Risk Awareness Week 2026 returns with a challenge to its own profession: risk management is about decisions, not risks

Zurich, Sept. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Risk Awareness Week (RAW), the largest virtual conference on risk-based decision making, returns for its seventh edition on 12–16 October 2026. Since 2019 the fully online event has been attended by more than 21,600 professionals from over 140 countries, and in 2024 FERMA, the Federation of European Risk Management Associations, named it Training and Education Programme of the Year. More than 2,000 professionals have already registered for this year’s programme.

Risk Awareness Week 2026 takes place online from 12 to 16 October. Registration for the two open conference days is free.

RAW is built around one argument: most organisations do risk management without it changing their decisions. Companies maintain risk registers and colour-coded heat maps, review them quarterly and report them to committees, while budgets are still approved as single numbers and projects still run on schedules few people believe. Fewer than one in five organisations say their risk management provides strategic advantage, according to North Carolina State University’s annual ERM survey, and Gartner research puts the share of leaders who rate their risk processes as highly effective at nine percent.

The conference focuses on the alternative: putting credible numbers on uncertainty and using them where decisions are made, in budgets, forecasts, projects, contracts and insurance.

The two open days, 12 and 13 October, feature 30-minute sessions with live Q&A. Sam Savage, author of The Flaw of Averages, explains why project budgets are wrong before construction starts. Grant Purdy speaks on gaining advantage from the unexpected. Platform strategist Sangeet Paul Choudary opens the conference on misreading uncertainty in industries where the rules are being rewritten. Norman Marks debates the role of the risk officer when AI runs the business, and retired CIA officer Robert Ivey examines why traditional risk management fails no matter how hard teams try. Other sessions cover AI governance in the boardroom, supply chain decisions, quantitative methods and new COSO research on making enterprise risk management useful for decisions.

From 14 to 16 October, premium participants join three-hour hands-on workshops where they build working tools on their own data, including an AI policy analyser for insurance renewals, quantitative models for project contingencies and business plans, a digital twin of an operation, and risk integration in procurement and contract management. Workshop attendance includes CPD credits.

All sessions are broadcast at scheduled times and available afterwards as replays. This year the open sessions will also be available with AI dubbing in Spanish, a language chosen by registrants’ vote.

“Every plan is a bet, and most companies don’t know the odds,” said Alex Sidorenko, founder of Risk Awareness Week and FERMA Risk Manager of the Year 2021. “Our profession spent twenty years documenting risks after decisions were already made. AI now writes those documents in minutes. What’s left, and what actually matters, is analysis that changes a decision before it’s taken. That’s what this week is about, and it’s why a growing share of our audience isn’t risk managers at all, but finance, procurement and project people who have to make those decisions.”

Event details
Risk Awareness Week 2026 · 12–16 October 2026 · fully online
Programme: 2026.riskawarenessweek.com/schedule
Speakers: 2026.riskawarenessweek.com/speakers
Registration (open days free): 2026.riskawarenessweek.com

About Risk Awareness Week
Risk Awareness Week is an annual virtual conference on risk-based decision making, held every October since 2019. It brings together practitioners and researchers in risk management, decision science, insurance and finance to show how organisations can quantify uncertainty and use it in real business decisions. The event is self-funded and organised by RISK-ACADEMY. More than 21,600 professionals from over 140 countries have attended since 2019. In 2024, FERMA named Risk Awareness Week its Training and Education Programme of the Year.

Alex Sidorenko, founder of Risk Awareness Week and FERMA Risk Manager of the Year 2021.

Press Inquiries

Alex Sidorenko
alex.ausrisk [at] gmail.com
https://2026.riskawarenessweek.com
Phoenix Business Centre, The Penthouse, Old Railway Track

A video accompanying this announcement is available here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zg5moDT3o7o