Dare to Compete: Qlik Connect 2026 Goes for Gold with The Qlik Games: An Immersive Sports Experience Zone

The lights are bright, the crowd is cheering, cow bell rings out and every move you make is being captured and converted into a digital footprint in real time. No, you aren’t at the World Cup or the Tour de France - you’re on the show floor at Qlik Connect 2026 in Orlando.

This year, we’ve built our very own “Field of Schemes” an immersive, high-stakes, experience: The Qlik Sports Performance Zone, sponsored by Topgolf. Home to the Qlik Games, this zone is where raw athletic activity meets real-time AI and analytics.

Why Sports? Because Winning is a Data Point

In elite sports, the difference between a trophy and a "tough luck" is often measured in milliseconds and margins. Our customers like the Malmö Redhawks, Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling, and Topgolf use Qlik to improve those marginal gains every single day.

The Qlik Games aren’t just about having fun; they are a live demonstration of how Qlik Talend Cloud, Qlik Open Lakehouse, and Qlik Cloud Analytics turn chaotic, high-velocity data into winning moments.

The Challenges: D.A.R.E. to Compete

Attendees are invited to complete three challenges to earn their place - and spell out D.A.R.E. - on our Qlik Games Tournament leaderboard. Each activity is inspired by a real-world customer story:

1. Qlik Precision Par (Drive)

Tee up with Topgolf in an immersive simulator experience. We aren’t just looking at your score; we are capturing sensor data on your ball speed, velocity, and club path.

• The Goal: Get "Closest to the Pin" (KP) within three shots.

• The Insight: Analyze your arc and master the metrics of a perfect swing.

2. Qlik Slap Shot (Aim)

Step onto the "ice" of the Malmö Redhawks stadium. This isn't just a shootout; it’s a test of decision-making under pressure.

• The Goal: Hit as many targets as possible and record your fastest shot speed before the clock reaches zero.

• The Insight: React at the speed of data—one goal can change the game.

3. Qlik Cycle Sprint (Ride)

Saddle up with the Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team on smart bikes connected to Zwift. Every pedal stroke generates a unique data point.

• The Goal: A 360m "Tour de Qlik" dash.

• The Insight: Understand why the pros call Qlik their "26th rider".

4. Engage

The final letter "E" is assigned because every drive, target hit, and pedal stroke is an Engagement with the power of Qlik.

Under the Hood: The Winning Architecture

How do we move from a physical pedal stroke to a live leaderboard update in seconds? The Qlik Games are powered by our own data & analytic solutions, which we chose to build on the AWS platform and services.

Data Movement:

We use Qlik Talend Application and API Integration to build routes that collect telemetry from the edge to integrate with,

• Sources such as InfluxDB, local files(CSV), and Bluetooth sensors

• Targets such as Amazon Kinesis and AWS S3 to deliver data into

The Lakehouse:

All data lands in Apache Iceberg tables on Amazon S3 via Qlik Open Lakehouse. We put to work the recently launched streaming ingestion capabilities to ingest,

• Message data in real-time directly from Amazon Kinesis

• Real-time events from JSON files stored in AWS S3

Coupled with our unique Adaptive Iceberg Optimizer, which cleans and compacts these files automatically to keep queries lightning fast and, more importantly, reduces storage costs! Ingestion costs are lower than equivalent data warehouse ingestion workloads since Qlik Open Lakehouse compute resources are significantly less expensive.

To manage the Iceberg metadata in our AWS Lakehouse, we’re using the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

AI & Insights:

We use Amazon Athena to query the lakehouse and connect our Qlik Analytics embedded solution to surface the performance data in all our Qlik Games Leaderboards, and we’ve applied additional capabilities Qlik Automate, Qlik Predict and Qlik Answers.

• Qlik Automate notifies players via email with key insights and a link to the leaderboards when they first play an activity, and once again if they get knocked off their position by another competitor – so players can return to reclaim their position if they wish. We’ve also used a REST API with Qlik Automate to deliver the players’ stats to our AI Photobooth so they can be printed on a Qlik Games AI Trading Card.

• Qlik Predict offers "what-if" analysis for cyclists to improve their strategy.

• Qlik Answers allows you to ask natural language questions about the performance data.

Play with Purpose

The best part? Your sweat equity supports a great cause. Through Qlik Cares, every participation in the Qlik Games drives charitable donations to Special Olympics. Our live dashboards track the cumulative impact in real time, so you can see exactly how your performance is helping athletes thrive through sport.

Become an All-Star

Now you’ve put the effort in, you’ve earned your prize! Before you leave the zone, stop by the AI Trading Card Station. Our AI photobooth will transform your actual game stats and your photo into a personalized, printed trading card.

Dare to compete. Step into the Sports Performance Zone at Qlik Connect 2026 and see for yourself how we transform raw activity into winning moments.

Stay tuned! Watch the Qlik Connect 2026 live stream.