Ottawa Innovation Week returns June 8–12 with demos and dialogue

Ottawa becomes a platform for innovation this week as the city hosts the second annual Ottawa Innovation Week, running June 8–12. Born out of Ottawa Unlimited, the event brings together the main street business, tourism, and technology ecosystems as one unified story.

This year's festival is more ambitious than last year's inaugural edition. It's designed not to be the biggest innovation festival in the world, but the most meaningful one for founders, investors, policymakers, researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, creatives, and ecosystem builders shaping real outcomes in sectors defining this era.

The opening event, "Built for Orbit: Mission-Ready Innovation," brings together five remarkable women leaders from across the space and sovereignty ecosystem to explore how Ottawa is driving mission-critical innovation on a global stage. Generously sponsored by Amazon and MDA Space, the conversation covers exploration, security, autonomy, and national strength—sectors increasingly interconnected and where Ottawa sits at the intersection of opportunity.

Throughout the week, attendees will move between boardrooms and breweries, labs and living rooms, test tracks, studios, classrooms, and Parliament Hill. The diversity, breadth, and quality of events—rather than sheer quantity—sets this week apart. Policy round-tables and product demos share the same afternoon, reflecting how Ottawa's landscape has always worked: the people shaping regulation and those building technology share the same postal codes, coffee shops, and ambitions.

Ottawa Innovation Week expects to showcase prototypes getting stress-tested and ideas moving from "we should" to "we just did." Some will look like startups. Some will look like research. Some will look like nothing you can quite predict yet. That's by design—a city mid-build, choosing which industries to invest in, which partnerships to forge, and which long-term bets to place.