For San Francisco locals, it’s finally over. Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual customer conference, has come to an end, leaving downtown streets clear of both blue lanyard-wearing tech attendees and traffic jams (or at least worse traffic than usual). 

The giant three-day party draws around 40,000 Salesforce customers from all corners of the world to Moscone Center and surrounding streets. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either an eyesore or heaven. But either way, it’s a star-studded spectacle, with a stretch of Howard Street closed to make space for faux waterfalls and exclusive catering. Between events showcasing the utility of new AI-powered software and discussions of artificial intelligence’s potential doom, Dreamforce’s stages featured not just CEOs of Bay Area tech giants but also Hollywood A-listers, Grammy Award-winning artists and even Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

This event means a lot to people. For San Francisco, a city that has lost tech conferences to other cities over the past few years, Dreamforce is like the Super Bowl or a World Cup match. Salesforce says the conference injects an annual $130 million into the city’s economy. And the injection continues into the evening as the event makes an overwhelming effort to make its customers feel like royalty in CEO Marc Benioff’s kingdom with a big-time lineup and extravagant after-parties. I mean, how else do you make B2B SaaS (business-to-business software as a service) cool, let alone fun?

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The short answer? Exclusivity, big names and lots of booze. 

I spent two days scouring the Dreamforce nightlife. My limited social capital in the tech world as a relatively new tech journalist was pretty obvious: I requested tickets to around seven private events and received only three invitations. 

Attendees stand by a sign displayed at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference on Sept. 15, 2026, in San Francisco. 

Not all events are sponsored by Salesforce, so it’d be an unfair comparison to lump them together. For example, a Tuesday night after-party for founders and revenue........

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