The RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up is kicking off today, opening the Hyatt Regency to exploration and development resources companies, corporates, brokers, fund managers, and retail investors.
Held from 5-7 May 2026 along the Darling Harbour, the conference is expected to bring in between 1,500 and 1,700 registered delegates over the 2026 program.
Speaking to Mining.com.au ahead of the event, RIU Conferences General Manager Jaxon Crabb says RIU Sydney stands apart from the RIU Fremantle event due to the percentage of its attendees and their reasons for attending.
“RIU Sydney is a little different to Fremantle, because it’s like a 70% investor attendance conference,” Crabb tells this news service.
“It’s incredibly beneficial to the 100-odd ASX-listed participating companies because most of them are still in that early stage of exploration or development.
“And therefore, because they’re not mining a product or a commodity they need capital to continue their exploration or resource development.
A diversified number of investment groups are expected to attend, ranging from institutions, funds, private stockbrokers, and private investors.
“It would probably be the largest conference in Australia when it comes to the diversified number of investment groups,” Crabb adds.
A strong start
Prior to the conference kicking off, Crabb described the registered numbers for this year’s RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up looking “exceptionally strong”.
This year’s event is expected to be on par with RIU Sydney 2023, the event’s largest year yet, which Crabb says was held at the peak of the lithium and electric vehicle (EV) boom.
In 2023, the RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up brought in 1,700 delegates, on par with lithium use per vehicle battery increasing by 1.5 times, according to Lithium Harvest.
The lithium extraction company reflects there to have been around 60,000 EVs on the road worldwide in 2011, before the number soared to over 41 million in just over a decade later in 2023.
For RIU Sydney, Crabb expects EV conversations to be prominent at the event, along with oil, gold, and rare earths.
“2024 and 2025 was a little bit softer from the EV side of things, And actually, the resources industry was a little bit softer in ’24 and ’25 as well — it kind of didn’t impact dramatically in RIU Sydney, just dropped the numbers back by like 150 delegates, which is not much,” Crabb says.
“We have comparisons for three or four years on a day-to-day breakdown, which I’m looking at a spreadsheet right now, and you would suggest that we are very confident to be on the pathway of the 2023 numbers.
“We’re looking forward to a cracking show and one that will provide a lot of investment opportunities and discussions — exactly what the large community of resources companies that are travelling to Sydney. That’s the reason they’re going to the conference.”
The three-day conference will feature ASX-listed explorers, including Black Canyon (ASX:BCA), Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Kalamazoo Resources (ASX:KZR), Lincoln Minerals (ASX:LML), and Mammoth Minerals (ASX:M79).
Mining.com.au is a media partner for the RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up conference and will be in attendance at this year’s program.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up
