For this Siteturner collection, we gathered up the best conference and event themes for WordPress that we could find. If you’ve got an event, conference, or convention coming up, and want to build a website for it using WordPress, you can save a bit of money by starting with one of these themes.
Chances are you’re a developer who was hired to build a site for an event or conference. During our research, we discovered that there are a few features you’ll want to make sure you’ve got in whatever theme your choose. Among them: a countdown clock. You’ll want to show site visitors exactly how much time they’ve got to buy tickets and make travel arrangements to your conference or convention. You can bet that event organizers will want this too.
You might also want visitors to be able to register or buy tickets right on the site, and if that’s the case, some sort of payment gateway integration will be a necessity. Events management capability is obviously good to have, too, and many of the themes on this list also add functionality via custom post types. You might find speaker/guest profiles useful, for example.
We scooped up these event themes by hand, and our selections are based on design quality and depth of functionality. The order is intentional, though obviously there’s some wiggle room and taste is subjective. Any one of these event conference themes could prove a good choice.
Now on with the list! Behold…
Eventbuilder
Our latest addition to the list also features our favorite events & conference theme design to date. You can always identify the seasoned web designers by how well they pull off content-centric, minimalistic design without sacrificing character in the process. The confident, sparse design of Eventbuilder shows a design team at the top of their game. Plenty of white space, high readability, and clean lines add up to an above-average, distraction-free user experience.
Indeed, usability is paramount in good web design, and Eventbuilder’s UX is fantastic. Navigation and performance are both top-notch – the site is snappy and responsive – and event searching/browsing features are well-implemented. The booking process is elegant and user-friendly (taking advantage of the Tailer Ticket WordPress plugin), with support for front-end registration and login.
Eventbuilder supports Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms, and Contact Form 7 out-of-the-box. Google maps is integrated, and the development team even went out of their way to provide a handy review system.
The premium Visual Composer and LayerSlider plugins are bundled free, adding a bit of extra value. If you don’t know what those are, well – you might not require them, but we suppose you’ll probably like them.
Of course, Eventbuilder is 100% mobile-ready and responsive, so you won’t risk alienating visitors who arrive to the site using their smartphones or tablets. Conclusion? Highly recommended.
More Info/DownloadThe Keynote
This time around, it’s the brand new conference theme The Keynote that tops our list. Developed by the awesome team at Goodlayers, The Keynote takes everything in you’ll need in the way of functionality and matches it with a professional, clean and modern design.
Key features for this WordPress event theme are PayPal integration (for ticket sales), programs and time schedules, speaker/guest profiles, and a front-and-center homepage countdown timer.
Additional add-ons like a page builder for assembling and altering layouts and the powerful slider plugin Master Slider add even more value. As you’d expect, there’s lots of room for customization too. An advanced options panel and multiple layout options give you full control over presentation.
The theme is retina-ready, mobile-ready and translation-ready (with full support for WPML). The Keynote is even WooCommerce ready, in case you’ve got merchandise you want to hawk. Highly recommended.
More Info/Download
Meetup
Meetup quickly became one of the best-selling conference and event themes on the ThemeForest marketplace.
The success is partly due to its versatility: users have a choice of several different headers, each with their own distinct look – Meetup provides a video header, a countdown header, a gallery header, registration header, and a tried-and-true slideshow header.
The theme is also remarkably snappy in terms of performance, and it’s clear the developers went out their way to offer a polished UX. You won’t find any lag or awkward, jumpy scrolling: visual effects and jQuery are extremely well implemented, complementing the usability instead of detracting from it. This is a stark contrast to many modern WordPress themes, which often get bogged down by overdoing ‘cool’ transitions, animations and flashy UI gimmicks.
Meetup is, of course, 100% responsive, and is retina-ready, guaranteeing crisp graphics and a consistent experience regardless of the smartphone, tablet or computer you load it up on. A free inclusion of Visual Composer for drag & drop page building is always welcome, and Meetup is translation ready.
More Info/DownloadEventMe
Next up we’ve got the EventMe theme, another elegant, clean and modern design that gives our first two selections a run for their money. Two different homepage sliders with large countdown clocks will make an instant and lasting impression on your visitors.
On the functionality side, this fully responsive theme has everything you’ll need. You can easily setup schedules, and guests, and visitors can easily register for your event. EventMe includes pricing tables, speaker profiles and more.
The theme also brings it on the backend: unlimited colors and an options panel based on the Redux options framework give you lots of control over elements and colors. The theme also provides support for a number of popular third party modules, like Contact Form 7, MailChimp for WordPress, and Visual Composer.
More Info/Downloadim Event
The gorgeous and vibrant im Event conference theme will give you everything you need to help make your event website a success. (And by extension, your event!) Two flavors of the design are included, light and dark, and fifteen premade color schemes are ready to use out of the box. There’s four different homepage slider options to choose from depending on your needs.
im Event is built on top of the Bootstrap 3 framework and fully responsive. Visual Composer is included for easy, drag & drop page building support. A registration form is built-in, so that visitors can register for your event in seconds, and PayPal is integrated if paid registration is required. The developer has even included a donation shortcode for fundraising.
Of course, there’s options on the backend too, if you want to tweak the colors and elements yourself. Another great value.
