TL;DR. Within 30 km of Quattro Passi (Nerano) is essentially Sorrento Peninsula + Naples city centre [1]. The peninsula itself hosts one major IT-adjacent event per year — ICSO 2026 (space optics, 12–16 Oct at Hilton Sorrento Palace, 10-min walk from Sorrento centre) [2][3]. For everything else — IEEE conferences, GDG DevFest, hackathons, meetups — you’ll drive 60–90 min into Naples, where the calendar clusters at Federico II, Città della Scienza (Bagnoli), and Stazione Marittima. If your weekend lands on 17 Oct, you can do Quattro Passi Saturday evening and Napoli DevFest the same day [11].
Geographic scope
Nerano sits at the tip of the Sorrento Peninsula. Naples city centre is ~26 km from Sorrento as the crow flies (Sorrento → Nerano adds another 5 km of coastal road) [1]. That puts the 30-km circle from Quattro Passi at the edge of central Naples — west Naples (Bagnoli, Pozzuoli) and the deep periphery (Caserta, Salerno/Fisciano, Aversa) fall outside. Road time from Nerano is the real constraint: 75–90 min to central Naples through SS145 and the A3.
2026 calendar — events inside the 30 km circle
| Date | Event | Venue (city) | Distance from Nerano | Focus | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Mar (past) | Skal – AI for tourism & hospitality | Bosco de’ Medici, Pompei | ~25 km | AI applied to tourism (local SMB) | [19] |
| 14–17 Apr (past) | NQSTI 3rd National Quantum Congress | Città della Scienza, Bagnoli (Napoli) | ~29 km | Quantum computing, secure comms | [15] |
| 28 May (past) | Security Summit Napoli 2026 | Città della Scienza, Bagnoli | ~29 km | NIS2, DORA, healthcare cyber | [5] |
| 28–31 May | IEEE MLISE 2026 | CESTEV@UNINA, San Giovanni a Teduccio | ~29 km | ML, deep & reinforcement learning | [4] |
| 16–18 Jun | EWP Convention 2026 | Chiostro SS Marcellino e Festo, Federico II | ~30 km | Digital innovation, Erasmus mobility | [6] |
| 13–16 Jul | IEEE MNC 2026 | Federico II Conference Center | ~30 km | Networking, IoT, wireless measurement | [7] |
| 7–11 Sep | Journées Montoises (JM 2026), 20th edition | Federico II, Napoli | ~30 km | Theoretical CS, automata, logic | [8] |
| 15–18 Sep | IEEE ITSC 2026 (29th) | Stazione Marittima, Napoli | ~30 km (edge) ⚠ | Intelligent transportation systems | [9] |
| 28 Sep–2 Oct | IEEE eScience 2026 (22nd) | Napoli (venue TBA) | ~30 km (edge) ⚠ | AI/ML, HPC, FAIR data, workflows | [10] |
| 12–16 Oct | ICSO 2026 (16th, ESA + CNES) | Hilton Sorrento Palace, Sorrento | ~5 km ✓ | Space optics, photonics | [2][3] |
| 17 Oct | Napoli DevFest 2026 (“Futuro Liquido”) | Città della Scienza, Bagnoli | ~29 km | Google tech, AI, mobile, web | [11] |
| 25–26 Oct (TBC) | The Big Hack — Special Edition | Apple Developer Academy, San Giovanni a Teduccio | ~29 km | Hackathon, regional startups | [20] |
⚠ The Federico II main quad and Stazione Marittima sit right at the 30 km isoline from Nerano; Bagnoli (Città della Scienza) is inside, and Sorrento itself is well inside.
Venues that anchor everything
| Venue | City (zone) | km from Nerano | Capacity | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hilton Sorrento Palace | Sorrento (Via Sant’Antonio) | ~5 | 24 rooms, 1,500-seat auditorium, 3,500 m² expo [17] | The peninsula’s only large MICE venue — hosts ICSO 2026 |
| Federico II — Centro Congressi & San Giovanni a Teduccio | Naples (Centro / east) | ~29–30 | Multiple halls + the new tech campus | Hosts MLISE, MNC, EWP, JM 2026, Apple Developer Academy [18] |
| Città della Scienza | Bagnoli (west Naples) | ~29 | Science museum + congress halls | Hosts Security Summit, NQSTI, Napoli DevFest |
| Centro Congressi Stazione Marittima | Napoli port | ~30 (edge) | 3,300 m², 18 halls, 700-seat plenary, up to 1,800 [16] | Hosts IEEE ITSC 2026 and most large industry congresses |
Recurring community meetups (Naples)
Naples has a small but real Italian-language dev community. None of these meet on the Sorrento Peninsula.
- GDG Napoli — 1,750 members, runs the annual Napoli DevFest plus irregular meetups and hackathons; flagship 2025 was 11 Oct, 2026 is 17 Oct [12].
- DevDay Napoli — 817 members, monthly developer talks, venue rotates around Naples [13].
- AWS User Group Napoli — 434 members; largely dormant for in-person (last regular meetup Apr 2024). They co-hosted the synchronous AWS Community GameDay Europe on 17 Mar 2026, but at VMEngine in Pozzuoli (~33 km, just outside) [14].
- PyCampania — 167 members, Python-focused, irregular [21].
- GDG Campania — regional GDG covering Naples & Salerno; mostly the same crowd as GDG Napoli [22].
Realistic advice: check the meetup pages a week before your weekend. The community runs on bursts of activity around the universities (Federico II, Parthenope, Vanvitelli), not on a fixed calendar.
What’s not within 30 km of Quattro Passi
These show up in “Campania tech” searches but are outside the radius — flagging so you don’t book a hotel on the wrong side of the bay.
| Event / venue | Where | Real distance from Nerano |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Community GameDay Europe 2026 (Italy node) | VMEngine, Pozzuoli (west of Naples) [14] | ~33 km |
| Google Challenge Campania 2026 | University of Salerno, Fisciano campus | ~50 km |
| Maker Faire Caserta 2026 | Maddaloni (CE) | ~70 km |
| Cybertech Europe 2026 | Roma, La Nuvola | ~260 km |
| Italian Tech Week (Wave) 2026 | Torino, OGR | far |
How to use this page
Pick your weekend on the calendar above. If it lands on a Saturday with no IT event in the area, that’s normal — the Sorrento Peninsula is a tourism economy, not a tech hub. Sorrento’s one shot at a marquee tech weekend in 2026 is ICSO, 12–16 October (Quattro Passi is bookable that Saturday — the 17th) [3]. The next-best overlap is the 17 Oct Saturday, when Napoli DevFest runs at Città della Scienza and you can be back in Nerano for an 8pm tasting menu [11].