At its national capital, India convenes the world’s AI leaders, 600 startups, 3250 speakers, and 13 nations to debate democratisation, governance, and production‑grade solutions for global impact.
New Delhi has become the centre of global discussions on artificial intelligence (AI) as India hosts the AI Impact Summit 2026, running from 16 to 20 February 2026 at Bharat Mandapam.
The event, coming to the Global South for the first time, will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16 February, alongside the co-located India AI Impact Expo.
The summit builds on earlier international gatherings, including the UK’s AI Safety Summit in 2023, Seoul’s focus on innovation in 2024, and Paris’s emphasis on economic opportunities in 2025. India’s approach differs, with Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan framing the agenda around ‘People, Planet, and Progress,’ highlighting AI solutions for real-world challenges.
Participation is expected from over 100 countries, including more than 20 heads of government such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Spain’s President Pedro Sánchez, Switzerland’s President Guy Parmelin, and the Netherlands Prime Minister Dick Schoof. A Chinese delegation will also attend.
Global industry leaders, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Brad Smith (Microsoft), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), and Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), are scheduled to join discussions. Modi will host a CEO roundtable and dinner.
Over 600 startups will showcase solutions already deployed at scale across healthcare, agriculture, education, climate resilience, and governance. More than 500 sessions featuring 3250 speakers will address AI infrastructure, skilling, data governance, and responsible frameworks.
The Expo will also feature 13 country pavilions, underscoring India’s push for cross-border collaboration in AI research, standards, and enterprise adoption.
Abhishek Singh, CEO of the IndiaAI Mission, noted that current AI systems are largely developed by a handful of countries, leaving most of the world as users rather than contributors.
He emphasised that without inclusive datasets, outputs risk being biased. Singh underlined that democratising AI resources, spanning datasets, compute, models, algorithms, and applications, would be a central theme of the summit.