More Info/DownloadEvents Conference and Festival Theme
Events is a fully featured event management solution for WordPress that will allow you to both promote and sell tickets to your festival, convention or conference. It doesn’t just look cool, with its eye-catching, contemporary design, but its integration with Eventbrite makes ticketing a snap.
Events provides additional pages and custom post types to help showcase every aspect of your event, from sponsors and speakers, to agendas and scheduling. Lots of theme options are included, but six pre-made color schemes are provided too.
More Info/DownloadEvential
Evential is a sleek, modern theme, and one of only a few “one-page” style event themes for WordPress. It’s built responsive on a solid foundation of HTML5 and CSS3 thanks to the Bootstrap framework, and it’s retina-ready for sharp display on high resolution devices.
Features include a working registration form, newsletter subscriptions, speaker details and a pretty nifty countdown clock. Parallax backgrounds and the cool Flipping Cards 3D plugin add a bit of extra visual pizazz.
More Info/DownloadShindig
Shindig is a recent entry into the event theme market and perhaps best suited to concert and entertainment-related events. The design of Shindig brings to mind rock shows and comic book conventions – unlike many of its corporate/tech flavored competitors, which are aimed toward conferences and industry events.
It’s a straight-forward, easy to use product, and includes support for ticket sales. Its light-weight, HTML5 code base (built on the popular HTML5 boilerplate) makes for excellent speed & performance.
Shindig is optimized for mobile, high-res devices of all kinds, and is translation ready. The ubiquitous Revolution Slider and Photoshop source files are bundled.
More Info/DownloadEvent WordPress Landing Page Theme
Event is a landing page event theme that provides you with every thing your need for your conference/event website. And it looks pretty good, with its elegant of white space and tasteful use of accent colors.
Event-specific features include an easy to use registration/booking form, integrated payments (PayPal support) and pricing plans. Site visitors can also sign up for newsletters.
On the backend, Event provides you with unlimited colors, 650+ Google fonts and a drag & drop page builder to work with.
More Info/DownloadIgnitionConf
Next spot on our list goes to IgnitionConf, from the talented folks at CSSIgniter. Great design and intelligent integration with Eventbrite makes this theme a good choice. And it’s built on the popular foundation framework, making it fully responsive.
Custom post types add functionality to IgnitionConf. Speakers, schedules and sponsors can be added and displayed with no fuss, and visitors can register and contact your organizers using the built-in contact form.
A powerful options panel in the admin will provide you with customization options, and the bundled shortcodes plugin will give you access to even more buttons and layout choices. IgnitionConf is translation ready.
More Info/Download
Fudge
The rather strangely named Fudge theme comes to us from ShowThemes, a WordPress theme shop devoted exclusively to the development of conference and event themes for WordPress. This is a lovely looking theme, with special attention paid to typography and space. The pastel color scheme is quite appealing too.
But the real selling point of Fudge is its features. As you’d guess from a shop devoted to event themes, Showthemes produces the most feature rich themes on our list. This is a full featured, total solution that’s unlikely to require any additional third party plugins. We don’t have the space to run down the whole laundry list here, but if you’ve got a few minutes it’s worth clicking through to their details page.
Full schedule and performer management, Eventbrite integration, EventEspresso integration, and Xing integration are just a few of the stand-out features here. You can display RSVP information from Facebook events, maps and more. And what event theme for WordPress would be complete without a countdown?
More Info/DownloadTyler
Tyler is our second pick from ShowThemes. We weren’t sure which to put first, but it really comes down to taste: both designs are equally strong, so it’s going to depend on your event or conference. Tyler, like Fudge, especially excels on the features end. This is an extraordinarily well thought out product, even beyond the design, and we recommend taking a closer look.
More Info/DownloadRocketick
Rocketick is a bit older now, first released in November ’12, but its timeless design keeps it from looking dated. The features are all there too. Beyond the ubiquitous event countdown timer, site admins can build program schedules, speaker line ups, and feature event partners and sponsors.
More Info/DownloadThemetick
Themetick shares many features with Rocketick, above, but with a minimalistic, stripped down design. We’re quite fond of the simplicity of this one – it illustrates the ‘less is more’ principle quite well. Themetick includes a countdown timer, a program schedule, a speakers line-up and more. A useful, easy to use options panel is provided too.
More Info/DownloadJanuas
Januas is our third pick from ShowThemes, the developer devoted exclusively to event & conference WordPress themes. We don’t favor the design of Januas as much as Fudge and Tyler, above, but it does include all of those excellent ShowThemes features and so we don’t hesitate to recommend it. If you haven’t already, click through to ShowThemes for a more detailed illustration of the functionality.
More Info/DownloadEvent Manager
Our final selection from ShowThemes.
More Info/DownloadEventure
We’re including Eventure here primarily because we think the minimalistic, black & white design is pretty cool. But it is a capable event theme for WordPress even beyond that, thanks to the unique event calendar. Worth a look, though you may find yourself needing a few third party plugins for adding additional functionality.
More Info/DownloadThat wraps up our list of the best conference and event themes for WordPress. If you think we’ve left something out that belongs here, or want to make a suggestion, feel free to comment. Until next time…