YIMBYtown 2026 extends speaker deadline for Raleigh housing conference

Raleigh’s housing debate is about to get a national stage. YIMBYtown 2026, the biggest pro-housing conference in the country, will bring more than 1,000 advocates, experts and leaders to the Raleigh Convention Center from Nov. 17-19, and organizers have now extended the speaker proposal deadline to July 17.

The move matters well beyond conference season. YIMBYtown says 2026 will be the first time the event is held in the South, placing Raleigh at the center of a national fight over how cities grow, who gets to live there and how fast local governments can build housing. The conference is being hosted by CITYBUILDER in collaboration with RaleighForward, WakeUP Wake County, Yes! in my Triangle, NC Housing Table and Southern Urbanism, with sponsorships handled through CITYBUILDER NC, a 501(c)(4).

The call for speakers is still open, and the conference says first-time speakers, emerging leaders and underrepresented voices are especially encouraged to apply. While the conference site had listed June 29 as the submission deadline, organizers have pushed that back to July 17. Discounted registration remains available through Aug. 15.

Raleigh is hosting the event while its own housing numbers remain under pressure. The city’s 2026-2030 Affordable Housing Plan says Raleigh is facing an urgent housing affordability and homelessness crisis as population growth continues to outpace housing development. Raleigh’s affordable housing dashboard says the city set a 2016 goal to create and preserve 5,700 affordable homes by 2026, and has so far reached 3,848, with more units still in the pipeline.

Wake County’s own housing page shows the scale of the strain is broader than Raleigh alone. The county says about 56,000 working households earning less than $39,000 a year cannot currently find affordable housing, and that number could climb to as many as 150,000 households over the next 20 years. County officials have also begun using an affordable housing impact tracker and a housing data dashboard to monitor investments and trends as pressure mounts across fast-growing Wake communities.

The timing comes after a series of local pro-housing efforts that show how organized the debate has become. WakeUP Wake County, CITYBUILDER and RaleighForward recently co-hosted an ADU Sustainability Training and Tour in Raleigh, part of a broader push to normalize accessory dwelling units, denser neighborhoods and new development tools. YIMBYtown’s stop in downtown Raleigh signals that the city’s housing arguments are no longer just local zoning disputes. They are part of a national contest over growth, affordability and the future of places like Wake County.