Innovation is at the heart of growth for Milton Keynes, one of the UK’s fastest developing cities. In the week 22-26 September, Milton Keynes cemented its position as the UK’s home of technology and innovation in an event organised by Milton Keynes City Council.
This was a trailblazing week for the tech gurus of Milton Keynes and beyond, who came together to celebrate the world of artificial intelligence, robotics, and emerging technologies. The programme saw a lineup of entrepreneurs, students, and industry leaders from global businesses.
It was a show-stopping event full of keynote speakers, interactive workshops, live demonstrations, conferences, and a long-awaited dive into the cutting edge technologies of the future. But what really happened at this year’s Milton Keynes Tech Week 2025?
Milton Keynes Tech Week 2025
MK Tech Week 2025 saw a fantastic round up of companies from the tech and innovation sectors. All displayed their innovative ideas at the city centre’s most exciting venues, including MK:U Innovative Hub, Aiimi HQ, centre:MK, X+Why Unity Place, and landmark locations like Bletchley Park, The National Museum of Computing, and The Open University.
Global businesses like Aiimi, Santander, NatWest Accelerator, Red Bull Advanced Technologies, and Smart City Consultancy, were among the many companies who brought the spotlight to Milton Keynes. These global businesses are based in Milton Keynes and they demonstrated of some of their latest works in locations across their hometown.
The event’s itinerary
The week began with an inspiring talk by RedBull Advanced Technologies, who demonstrated how they apply technology to the Formula One development cycle. Their talks also included an overview of how they built the RB17 – the world’s next hypercar which made its debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed – as well as how they are engaging with grassroots communities to inspire the next generation of local engineers.
The excitement for Tech Week grew over the course of the event, with interactive sessions, inspirational talks, business networking events, and tech summits.
For robot enthusiasts, Smart City Consultancy hosted their robotics competition which featured team challenges, a tech exhibition, an evening symposium, and robot demonstrations. The competition brought teams from across the UK and Europe to the centre of Milton Keynes, to test their tech robots in tackling real world tasks such as delivering coffee orders and flying drones.
What inspired MK Tech Week?
The event builds on the success of last year’s Artificial Intelligence Festival, which caught the attention of over 2,000 people. That event, just like this year’s Tech Week, brought together tech experts and businesses to showcase groundbreaking technologies that the city will benefit from in future years.
It followed the same format as the UK Government’s global AI Safety Summit, held at Bletchley Park in 2023, where leaders from all over the world and tech lovers alike came together to discuss the future of AI.
The aim of MK Tech Week & tech summits in Milton Keynes
Part of the reason for hosting events like Tech Week is to highlight Milton Keynes as an AI hub and home to technological innovation and smart city living.
Milton Keynes was granted city status in 2022, and since then has had an ambition to become one of the UK’s fastest growing smart cities. Events like Tech Week and the MK AI festival aim to further cement the city’s role in the tech sector. Currently, one in three jobs in the city is linked to tech, with over 2,400 tech businesses generating £3.4bn annually.
Speaking before this year’s MK Tech Week began, Cabinet Member for Planning and Placemaking, Councillor Shanika Mahendran said:
“Milton Keynes is where the future is being designed and created. We’re really looking forward to showcasing what brilliant minds are working on in MK and the country in Tech Week, through a really exciting programme that ranges from robotics, to AI, to national security, and gaming”.
Long term vision for Milton Keynes
Since the Bletchley Declaration – the first multinational agreement on the future of artificial intelligence – was signed at Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes has aimed to build on this to further establish the city’s reputation as a leading UK tech city.
Plans include making Milton Keynes a smart city, defined as “the use of digital technology and data to improve places by providing citizens with social, economic, and environmental benefits”.
To meet this target, the city intends to enhance local strength in AI, data science, smart city technologies, robotics, and advanced communications. For more detail on how they plan to do this, click here.
Comments? We want to hear them. Please write to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
