Services Week 2026 Wrap Up

Thank you to everyone who made Services Week 2026 such a resounding success! It was inspiring to see the community come together to share, learn, and collaborate on improving public services. 

This year, we saw an incredible turnout with around 4,000 attendees across 80 sessions, delivered by community members from over 30 different government departments. 

Our most popular sessions included a talk from Lou Downe on "Bad services: how to fix services that don’t work", the User-Centred Design (UCD) team at Ofgem gave a popular demonstration on "Practical AI for User-Centred Design: Lessons from Experimenting with AI", and the Government Digital Service delivered an engaging session on "The Future of the Digital Service Standard".

Attendees from across the community told us that Services Week has helped them learn about other services, build connections and share practical approaches to service design. 

They loved getting a clearer picture of different service areas and seeing how other teams put design principles into practice.  

We are looking forward to hosting the event again next year with even more sessions to explore. We hope to be joined by many of you again, as well as lots of new faces. 

We look forward to carrying this momentum forward, using the connections and collaborative spirit fostered over this week to continue supporting one another as we build and refine our community throughout the year ahead.

Join the Conversation 

The energy doesn't have to end with Services Week! We encourage you to join the Services Week community on Slack using your government email address. It's the best place to stay connected with the service design community, share news, and ask questions. 

Introducing "A Problem Shared" 

To keep the collaborative spirit alive, we are launching a new monthly initiative called 'A Problem Shared' on our government wide Slack channel. Each month, we'll feature a specific service design challenge or dilemma from a government team and invite you to share your thoughts, advice, and lessons learned. 

This month’s question is:

What additional support would be most valuable in helping you design inclusive and accessible services in your or your team's work? 

Whether you have practical examples, lessons learned, useful resources, or simply a perspective to share, we'd love to hear from you. 

Do you have a tricky problem or a service design question you'd like the community's help with? Post your question directly on the Slack channel, or get in touch with the GDS events team to submit your challenge for a future discussion.

We look forward to the conversations this will spark and thank you for your continued commitment to building such a strong, collaborative community.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/08/24/services-week-2026-wrap-up/

seen at 14:55, 24 August in Government Digital Service.