NECANN is the convention series that gave East Coast cannabis a meeting place, one state at a time. Launched in 2014 and anchored by its Boston flagship, it runs business-first shows in New Jersey, Minnesota, Virginia and beyond — each built around that state's own market, licensees and rules.
Two Alt-Weekly Guys Start a Convention
NECANN came out of Boston's alternative press, not the trade-show industry. Jeff Lawrence, publisher of the alt-weekly DigBoston, and events veteran Marc Shepard launched the company in 2014 and staged the first New England Cannabis Convention that winter — January 31 and February 1, 2015 — back when Massachusetts was still a medical-only state.
Lawrence framed the first show plainly: a room where patients, advocates, businesses and educators could finally trade answers about a medical market that was mostly open questions. Nothing at that scale had been tried in Massachusetts, and the bet was that the audience existed before the industry officially did.
It paid off, and the Boston show became an annual fixture. By its tenth edition in 2024 it filled three exhibit halls at the Hynes Convention Center with more than 300 exhibitors, five programming tracks and a finance summit — plus an after-party at the Royale headlined by Slightly Stoopid. A convention that started by explaining the rules now throws the industry's biggest East Coast party.
The Local-First Playbook
Most national convention brands stamp the same show onto every city. NECANN works the opposite way: it enters a state by working with the local industry first, builds the programming around that market's rules and license classes, and donates 10 percent of its exhibit-hall space to social equity licensees and advocacy groups.
That approach travels well through markets the big Vegas shows ignore. NECANN editions have run from Illinois to Maryland to New York, and the series added the NECANN Cup in 2019 — state-by-state cultivation competitions whose awards now share the bill with the conventions themselves. In New Jersey, the Cup ceremony is part of the convention's own headline.
The operation has stayed close to its founders, too. Shepard still runs the series as president, and the team behind it is a handful of event and media people rather than a conglomerate's events division — which is a big part of why the local-first promise actually holds.
Where It Runs Now
The current calendar starts with the New Jersey Cannabis Convention at the Atlantic City Convention Center, September 18–19, 2026, paired with the NECANN Cup awards ceremony on the same bill. The Minnesota edition follows at the Minneapolis Convention Center, May 14–15, 2027.
The Boston flagship returns to the Hynes in April 2027, then the fall run: Richmond's convention center October 1–2 and Providence October 15–16, with a Philadelphia debut set for April 2028. Tickets, exhibitor applications, speaker applications and the full schedule live on the official NECANN site — and licensees and qualified buyers can apply for free admission, which tells you who these shows are actually built for.
Why It Matters
Every new legal state hits the same moment: hundreds of fresh licensees and no room where they can meet each other. NECANN has made a decade-long business out of building that room early — showing up while a market is still forming instead of waiting for it to get big enough for Vegas.
That is why the series reads less like a trade-show brand and more like infrastructure. If your state just legalized, odds are a NECANN edition is already on the calendar — and when it lands, it will be the first room where the local industry actually gets to look like one.