30 October 2025
Venture Café UK gathers momentum across the country
After a successful launch in London earlier this year, Venture Café is branching out around the UK. 
A panel at a Thursday Gathering with Convergent Research and ARIA to launch the FRO Founder Residency. From left to right: Philip Budden (MIT), Pranay Shah (ARIA), Gabi Heller (Bind) and Mary Wang (Convergent Research).
For the full potential of breakthrough science to be realised, it needs multiple pathways to the real world. That’s where our Activation Partners play a vital role – helping to create the conditions for bold ideas to thrive, building and connecting communities, and empowering those driving impact beyond the lab.
One of these nine Activation Partners is Venture Café Global Institute. With the ethos that isolation is the enemy of innovation, Venture Café’s mission is to connect innovators through high-impact programming, spaces, storytelling, and broad engagement.
This year, as part of our partnership, Venture Café brought their global innovation Thursday Gatherings to the UK for the first time. Events in London have spanned the science and technology stack – diving into the likes of food security, AGI, longevity and climate – and have welcomed 2400 attendees across the first 12 Gatherings.
“It’s the fastest and most successful launch in our 16-year history,” says Mike Jackson, Head of Venture Café UK. “That’s a testament to both the hard work of the London team, the support of ARIA, our fellow Activation Partners, and the London science and entrepreneurship communities.”
These weekly events provide innovators, entrepreneurs, and community members a platform to exchange ideas, spark collaborations, and drive innovation across diverse fields. Hosted weekly in the same location, they’re non-exclusive and have Venture Café’s global network behind them – reaching beyond local ecosystems to connect people from all around the world. “The atmosphere at our events can also be partly credited to the behaviours we encourage, like no hard sales and being interested in the people you connect with,” says Mike. “Our name badges don’t include your job title or organisation or seniority. It forces people to connect at a human level, no scanning of badges looking for a potential investor or customer… it’s just two people at an event talking.”
An innovation showcase at a Venture Café London Thursday Gathering in partnership with Nucleate UK.
Building on this success in London, momentum is gathering across the UK – last week, Venture Café Manchester launched with 300 attendees present, and Venture Café Edinburgh is launching on 20 November. “It was always important that Venture Café wasn’t just a London or even a ‘Golden Triangle’ initiative, but reached and served the science community across the UK,” says Pranay Shah, ARIA Product Manager. The Venture Café team and ARIA chose both Manchester and Edinburgh as the next expansion cities – both having strong science entrepreneurship foundations as well as easy reach to surrounding other hubs.
With a background in both academia and entrepreneurship, Claudia Cavalluzzo – Director of Venture Café Edinburgh – is determined to create the right environment for innovators. “Scotland is a vibrant place for founders, but there’s an opportunity to build the cohesiveness seen in other innovation hubs and I hope we can provide the connective tissue to help our ecosystem and innovators to thrive,” she says. “There’s so much talent, not just in tech but also in life sciences, creative industries and social businesses – our vision for Venture Café Edinburgh is to create a space for innovators of all kinds, no matter their background or idea stage.”
Venture Café UK is expanding their impact further by also rolling out their Connect model in a number of cities across the UK over the next year – a lighter touch approach where monthly meetups are delivered by local innovation organisations and powered by the Venture Café model. Four UK cities are in discussions to launch Connect gatherings over the next year. “I’m very optimistic for the future of Venture Café in the UK,” says Mike. “We can play a real part in both supporting new frontier science startups and scaleups and maximising the talent and expertise across our universities and research institutions.”