NAVC builds a year-round calendar for CE and team development

NAVC is leaning harder into a year-round education model, using its event calendar to connect veterinary professionals with a mix of flagship conferences, regional programs, hands-on training, and virtual CE. The current lineup puts NAVC SkillShop in Orlando on May 24–28, 2026, HiVE South in San Antonio on May 30–31, 2026, HiVE East in Charlotte on August 1–2, 2026, and VMX 2027 in Orlando on January 16–20, 2027. That follows VMX 2026, which NAVC said brought in nearly 29,000 attendees, reinforcing the group’s scale as one of the profession’s biggest education providers. (navc.com)

The calendar story matters because it shows how NAVC is moving beyond a once-a-year conference model. In its post-VMX 2026 messaging, NAVC said the networking and educational opportunities “don’t stop at VMX,” pointing readers toward HiVE and other programs. On its main site, NAVC says it hosts 50-plus events annually and serves a community of more than 675,000 professionals. That positioning reflects a broader strategy: keep learners engaged across formats, roles, and price points, rather than relying only on one large in-person event. (navc.com)

The details of the upcoming schedule support that approach. NAVC’s event calendar lists SkillShop first, a multi-day Orlando program built around immersive, course-based learning. The 2026 SkillShop catalog includes clinical tracks as well as the Uncharted Practice Owner Summit, a practice leadership program led by Andy Roark, DVM, on May 26–27. HiVE, meanwhile, is explicitly built for veterinary nurses, technicians, and practice management staff. NAVC’s HiVE page says each event offers more than 10 hours of CE, peer-led content, mentorship, networking, and practical skill-building, with proceedings included. Current 2026 dates on the HiVE site are South on May 30–31 in San Antonio, East on August 1–2 in Charlotte, and West in October, with location still to be announced. (navc.com)

VMX itself also gives a clearer picture of the kind of content NAVC is using to anchor that broader portfolio. Ahead of VMX 2026, NAVC promoted “Champions of Care” sessions around extending animal healthspan, movement and rehabilitation, and expanding access to care. The highlighted speakers included Naomi Hoyer, DVM, on dental pain prevention and owner communication; Angela Lennox, DVM, on exotic-species anesthesia and analgesia; Carrie Britt, DVM, on rehabilitation and pain management; and Michael Pesato, DVM, on backyard poultry and mixed-practice care as small-scale farming expands. Even in preview form, that lineup signaled that NAVC wants VMX to cover not just core medicine, but preventive care, integrative thinking, mobility, species diversification, and rural or underserved access issues. (navc.com)

That role-based focus has been building for at least the past two years. NAVC’s 2025 impact report said HiVE Midwest and HiVE West welcomed a combined audience of more than 650 professionals in 2025, with content spanning clinical skills, career development, and peer-led support for team members. A Today’s Veterinary Practice article promoting HiVE West also framed the event around hospital productivity, retention, and revitalization, while stressing low registration prices and manageable schedules. In other words, the calendar is not just a list of dates; it’s part of a workforce-facing education strategy. (navc.com)

Industry commentary around VMX 2026 helps explain why that strategy may resonate. Goodnewsforpets’ VMX 2026 wrap-up highlighted education, attendee experience, and responsible AI as defining themes at this year’s conference. Separately, Vet Life Reimagined’s VMX 2026 recap pointed to high attendance, broad CE offerings, conference inclusivity, and generational workforce issues as notable takeaways. In that discussion, leadership speaker Megan Gierhart’s message on five generations working side by side stood out: generational tension can contribute to team cohesion problems, turnover, lower engagement, weak succession planning, and poor knowledge transfer. While those are not formal policy statements, they help explain why conference programming that blends medicine with leadership, communication, and team development may be landing with attendees. (goodnewsforpets.com)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially practice leaders, the practical takeaway is that CE is being reshaped around workforce design as much as clinical content. Technician utilization, mentorship, burnout, and career development remain recurring issues across the profession. AVMA has long flagged concerns around technician recognition, turnover, and job satisfaction, while more recent workforce analysis has complicated the old shortage narrative by suggesting the profession’s challenges may be as much about distribution, utilization, and retention as raw headcount. Against that backdrop, NAVC’s mix of flagship, regional, hands-on, and virtual programming looks like an attempt to meet teams where they are, both geographically and professionally. The VMX 2026 session themes add another layer: preventive medicine, rehab, exotics, and rural access are all areas where practices may need new skills as patient populations and client expectations shift. (avma.org)

There’s also a business implication. Lower-cost regional events and focused leadership programs may be easier for hospitals to support than sending multiple team members to a major national meeting. HiVE East, for example, is currently advertised with a $99 basic badge during the early registration window, and NAVC has emphasized that these events are designed differently for specific roles rather than as scaled-down versions of VMX. If those formats continue to draw credentialed technicians, managers, and emerging leaders, they could become a more important part of how practices build skills and retain teams. More broadly, NAVC’s platform now reaches beyond CE alone: the organization also runs the VETTY Awards, which recognize animal health marketing work across clinics, pharmaceutical companies, diagnostics, associations, advocacy groups, and agencies. That does not make the awards a CE product, but it does reinforce NAVC’s position as a connector across multiple parts of the veterinary and animal health ecosystem. (navc.com)

What to watch: The next signal will be turnout and program evolution across SkillShop and the remaining 2026 HiVE events, especially whether NAVC adds more role-specific offerings, expands hybrid access, or uses these programs to address workforce pain points such as mentorship, technician utilization, leadership development, and cross-generational team dynamics more directly. It is also worth watching whether NAVC keeps broadening its influence through adjacent programs like the VETTY Awards, which suggest the organization is positioning itself not just as a conference host, but as a year-round platform spanning education, community, and industry visibility. (navc.com)