HIMSS 2027 Dates, Venue and Format at a Glance

HIMSS is changing cities again. After Las Vegas hosted the 2026 edition, the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition moves to Chicago for HIMSS27, and the dates are already locked. If you’re a clinician, hospital IT leader, or informatics team trying to decide whether this one is worth the travel budget, here’s what’s confirmed so far and what the AI programming has looked like in recent years.

Detail	HIMSS 2027
Dates	April 5-8, 2027
Preconference	Monday, April 5 (separate registration required)
Main conference & exhibition	Tuesday-Thursday, April 6-8
Venue	McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, IL
Prior edition attendance	24,000+ attendees from 88+ countries (HIMSS26, Las Vegas)
Prior edition scale	950 exhibitors, 600 educational sessions (HIMSS26)
Sample pricing (HIMSS26 reference)	Free (exhibit hall only) up to $1,945 for an Executive Plus Pass
Call for speaker proposals	Opens Spring 2026

Where and When HIMSS 2027 Is Actually Happening

HIMSS27 runs April 5-8, 2027 at McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, IL. The organizers have split the week the way HIMSS typically does: Monday, April 5 is preconference day (registration required), and the main conference and exhibition run Tuesday through Thursday, April 6-8. That’s a shift from HIMSS26, which ran March 9-12, 2026 at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas.

Chicago isn’t a random pick for a health IT crowd. McCormick Place sits in a market that is home to over 20 major hospitals and health systems and several large payer organizations, which matters if you’re hoping to combine the conference with site visits or local partner meetings.

Worth noting: full session-level scheduling, hotel blocks, and registration tiers for HIMSS27 are still being finalized. The official FAQ page notes that “additional details regarding registration categories, pricing, add-on programs and important dates will be announced closer to launch”, and the call for speaker proposals is expected to open in Spring 2026. If you’re budgeting now, treat anything below on cost as a reference point from the most recent edition, not a confirmed 2027 number.

What to Expect from the HIMSS27 AI Track, Based on Recent Editions

HIMSS hasn’t published a session-by-session HIMSS27 agenda yet. But the organization has run a consistent AI programming structure for several years running, and there’s no signal that Chicago will look different. Here’s what that structure has actually included.

The AI in Healthcare Preconference Forum

At HIMSS26, the pre-conference AI in Healthcare Forum ran Monday, March 9, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., as a full separate-registration day ahead of the main show. Sessions covered governance and safety at scale: one featured talk covered how Mass General Brigham built systemwide data governance, security and vendor oversight frameworks to support AI deployment across its 78,000-person workforce. The HIMSS26 forum framed itself around moving past AI hype and toward measurable clinical value, and HealthTech Magazine reported the AI preconference track saw healthy attendance with a focus on tangible use cases and lessons on deploying AI into better-integrated workflows.

Main-Conference AI Sessions and Keynotes

Beyond the preconference day, AI bleeds into the general program. At HIMSS26, preconference forums on AI and healthcare cybersecurity offered actionable strategies for scaling AI and safeguarding systems, and CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz delivered a keynote on the conference’s final day touching on how technology and home-based care could bend healthcare cost curves. Healthcare Dive’s recap noted the industry is increasingly adopting AI agents that can act more autonomously and updating governance strategies to keep pace with the rapid rate of change.

Vendor Floor Themes Worth Tracking

Expect the exhibit hall to keep leaning on ambient documentation, agentic workflows, and EHR-embedded AI. One recap from HIMSS26 pointed out that platforms like Epic are pushing embedded, no-code agentic AI across EHR and ERP systems, raising the bar for what “integrated AI” looks like and making it harder for standalone point solutions to compete. That same recap flagged a persistent, less glamorous problem underneath all the AI talk: most healthcare data still isn’t structured or standardized enough for meaningful AI use. If you’ve read our breakdown of generative AI tools and their real-world limits, this data-readiness gap will sound familiar; it’s the same bottleneck showing up conference after conference.

Who Should Actually Plan to Attend HIMSS 2027

HIMSS skews toward health system executives, CIOs/CMIOs, informatics and IT teams, payers, and vendors, more than bedside clinicians. If your main interest is ambient scribing tools or point-of-care AI specifically, our guide to AI medical scribes and what can go wrong with them may answer more of your day-to-day questions than a week in Chicago will. HIMSS is better suited to people evaluating enterprise AI governance, procurement, vendor selection, or interoperability strategy, the kind of decisions covered in our piece on operational efficiency versus clinical AI gaps.

If your organization also considers international events, it’s worth comparing HIMSS27 against other regional shows on the calendar, including WHX Dubai (Arab Health) 2027 for Middle East market exposure, or the smaller, more US-focused AI Con USA if your team wants a tighter, less vendor-heavy AI agenda.

Registration, Costs and Practical Planning Notes

HIMSS27-specific pricing wasn’t published at the time of writing. For planning purposes, HIMSS26 registration ranged from complimentary exhibition-only access up to $1,945 for an Executive Plus Pass, and the event drew more than 24,000 attendees from over 88 countries, with 950 exhibitors and 600 educational sessions. Attendance can also run below projections: HIMSS26 organizers noted the attendance fell a bit short of an anticipated 25,000, partly because some international and defense-sector attendees couldn’t travel as planned, a reminder that headline attendance figures are estimates, not guarantees.

Practical notes for Chicago planning: book hotels early given McCormick Place’s size and Chicago’s spring convention calendar, and watch the HIMSS27 headlines and blog channel for registration tier announcements, since early registration typically carries the lowest price. If you’re weighing HIMSS27 against domestic alternatives, our roundup of AI healthcare conferences in the USA covers smaller, cheaper options that may fit a leaner travel budget.

FAQ

When and where is HIMSS 2027?

HIMSS27 runs April 5-8, 2027 at McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, IL, with the preconference on Monday, April 5 and the main conference and exhibition running Tuesday through Thursday.

Is there a dedicated AI track at HIMSS 2027?

The full HIMSS27 agenda hasn’t been released, but HIMSS has run a dedicated AI in Healthcare preconference forum plus AI-heavy main-conference sessions every recent year, so it’s reasonable to expect the same structure in Chicago.

How much does HIMSS 2027 cost to attend?

Pricing for HIMSS27 hadn’t been announced at publication. As a reference point, HIMSS26 registration ranged from free exhibit-hall-only access up to $1,945 for an Executive Plus Pass.

How big is HIMSS compared to other health IT events?

The most recent edition drew more than 24,000 attendees from over 88 countries, with 950 exhibitors and 600 sessions, making it the largest annual health IT conference in the world, well ahead of most regional or specialty AI-in-healthcare events.