Operating Partners Forum Europe 2026

Operating Partners Forum Europe is the leading two-day gathering for portfolio operations executives at private equity firms — operating partners, value-creation leads, portfolio CFOs, ESG operations heads and the rest of the back-end of the PE firm that increasingly drives realized returns. Held in London and produced by PEI Group, the forum has become the default annual peer-benchmarking venue for the European PE operations function.

The agenda concentrates on the practical realities operating partners actually face: the transition from financial engineering to operational alpha as the primary return driver in higher-rate environments; the build-out of dedicated functional centers of excellence (technology, procurement, talent, ESG); the operationalization of ESG and impact programs across portfolios; the data infrastructure required to support cross-portfolio analytics; and the talent question — recruiting, compensating and retaining operating partners and portfolio executives.

A distinctive feature of the forum is closed-door peer roundtables segmented by AUM band and by functional specialty. These are the conversations operating partners can't have at general PE conferences — comparing notes on actual portfolio company KPIs, on specific vendor decisions, on talent compensation benchmarks — and they're the reason the conference has become a fixture on the European PE operations calendar.

Sessions explicitly address the divergence between mid-market and large-cap operating models. Mid-market portfolios increasingly require value-creation involvement at the day-to-day operating level; large-cap programs concentrate on structural transformation and portfolio-wide functional uplift. The forum is structured to make both useful to the relevant audience.

Operating partners, value-creation leads, portfolio CFOs, ESG operations heads, talent and HR leadership, technology and digital transformation leads at European PE firms across the AUM spectrum.

As multiple expansion has compressed and rates have normalized, operational improvement has become the dominant source of PE return generation. The operating partner function is now structurally as important as the deal team — and the forum is the only European venue with the seniority and density of operating partners to make peer benchmarking meaningful.