2026 Esri User Conference: Power of Where Collection Debuts at the World’s Largest GIS Event
The 2026 Esri User Conference runs July 13–17 at the San Diego Convention Center, drawing more than 18,000 in-person attendees from over 100 countries, with thousands more joining virtually. As the flagship annual gathering of the global geographic information system (GIS) community, and the largest GIS conference in the world, this year’s edition carries the theme “GIS—Creating a more intelligent world,” with a plenary session led by Esri president and founder Jack Dangermond alongside Kristine Tompkins, president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation. Among the notable debuts at the show: Esri Press will launch the Power of Where Collection, a new book series extending Dangermond’s landmark work into applied, sector-specific GIS practice.
The Power of Where Collection
The collection builds on the ideas introduced in Dangermond’s 2024 book “The Power of Where: A Geographic Approach to the World’s Greatest Challenges,” which explored the history, philosophy, and real-world applications of GIS through stories, maps, and decades of accumulated insight. The new series carries those foundational concepts into focused, real-world domains, showing how spatial thinking is reshaping the way organizations understand systems, manage resources, and plan ahead. As Dangermond framed it, “The geographic approach is essential to understanding and solving today’s most pressing challenges. This collection demonstrates how GIS connects data, people, and place to create a more sustainable and resilient future.”
Two titles anchor the launch. “Geowater: A Geographic Approach to Water Data and Forecasting” examines how spatial analysis supports water data integration, spatial data modeling, and decision-making in a rapidly changing environment, a timely focus given mounting pressure on water sustainability and climate resilience. “Parcels: How Property Shapes Geography” makes the case for land records and parcel systems as foundational data underpinning planning, infrastructure, governance, and economic activity. Together, the two illustrate the breadth of the geographic approach, from environmental forecasting to the property systems that quietly structure economic life, and the collection is set to expand with future titles spanning additional industries and disciplines.
Where the Collection Fits at the Conference
The Power of Where Collection will be featured throughout the event via author presentations, book signings, and the Esri Press stand. That placement reflects the conference’s broader character: beyond the plenary, Esri UC features hundreds of technical sessions and user presentations, a Map Gallery of printed and digital cartography, and an Expo connecting attendees with more than 200 organizations alongside Esri’s own product and industry experts. For the GIS community, the book launch is a natural fit within a week built around translating spatial technology into practical impact across water management, land records, infrastructure planning, and economic development.
The Bigger Picture: GIS Meets AI
The collection debuts against a backdrop of rapid change in the GIS field itself. Esri has been positioning this year’s conference around how ArcGIS is being enhanced with AI to accelerate insight, automate workflows, and broaden access to geographic intelligence, part of an industry-wide push to make spatial analysis usable by far more people than the traditional GIS specialist base. The Power of Where Collection’s emphasis on applied, domain-specific practice, water forecasting, parcel systems, infrastructure, complements that direction: as AI lowers the technical barrier to spatial analysis, the differentiator increasingly becomes domain expertise and the quality of the underlying geographic data. In that sense, the series is less about GIS mechanics and more about the decisions GIS enables, which is precisely where the technology is heading as it moves deeper into governance, resource management, and long-range planning.
Event Details
The 2026 Esri User Conference takes place July 13–17, 2026, at the San Diego Convention Center, 111 W Harbor Drive, San Diego, California. The event features the plenary session, hundreds of technical and user presentations, the Map Gallery, and the Expo, along with networking events and special-interest gatherings across the week. Registration and full agenda details are available at esri.com/uc, and the Power of Where Collection can be explored at the Esri Press stand and through the series’ author presentations and signings on-site.