Zeta Live 2026: Inside Six Years of Steinberg's Stage
Originally published September 2026. Updated October 12, 2026.
Zeta Live is Zeta Global's annual AI marketing conference. It has run every fall since November 2021. The first edition was a two-day virtual event with four keynote guests. Six years later, the sixth edition was scheduled as a single-day gathering at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, on October 8, 2026. Zeta Global's own September 16, 2026 announcement said more than 1,800 attendees and 100 speakers were expected. As of this update, EPR had not found final attendance figures published by Zeta Global, so the 2026 numbers on this page are the company's pre-event figures.
Zeta Live 2026 at a glance
Item
Detail (per Zeta Global's announcements)
Edition
Sixth annual
Date and venue
October 8, 2026, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York
Named headliners
Kevin Hart, Lindsey Vonn, Russell Westbrook, Tiffany Haddish
Planned scale
More than 1,800 attendees, more than 100 speakers, four stages
Stages
Vision, Innovation, Discovery and Masterclass
Evening program
Invite-only evening at the American Museum of Natural History with Steve Aoki, Aloe Blacc and Oz Pearlman
How did Zeta Live start in 2021?
Zeta Live started as a two-day hybrid conference broadcast from New York on November 16 and 17, 2021. That was five months after Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) went public. Zeta Global unveiled the first speaker lineup on November 1, 2021. Named guests included Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman of S4 Capital, and Michael Rubin, CEO of Fanatics. Verishop founder Imran Khan and Zeta co-founder John Sculley, the former Apple CEO, also joined the lineup.
The 2021 sessions covered data and identity management. Attendees got an early look at Zeta's AI Lab and heard customer success stories from Zeta's client base. Co-founder, Chairman and CEO David A. Steinberg told attendees marketers needed to prepare for "the world of tomorrow." Everything-PR profiled Steinberg's founder-to-CEO profile that same year. The profile ran weeks after Zeta's June 2021 listing and described a co-founder who built the company with Sculley in 2007.
Zeta Global itself started years before Zeta Live. Steinberg and Sculley founded the company in 2007 as XL Marketing. It became Zeta Interactive in 2014, then Zeta Global in October 2016. The founding section of Everything-PR's David A. Steinberg profile traces the strategy back to Steinberg's earlier InPhonic collapse. Zeta reached the New York Stock Exchange on June 10, 2021, at a roughly $1.7 billion valuation, five months before the first Zeta Live.
The first Zeta Live ran as a hybrid broadcast because large in-person gatherings were still unusual in late 2021. Every edition since has moved back toward a fully physical, invitation-only format.
How has Zeta Live grown since 2021?
Zeta Live has added a bigger venue and a wider speaker roster almost every year since 2022. The table below tracks each edition using Zeta Global's own press releases.
John Sculley, Sir Martin Sorrell, Michael Rubin, Imran Khan
Two-day digital-first format
2022
2nd
Hudson Yards, New York, Sept. 29
Dr. Deepak Chopra, Isiah Thomas, Michael Milken, Raja Rajamannar (Mastercard CMO), Henry Schuck (ZoomInfo CEO)
Not disclosed in the announcement
2023
3rd
New York, Sept. 28
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Brandi Chastain, Dr. Deepak Chopra
Speakers and attendees representing over $100 billion in marketing budget
2024
4th
New York, invite-only plus livestream, Sept. 26
Shaquille O'Neal, Simone Biles, Michael Milken, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Tiffany Haddish
Record attendance, per Zeta Global
2025
5th
New York, invite-only, Oct. 9
Serena Williams, Tom Brady, The Chainsmokers, Michael Milken, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Bonin Bough
1,200-plus marketers, 70-plus speakers, 25-plus sessions across three stages
2026
6th
David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, Oct. 8
Kevin Hart, Lindsey Vonn, Russell Westbrook, Tiffany Haddish
More than 1,800 attendees, 100-plus speakers, four stages (planned)
The 2026 edition was planned as the largest on Zeta Global's own stated numbers. Its 1,800-plus planned attendees compare with 1,200-plus marketers in 2025, about 50 percent more. Its 100-plus speakers compare with 70-plus a year earlier, and it was set to run four stages against three. Zeta Global's September 10, 2025 release framed the fifth edition around the theme "Achieve the Impossible," with Serena Williams and Tom Brady sharing leadership playbooks.
Speaker names alone show the shift in emphasis. The 2022 program at Hudson Yards paired Wall Street names such as Michael Milken with marketing executives such as Mastercard's Raja Rajamannar. By 2026, Zeta Global was booking entrepreneur Kevin Hart and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn as its first two keynote headliners. That celebrity-and-athlete pairing is a scale the company had not used before.
Zeta Global's own invitation to prospective 2026 attendees makes a bigger claim than any past edition. It states that this year's registered companies represent more than $200 billion in combined annual marketing and technology spend. That figure is roughly double the $100 billion in marketing budget Zeta cited for its 2023 edition. The 2023 figure described the size of the audience, not Zeta Global's own revenue.
Why did Zeta Live move to Lincoln Center?
