leadership off-sites. Renewables, ESG, sustainable supply chain— they are all actively discussed inside the company but carefully scrubbed from outside it. *The bureaus winning these bookings have learned not to mention them in the case study. Hiding the topic is the new clarity.*

**19. Bureaus think the path forward is signing new speakers. New speakers can't get any attention because there are too many of them.** Every bureau is expanding its roster. Every roster page now scrolls forever. The agent who signs ten new names this quarter has ten new names competing for the same number of finite gigs — and competing with the legacy roster already there. Clients want simplicity, but bureaus just keep adding on complexity. Bottom line? More inventory in a crowded market just means more inventory.

**20. Force majeure is being invoked more often than ever. Force majeure covers less than ever.** Many event industry experts warn that post-Iran-conflict, any future Middle East war may fail the 'foreseeability' test in most contracts. Everyone is scrutinizing force-majeure clauses to get more certainty, but the very idea of certainty is gone. Speaker contract templates are being reworked in real time, but no one knows what to definitively write.

**21. Every speaker has the same research tools. Every speaker is starting to sound the same.** AI gave the entire industry instant access to the same statistics, the same frameworks, the same case studies. The result: keynote convergence. When everyone starts to sound the same, the speakers winning are the ones with stories AI couldn't have written. Lived experience matters more than ever before.

**22. Speakers are working harder than ever. Speakers are speaking less than ever.** Prep calls. Discovery calls. Customization calls. Audience research. LinkedIn content. Highlight reel approvals. AI tool evaluation. The 60-minute keynote now requires 20 hours of supporting work that didn't exist five years ago — and the fee per stage hour is flat. The job got bigger. The pay didn't.

**23. AI is screening speaker proposals. AI is writing speaker proposals.**  Like everyone else, the industry is drowning in AI slop. Both sides of every pitch are now AI-mediated. The relationship between agent and planner is being subjected to all the weirdness that AI introduces into every relationship. What's real? What's not?

**24. Top-tier speakers are scarcer than ever. Speaker supply is exploding.** Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Mel Robbins, Ian Bremmer — sold out. At the same time, the established mid-tier speaker faces competition from these premium speakers and a flood of new speakers willing to "*do it for exposure*." Established speakers (like me) in the middle with track record and mid-tier fees of $25,000–$50,000 now find ourselves in this most dangerous place.

**25. Speaker highlight reels look better than ever. Speaker highlight reels prove less than ever.** Production values are at an all-time high — AI editing, cinematic B-roll, applause added in post. Yet some reels are showing stages the speaker never stood on, and touting experiences that have actually never happened. The result? Bureaus are quietly resurrecting the need for a reference check. Meeting planners are rebelling after a keynote falls flat. The reality? A highly reliable tool used to be for verification. Now it's a suspect in an industry losing touch with reality.

**26. The leadership wisdom market wants 20 years of experience. The hot new supply has 20 months.** LinkedIn trained a generation of creators to write authoritative leadership content without having any leadership experience. They've got 50K+ followers, polished personal brands, and bureau aspirations. Yet few have managed a team, built a company, or carried a P&L. The highlight reels are confident, but the track record is thin. Audiences usually can't tell: until the speaker is in the room.

*If you're trying to resolve all this into a clean path forward, don't bother. *The industry has simply become weird, full of wild contradictions.

All you can do is think about these things and try to figure out a way to navigate through them.

As for me? I'm just quietly doing my work — landing gigs that come through AI search, spending long exploratory calls with clients, riding the word-of-mouth from 33 years in the industry.

**Some of you I haven't heard from in a while. If a client is wrestling with any of these contradictions, give me a shout.**

*Because maybe the most important topic right now is how to navigate a future that is, well, just weird.*

2026? It's the most interesting - and weird - year I've watched in 30 years of doing this.

Onwards.

— Jim

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