Sheffield Innovation Spine launch the city’s first Open Doors Innovation Festival
Open Doors is a city-centre-wide festival for curious people to experience Sheffield's urban innovation district on 20 October 2026, following the Spine Guide app.
Seven venues in Sheffield Innovation Spine are to open their doors to the public, celebrating the groundbreaking ideas, technology, and people shaping the region’s future.
Functioning much like a classic 'Open Studios' or 'Open Gardens' event, Open Doors invites festival-goers to step inside specialist spaces and meet the scientists, student entrepreneurs, technical experts, and deep-tech founders solving real-world challenges right here in South Yorkshire.
A trail of immersive experiences and hands-on demos
On 20 October, festival-goers can follow an interactive walking route using the official event app, unlocking exclusive stories from Sheffield’s innovators and collecting leaderboard points along the way. Venue highlights include:
Sheffield Hallam University (Strines Building): Step inside the 360-degree 'Igloo' immersive environment to experience place-inspired films, and tour the 144-camera photogrammetry suite used to create 3D models for gaming, fashion, and biomechanics.
Electric Works: Meet local tech entrepreneurs and business advisers, and experience the venue’s famous three-storey helter-skelter slide – "7 seconds of pure exhilaration".
Sheffield Technology Parks (Cooper Building): Try out live inventions in the tech incubator and explore labs housing early-stage startups.
Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub (UKSE Innovation Centre): Meet Dr Rachel Smith, Senior Enterprise Manager, to learn how national engineering networks support local innovators building global, green and growing businesses.
University of Sheffield Engineering Heartspace: Step inside the Siemens Digital Innovation Zone "living lab," and help test next-generation products spinning out of the university.
University of Sheffield Ella Armitage: Explore the Emerge Startup Studio product showcase. Meet academics, students and entrepreneurs generating game-changing solutions to societal and industrial challenges.
Pennine Five: Tour deep-tech labs, get live product demos from scale-ups like Exciting Instruments and FourJaw, record a Vox Pop in the podcast studio, and take in panoramic city views from the top of Block One.
Tom Wolfenden, CEO, Sheffield Technology Parks, said, "Sheffield Innovation Spine is a hot spot for well-paid jobs, opportunity and collaboration in the centre of Sheffield. Open Doors on 20 October will give people, who until now, might not know much about what happens here, the opportunity to peek inside and learn more about our founders, problem solvers, and the wider innovation community.
“This type of event is important because the Spine is somewhere people live, work and visit. It isn't a ‘project’. It’s a ‘place’. And it belongs to the communities that use it - creating real value for our city, by stimulating investment, new developments and job opportunities. Open Doors brings people together to explore the Spine in new ways.
“The Spine is a live urban innovation district - celebrating people doing incredible things and we are excited to be working with venues across the city to open up spaces and share what we’re doing with curious residents, students, workers and visitors. Download the app and follow the route of the Spine on 20 October - come on in!”
Open Doors is free, fully accessible, and open to everyone. To join the trail on Tuesday 20 October, visitors are encouraged to download the ‘Spine Guide’ app today for Android or register to be sent the app for iOS here: https://www.sheffieldinnovationspine.com/open-doors.
The app serves as a digital guide, offering location-based unlockable content and a selection of new, previously unheard, founder stories. As explorers move along the Spine trail, they can "tap" in at venue checkpoints to earn points, unlock hidden content, and compete with friends on the festival leaderboard. Leaderboard entrants aged over 16 can ‘opt in’ and enter into a prize draw with the chance to win a £100 city centre gift card donated by Sheffield Business Improvement District (BID). The gift card can be used in Sheffield city centre hospitality venues and retail stores.
Spanning 190 acres across five mixed-use neighbourhoods, bookended by two world-class universities, the Spine is an energised urban innovation district in Sheffield city centre. It is home to university spinouts, scaling tech firms, and specialist workspaces. This is the first time that Spine venues have collaborated to open their doors to the public in this way, activating a new wave of community engagement. The Open Doors event on 20 October will kick start three days of fringe events around TECH SY’s Northern Tech Summit, which is set to attract businesses, policy makers, investors and place-based leaders to Sheffield this October.
Open Doors is delivered through a unique collaboration between organisations, communities and venues with a shared purpose; to champion inclusive innovation, inspire and connect people with opportunities across Sheffield’s urban innovation district. It is delivered by TECH SY, University of Sheffield, Business Sheffield, Electric Works, Sheffield Hallam University, Emerge, Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub, Pennine Five, Sheffield Technology Parks, Llama Digital and convened by Sheffield Innovation Spine.