Berlin’s SX Festival and Expo looks likely to be discontinued, following its founder leaving her role as organizer.
Ola Miedzynska, who founded the event as a sextech conference in 2019, announced that she was “stepping down from leading and organising” it. She confirmed that there will be no iteration of the event in 2027.
“I cannot confirm that this is its permanent end, but for today there are currently no plans for it to continue,” Miedzynska told SEXTECHGUIDE.
She added: “There will be no further editions of the event under my leadership, and due to this… sadly, no event will take place in 2027.” Writing earlier on LinkedIn, Miedzynska said that it will “take time to consider who could write this project’s next chapter and whether there will be one.”
Miedzynska organized various iterations of the sex-positive showcase and conference events. They often served as platforms for sextech devices, innovations and brands.
The most recent took place in June 2026. Online sex work, age verification technology, censorship in AI and payment processing were among the topics covered in talks and workshops.
Miedzynska wrote on LinkedIn: “We secured industry investors, built a remarkable team and planned an ambitious expansion. Together, we set out to create a modern, global business network for next generations of adult tech.”
She added: “But after 2 years of relentless pressure, strained partnerships and thousands of hours worked without a break, I had crossed my own limits. Even with that commitment, we faced more than we anticipated.”
A home in Europe for sextech
SxTech EU was founded by Miedzynska in Berlin in 2019, and later became the SX Festival and Expo. As the original name suggests, it started off focusing on sextech, and hosting events such as tech hackathons, before becoming a wider sex-positive gathering.
The inaugural 2019 SxTech conference featured speakers from WOW Tech Group and panels on topics like VR and AR, sex toy hacking and sextech funding, and even let us interview a robot live on stage. The one-day event concluded with a sextech hackathon, where teams pitched a safety app for sex workers, an AI relationship chatbot, a two-player VR porn experience and more.
A larger hackathon and a week-long accelerator program in Mallorca were both announced for 2020.
The 2020 edition, which brought sextech and femtech together, took place online due to the Covid pandemic, and was on hiatus in 2024, following a fifth edition in Berlin in October 2023. Most of the events took place in Berlin, but in 2021 it was hosted in Wrocław, Poland due to a collaboration with the Wolves Summit tech event. Subscription service Pleasy Play won the SxTech Great Pitch Contest that year, then the overall Wolves Summit Pitch Contest that followed, taking €50,000 in funding.
That 2021 collaboration was billed at the time as a sign of sextech moving closer to mainstream tech, a rare welcome for a category routinely shut out of events like CES. The Wolves Summit attracts tech startup companies from all over Europe.
By 2025 Miedzynska’s event had become more ambitious, including a festival, expo and conference over a weekend. Sessions about AI ethics and porn regulation took place, as did sextech startup pitch sessions.
SEXTECHGUIDE writer Carolyn Stransky Vohr wrote at the time: “As one of the only global events dedicated solely to sex tech, the need for SxTech EU is undeniable.”
However, she also noted: “With unclear audience targeting and underwhelming tech showcases, SxTech EU 2025 often felt like it was still figuring out what it wants to be.”
Stransky Vohr also attended the June 2026 event, the first held under the SX Festival and Expo name. “That shift brought more diverse crowds and a clearer after-party dress code, but none of the technology or innovations that inspired SxTech EU’s inception,” she said. The closure lands while Venus Berlin, which has already set October 2026 dates, keeps growing as a showcase, though a big trade fair is a very different proposition from an event built around startup pitches and hackathons.
Miedzynska said: “Walking away from something that had shaped so much of my life is painful, but staying would have meant asking more of myself than I could give.”
She added: “This isn’t my official goodbye to the industry, though! I’ll continue working in adult space and supporting your projects where I can.”
Additional reporting from Carolyn Stransky Vohr
