Research conducted June 2026. Groups within ~1 hour of BS36 (South Gloucestershire). All events are free unless noted.
See the full interactive table and analysis in the HTML version of this note.
1. Bristol Machine Learning Meetup — 900+ members. Purely technical focus, talks recorded. Hosted rotating venues (most recently Berkeley Square, 470 Bath Rd). Monthly approx. Free. meetup.com/bristol-machine-learning
2. Bath Machine Learning (BathML) — 750+ members. Founded 2016. Monthly. Talks + workshops. Guild Coworking Hub, Bath. Sponsored by Mango Solutions. Free. bathml.org / meetup.com/BathML / Discord: discord.gg/kFxZ6YmQJy
3. PyData Bristol — 1,065 members. Bristol chapter of NumFOCUS international network. Quarterly-ish. Python, data science, ML, NLP. Free. meetup.com/pydata-bristol
4. Data Bristol — 1,600+ members. Broad data engineering, AI/ML, BI, cloud. Monthly. Rotating Bristol venues (iO Associates etc). Sponsors: iO Associates, Advancing Analytics, Amdaris. Free. meetup.com/databristol
5. Databricks Bristol Meetup — New (2026). Quarterly. Data engineering, Lakehouse, AI/ML pipelines. iO Associates, St Bartholomew's House, Bristol BS1 2NH. Run by Advancing Analytics + iO Associates. Free. meetup.com/databricks-bristol / usergroups.databricks.com/bristol-databricks-meetup
6. Mindstone Bristol AI Meetup — Monthly. LLMs, AI product building, productivity. Bristol city centre (venue varies). Free (RSVP via community.mindstone.com). meetup.com/mindstone-bristol-ai-meetup
7. Bristol AI Ethics — Monthly. AI ethics, governance, societal impact. Torchbox, 15 Colston Street, Bristol. Free. meetup.com/bristol-ai-ethics
8. Bristol Data Intelligence Network — Periodic. R, Python, data analytics, process automation. DeskLodge House, 2 Redcliffe Way, Bristol. Organised by Datacove. Free. meetup.com/bristol-data-intelligence-network
9. South West Data Social — Monthly (2nd Tuesday). Informal networking for data professionals. Watershed, Bristol. Organiser: Frank Kelly. Free. meetup.com/south-west-data
10. Create With: Bristol AI Meetup — Periodic. AI agents, automations, no-code/vibe-coding. Future Space Bristol. Free. createwith.com
Bristol Data Week — Annual, June. Free week-long festival run by Jean Golding Institute (University of Bristol). Workshops, talks, training on data science and AI. bristol.ac.uk/golding/events/data-week
Jean Golding Institute Turing Seminar Series — Ongoing. Academic talks on cutting-edge data science and AI research. University of Bristol.
Create With Annual Conference — Annual, May (Brighton). UK flagship conference for AI agents and vibe-coded software. 600+ attendees.
Next event dates change frequently; check meetup.com or the group's own site before attending. Attendance figures and cost based on publicly available information at time of research.