The Leeds Digital Festival has announced that it is hosting its spring event online, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Virtual events are set to go ahead in April, with the physical festival anticipated to take place in autumn.

Delegates will be able to log in to the festival, which is taking place from 20 April to 1 May, and take part in sessions. The festival will cover all areas of digital marketing and strategy through an online platform from social media masterclasses through to SEO strategy, web development education and automation talks.

Head of ConferenceLeeds, Claire Heap, said: “The COVID-19 crisis has had an unprecedented impact on the conferencing industry, with the postponement or even cancellation of thousands of events across the world. In this current climate, it’s incredibly encouraging to see how a local, home-grown event such as the Leeds Digital Festival can adapt and change practices to continue to run in-spite of this, and we’re really pleased that all of the knowledge sharing, learning and networking will still be able to take place, as it’s more important than ever for professionals in this industry at this time.

“We’re very much looking forward to seeing the Digital Festival go truly digital at the end of this month, really providing a shining example of our strength in the digital sector as a city, and also for the rest of the event when it happens again later this year!”

Stuart Clarke, festival director of the Leeds Digital Festival, said: “We had over 240 events submitted for this year’s Leeds Digital Festival so it was obviously disappointing when the Covid-19 crisis forced a postponement of physical events. However, you can’t keep the Leeds digital community down and when we decided to put on an online festival, we were overwhelmed by the level of support we received.

“April’s online Festival will feature over 50 virtual events and will provide a key role in bringing the sector together. We’ll also be back for our two-week physical Festival from 21st September, where we can continue to celebrate and collaborate.”

For more information, visit www.conferenceleeds.co.uk.