The MACH Alliance, the not-for-profit community that champions best-of-breed commerce and innovation, has announced that H&M Group, Charles Tyrwhitt, JD Sports Fashion, Rituals and LOAF will be among the brand-side leaders and retailers speaking at its annual headliner European conference, MACH X: Amsterdam.
Taking place between 29 – 30 September 2026 under this year’s theme, Meet the Agents, MACH X is the flagship event series from the MACH Alliance. It brings together progressive commerce leaders to share composable best practice and practical outputs, as well as offering meaningful peer-to-peer discussion, learning and networking for senior brand-side leaders.
The event in Amsterdam, which will be headline sponsored by Adyen and Voucherify, follows the MACH X’s Spring edition in Toronto, Canada, which connected 350 enterprise innovators and senior commerce luminaries from over 14 countries to chart a path for future-forward composable innovation in the era of agentic AI.
The conference programme will include three dedicated tracks, spanning Technology, Commercial & Change and Governance & Security.
Kicking off Day 1, JD Sports Fashion’s Head of Platform Innovation, Antonia Hansen, will deliver a keynote exploring the key drivers behind its decision to re-architect its tech infrastructure and adopt a MACH stack. She will outline how it is readying its operations for the AI tooling needed to evolve its offering, including moving to instant checkout and zero-click commerce.
Hansen will be followed by furniture brand LOAF’s Technical Director, Louis Adamou, who will walk delegates through its use of AI, which is “empowering the leadership through “live” reporting that accelerates good decision-making and reduces human bias.
Hansen and Adamou will be joined on-stage at MACH X: Amsterdam by leading brands, including: H&M Group’s Global Head of Product, Marketing & Content, Adam Ull; Charles Tyrwhitt IT Director, Doug Wooten; and Ritual’s Director of Digital Architecture at Rituals, Martijn Ameling. They will cover topics spanning AI coding within the enterprise, automated product data enrichment and content creation, as well as democratising business intelligence through AI adoption.
“As the race towards agentic execution accelerates, it’s no longer enough to strategise about moving from pilot to production,” said Jason Cottrell, President of the MACH Alliance. “Commerce leaders must consider the entire agentic value chain – from best-of-breed innovation and operational excellence to guardrails and compliance and, ultimately, long-term impact,”.
“At MACH X: Amsterdam, we’re bringing together the sharpest minds at the cutting edge of composable architecture to explore how agentic technologies are redefining the way modern commerce is built,” Cottrell added.
In addition to the insight and discussions shared across the MACH X conference programme, breakout sessions at the event will include practical applications of AI. The Agent Build Lab allows retail leaders to collaborate, flexing their innovation capabilities to develop and test AI applications in a live environment. The Agent Build Lab not only encourages composable creativity but helps brands take away practical ideas and an executional playbook back to their own organisations.
MACH X: Amsterdam will also include a dedicated session showcasing the MACH Alliance AI Exchange Hackathon, featuring live business use cases from easyJet holidays and Your Golf Travel, sponsored by Bloomreach and Uniform. Over an eight-week virtual program, cross-functional teams are building production-style solutions around each brand’s real-world challenge. This session gives attendees a first look at how participating teams have applied agentic capabilities to real commerce challenges.
MACH X: Amsterdam will also host its Impact Awards programme, celebrating standout examples of agentic commerce execution and the people driving them. This includes the Agentic Achievement award for AI solutions deployed or piloted in production and the Impact Makers category which celebrates individuals and teams advancing agent-ready ecosystems.
Sponsored by Siteimprove and open to MACH Alliance members and their retail partners, the winners will be crowned live at a ceremony on Day 1 (29 September 2026). This year also marks the inaugural presentation of The Jon Panella Award, created in memory of the industry veteran who spent four decades connecting people across the innovation ecosystem, with its first recipient revealed live on stage.
For more information or to register for your place at MACH X: Amsterdam, visit: https://mach-x.machalliance.org/amsterdam/.
Terry Clark is the Publisher and Content Director of 365 Retail, with more than a decade of experience covering retail design, technology innovations, store openings and the wider retail industry. He also works closely with leading retailers, suppliers, agencies, events and industry awards across the UK.