Zeta Global moved Zeta Live to David Geffen Hall because the sixth edition needed a bigger mainstage program than any earlier year. The company confirmed the venue on June 1, 2026. Zeta Global called the move an expanded footprint that allows for larger mainstage programming. It also promised more breakout sessions built around executive-level discussions.
Steinberg framed the venue change around one idea in that June release. He said the leaders who win are those "moving fastest from AI experimentation to AI execution." Three months later, announcing the expanded lineup on September 16, 2026, Steinberg shifted the same idea toward infrastructure. He argued that every company leader now faces pressure to explain what AI means for their business. Only real infrastructure, not just software features, turns that pressure into growth, he said.
The 2026 program was set to run across four named stages: Vision, Innovation, Discovery and Masterclass. The day was planned to close with an invite-only evening at the American Museum of Natural History, with Steve Aoki and Aloe Blacc performing, followed by an interactive set from mentalist Oz Pearlman. Zeta Global's own program description calls Zeta Live 2026 the company's "most ambitious event yet."
How does Zeta Live tie to Zeta's AI Cloud?
Zeta Live 2026 sits directly downstream of Zeta's broader AI infrastructure buildout, with the revenue and Athena figures set out in Zeta Global's Q2 2026 results, and a June 2026 infrastructure deal that rebuilt how Zeta Global processes customer data. Everything-PR reported that Zeta's Palantir Foundry partnership rebuilt Zeta's Data Cloud. Athena by Zeta sits at the center as the intelligence layer on top. Steinberg told investors the deal could add more than $100 million in incremental annual revenue.
Athena runs on Zeta's SuperGraph identity graph, which Everything-PR's reporting put at roughly 245 million U.S. individuals. Foundry supplies the governed, auditable data layer that regulated buyers had used as a reason to delay purchases. That group includes financial services, healthcare and insurance marketers. Zeta shares rose roughly 5 percent on the announcement, while Palantir shares fell about 7 percent. Everything-PR read that market split as an early sign Zeta captured more of the deal's value than Palantir did.
That partnership is the technical story behind Zeta Live's own self-description. Zeta Global's September 2026 release calls the company "the intelligent AI infrastructure company." That label did not appear in Zeta Global's earlier Zeta Live announcements. It ties the 2026 conference theme directly to the Foundry-based rebuild Everything-PR covered three months earlier.
What has EPR reported on Zeta and Steinberg?
Everything-PR has tracked Zeta Global's finances and leadership across several pieces. The David A. Steinberg profile covers his career, the Sculley founding story and his net worth. The Palantir report covers the Foundry deal cited above.
EPR's Zeta Global Q2 2026 results report covers the company's beat-and-raise streak and the Athena development supported by OpenAI. Zeta extended that streak to 19 straight quarters by its Q1 2026 report and to 20 straight quarters by its Q2 2026 report on August 4, 2026, delivering $443 million in quarterly revenue, up 44 percent year over year.
Steinberg's wealth-building track record has its own place in Everything-PR's coverage. A 2013 comparison, updated since, places Steinberg's InPhonic-to-Zeta arc alongside Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. It treats his one bankruptcy and one rebuild as the exception to an otherwise straight-line founder-wealth pattern. Everything-PR's Builders series also covers Steinberg's 2018 wedding to Kristen Sanne Steinberg, part of a recurring profile of entrepreneurs shaping major markets.
What does Zeta Live's growth show about Zeta?
Zeta Live grew from a four-speaker virtual broadcast into a conference planned for 1,800 attendees at Lincoln Center. That climb tracks the same numbers Everything-PR has reported about Zeta Global itself. The company built a revenue base that reached $443 million in a single quarter and a beat-and-raise streak that reached 20 quarters by August 2026. It backed that record with a Palantir-built data stack under Athena. The conference is not a separate marketing exercise from that record. It is the yearly public marker of a five-year change at the company itself. Zeta Global turned a martech vendor into what it now calls an intelligent AI infrastructure company.
Zeta Live is Zeta Global's annual AI marketing conference. It has run every fall since November 2021, when the first edition was a two-day virtual event.
Where and when was Zeta Live 2026?
The sixth edition was scheduled for October 8, 2026 at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, in New York, according to Zeta Global's announcements.
Who headlined Zeta Live 2026?
Zeta Global named Kevin Hart, Lindsey Vonn, Russell Westbrook and Tiffany Haddish in its September 16, 2026 announcement, with performances by Steve Aoki and Aloe Blacc and an interactive set from Oz Pearlman.
How big was Zeta Live 2026 compared with 2025?
Zeta Global said it expected more than 1,800 attendees, more than 100 speakers and four stages, compared with more than 1,200 marketers, more than 70 speakers and three stages in 2025. Those are pre-event figures, and EPR had not found final attendance numbers at the time of this update.
When was the first Zeta Live?
The first Zeta Live was a two-day hybrid conference broadcast from New York on November 16 and 17, 2021, five months after Zeta Global listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Who founded Zeta Global?
David A. Steinberg and John Sculley founded the company in 2007 as XL Marketing. It became Zeta Interactive in 2014 and Zeta Global in October 2016. The David A. Steinberg profile tells the founding story.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
