Groundwater Week 2026 Location: Las Vegas Convention Center, December 8–10

If you're trying to lock down travel for Groundwater Week 2026, here's the short answer — then everything underneath it, sourced and current.

The Venue: Las Vegas Convention Center

After last year's run in New Orleans, NGWA is moving Groundwater Week to the Las Vegas Convention Center — one of the largest single-level exhibit facilities in the country at over 4.6 million square feet of total space.

The address you need is 3150 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, NV 89109. It sits just east of the Las Vegas Strip, about a 15-minute drive from Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) and walking distance from the Westgate, Renaissance, and several other hotels NGWA has on its room block.

For 2026, Groundwater Week is once again co-located with the Irrigation Association's annual show. That means a meaningfully larger crowd than past stand-alone years — and overlap on the expo floor that's worth being intentional about if you sell into both markets (geothermal, well systems, water management) or want to source equipment vendors who serve irrigation as well as drilling.

Dates & Schedule at a Glance

NGWA structures the schedule so the bulk of the technical workshops land on Tuesday, with select sessions sprinkled through Wednesday and Thursday alongside the main expo. If you can only fly in for one day and you're there for education, Tuesday is the day to pick. If you're there for the expo and customer meetings, Wednesday tends to have the most foot traffic and the keynote.

Official Hotels & Lodging

NGWA has secured group rates at five hotels for 2026. The Westgate is the headquarters and is closest to the convention center.

The Westgate group code is SNGW6R — you can book directly at passkey.com or by phone at (800) 635-7711. NGWA's full lodging page is at groundwaterweek.com/venue-hotels.

Heads-up on the resort fees. Most Las Vegas hotels — including the Westgate — tack on a daily resort fee that's separate from the room rate ($30–$50/night). Budget for it. A $110 room on the conference room block is really a ~$140/night room once the fee, plus Nevada taxes, kick in.

Registration Pricing

NGWA's official registration page is at groundwaterweek.com/registration. Pricing is per person and covers workshops, the exhibit hall, general sessions, and networking events — meaning you don't pay extra to walk the expo if you've already registered.

A note for manufacturer employees: NGWA explicitly restricts standard attendee rates if your company makes equipment sold into the groundwater market. You'll need to register either as a booth-staff exhibitor (if your company has a booth) or as a non-exhibiting manufacturer (the $1,400 tier). They check.

Keynote: Aaron Golub

The keynote speaker for 2026 is Aaron Golub, the first legally blind player in NCAA Division I football and a former member of the New England Patriots organization. His talk centers on "Leadership strategies that challenge limitations and drive performance" — which, for an industry that increasingly turns on small-team execution, succession, and operating at the edge of what's physically demanding, is a more on-point keynote topic than the usual professional-speaker fare.

NGWA has historically scheduled the keynote on Wednesday morning of Groundwater Week. The full agenda lands on groundwaterweek.com closer to the event.

The Expo: Sold Out, ~300 Exhibitors

NGWA confirmed in early 2026 that exhibit space is officially sold out for 2026. For context on the size of what you're walking into:

• 2025 record: 299 exhibitors, 81,900 square feet of exhibit floor, 4,712 attendees
• Attendee reach: All 50 states and 35 countries represented in 2025
• Workshops: Nearly 40 sessions across 8 topic tracks (drilling operations, water systems, geothermal, well maintenance, business management, safety & compliance, sustainable groundwater, workforce development)

2026 is expected to match or exceed those numbers given the Vegas venue capacity and the co-located Irrigation Association draw. If you're attending, plan two full days for the expo floor at minimum — you can't see 300 booths properly in one.

For exhibitors who missed the cutoff, the waitlist is at groundwaterweek.com and NGWA's expo lead is Jonathan Dalferes (jdalferes@ngwa.org).

Workshops & Continuing Education

The eight workshop tracks NGWA has announced for 2026:

1. Business Management — pricing, hiring, financial planning, succession
2. Drilling Operations — techniques, rigs, challenging formations, efficiency
3. Geothermal Technologies — loop systems, ground-source heat pumps, hybrid systems
4. Safety & Compliance — OSHA, wellhead protection, jobsite safety culture
5. Sustainable Groundwater — aquifer management, managed aquifer recharge, conservation
6. Water Systems — pumps, VFDs, system design, pressure management
7. Well Maintenance — rehabilitation, video inspection, preventive programs
8. Workforce Development — recruiting, training, apprenticeships, retention

Workshops are 60 minutes including Q&A, noncommercial by NGWA rules, and most carry CEUs that count toward state well-driller licensing renewals (verify the specific state requirements with NGWA directly — they vary). The workshop proposal portal was open through May 15, 2026, so the final workshop schedule typically posts in summer.

Getting There

Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) is the airport for Las Vegas. From LAS to the convention center is roughly:

• Rideshare (Uber/Lyft): 12–18 minutes, $18–$30 depending on demand
• Taxi: 12–18 minutes, flat rates run higher than rideshare
• Hotel shuttle: The Westgate, Resorts World, and several Strip-area hotels run airport shuttles on schedules — check with your hotel directly
• LV Monorail: The Las Vegas Convention Center has its own monorail stop (Las Vegas Convention Center Station), connecting it to MGM Grand, Bally's/Paris, Flamingo/Caesars, Harrah's/The LINQ, and the Sahara — useful if your hotel sits on the Strip rather than Paradise Road

If your hotel is on the Westgate / Paradise Road side, you can walk to the convention center every day. If you're on the Strip, the monorail saves the cab fare and skips Vegas traffic. NGWA hasn't announced a dedicated shuttle for 2026.

Key Dates & Deadlines

If you only remember one date: book the Westgate before November 17. Once that group block fills (and it does fill in Vegas years), you're paying convention-week walk-up rates that can easily double the discounted figure.

Who Attends Groundwater Week?

Looking at NGWA's published attendee breakdown, the typical Groundwater Week crowd includes:

• Well drilling contractors (owner-operators through multi-state operations)
• Pump contractors and well-pump service techs
• Water-treatment companies — point-of-entry softening, filtration, RO, UV
• Geothermal drilling and installation firms
• Hydrogeologists, environmental consultants, and remediation engineers
• Government and utility groundwater managers
• Manufacturers and distributors of drilling rigs, pumps, casing, controls, and treatment equipment
• Academic researchers and graduate students in groundwater science
• Service-business owners exploring partnerships, succession, or acquisitions

If you serve the groundwater market — as a contractor, vendor, or service provider — your customers, suppliers, and competitors are all in that building for three days. That's the reason this event matters more than its size suggests.

Related Reading

• Groundwater Week 2026: Your Complete Guide to NGWA's Biggest Event — our deeper guide on how to make the trip pay for itself: pre-event prep, expo strategy, follow-up cadence, certification planning
• Groundwater Awareness Week 2026: A Marketing Playbook for Well Drillers — the other big NGWA week of the year (March), and how to actually do marketing around it
• How to Market a Water Well Drilling Company in 2026 — the broader marketing playbook for groundwater contractors

Sources: groundwaterweek.com (official event site), groundwaterweek.com/venue-hotels, groundwaterweek.com/registration, NGWA.org, and NGWA's Groundwater Week 2025 recap. Information current as of May 19, 2026 — we'll update this page as NGWA finalizes the agenda and on-site details closer to December.