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The India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi represents a pivotal moment in the global AI dialogue, marking the first time this summit series will be hosted in a developing economy. Taking place from February 16-20, 2026 at the Bharat Mandapam, this international gathering aims to chart a path towards a future where AI delivers transformative impact that serves humanity, advances inclusive growth, fosters social development, and promotes people-centric innovations that protect our planet. 

This insight highlights the expected topics to be discussed at the upcoming AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. Please note that techUK’s Sue Daley OBE, Sabina Ciofu and Tess Buckley along with our delegation will be on the ground, if you would like to join us you can learn more here. As we did for the Paris AI Action Summit, you can expect daily updates and insigths from the ground to be shared on the techUK website and LinkedIn pages. 

The techUK team would like to know if any members will be attending. If you or your teams plan to be in New Delhi for the Summit, please get in touch and let us know by contacting tess.buckley@techuk.org. 

The 2026 India AI Impact Summit 

The global AI summit journey began in 2023 with the UK's Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit, which focused on foundational discussions about AI governance and safety. This evolved into the 2024 Seoul AI Summit, structured around innovation, inclusion, and safety, followed by the 2025 France AI Action Summit with its expanded focus on international governance, future of work, and AI for the general interest. 

Building on this momentum, India is hosting the 2026 AI Impact Summit with a distinctive focus on the impact of AI, particularly for global majority countries. This evolution reflects how the global AI dialogue has matured from initial safety concerns through actionable frameworks to now addressing the potential of AI for inclusive development across diverse economies. 

India has structured the Summit around three foundational principles ('sutras') and seven key focus areas ('chakras'): 

The Three Sutras: 

People – Ensuring AI serves humanity's full diversity whilst respecting cultural identities and human dignity. This principle prioritises human-centred outcomes through fostering development in an AI-enabled world, advancing inclusivity via multilingual and culturally contextualised systems, and establishing frameworks for safe, trusted AI deployment. 

Planet – Addressing environmentally sustainable AI development whilst leveraging AI to accelerate climate resilience and scientific breakthroughs. This recognises AI's expanding role in interpreting and influencing biological systems, ensuring technological advancement aligns with planetary stewardship. 

Progress – Focusing on equitable distribution of AI benefits aligned with global development priorities. This bridges the digital divide by democratising access to datasets, computational infrastructure and advanced models, whilst applying AI to accelerate socio-economic development across healthcare, education, governance and agriculture. 

The Seven Chakras: 

Human Capital – Develops global frameworks for equitable AI literacy, workforce transitions, and ensuring productivity gains are shared broadly across society. Addresses the infrastructure gaps in developing economies for workforce transition and the fragmented approaches to AI literacy that risk exacerbating inequalities. 

Inclusion – Fosters AI systems that are inclusive by design, locally relevant, and culturally respectful. Tackles the concentration of AI development among few actors and the exclusion of indigenous languages and diverse cultural perspectives, ensuring meaningful participation of traditionally excluded communities. 

Safe and Trusted AI – Democratises access to governance tools, empowering all nations with technical capabilities for effective AI oversight whilst fostering innovation. Addresses the technological governance gap, particularly in the Global South, where current approaches remain fragmented with limited access to advanced governance tools. 

Resilience – Promotes innovations enhancing energy efficiency throughout the AI lifecycle, ensuring all countries can equitably access AI-enabled solutions regardless of resource limitations. Recognises that AI systems require significant energy resources, challenging countries with infrastructure constraints. 

Science – Expands responsible AI use in scientific innovation, promoting inclusive collaboration and strengthening research ecosystems to address shared challenges whilst emphasising open, interdisciplinary research. Aims to address the uneven access to AI tools and collaboration that currently disadvantages the Global South. 

Democratising AI Resources – Establishes multilateral frameworks for equitable access to innovation essentials, transforming AI development from exclusive privilege into collaborative endeavour serving collective needs. Tackles the concentration of AI resources in specific centres that creates solutions with limited datasets failing to represent global realities. 

Social Good – Enables identification and scaling of AI applications for public interest, creating frameworks for adapting successful approaches across geographies through knowledge sharing and cross-border collaboration. Addresses the limited and uneven application of AI in public sectors, particularly in the Global South. 

The Summit's stated goal encapsulates this comprehensive vision: to chart a path towards a future where AI delivers transformative impact that serves humanity, advances inclusive growth, fosters social development, and promotes people-centric innovations that protect our planet. 

Road to the Summit 

The pre-summit process has been inclusive and busy. A public consultation was launched in June 2025, led by IndiaAI and MeitY via MyGov.in to gather citizen and stakeholder input on themes, agenda, and deliverables. This shaped the Summit's direction, followed by numerous official events hosted in India focusing on cybersecurity, responsible AI, and digital skills. International pre-summit events have also taken place in the USA and Switzerland. 

A rolling application window opened in August 2025 for organisations to host events contributing to the Summit's objectives, with the event hosting period concluding on January 31, 2026. Applications were open to governments, research institutions, multilateral organisations, private sector organisations, non-profits, think tanks, civil society organisations, and industry or professional associations. 

Flagship Events and Programming 

The Summit features several flagship initiatives listed below which has been designed to showcase AI's transformative potential: 

• AI Impact Expo 2026 runs throughout the Summit (February 16-20), demonstrating AI's impact across sectors through domestic showcases and international programmes, with dedicated areas for startups and investors. 
• Research Symposium on AI and its Impact takes place on February 18, providing an interdisciplinary forum for researchers from India, the Global South, and the international community, chaired by Abhishek Singh, CEO of IndiaAI, and Prof. P. J. Narayanan from IIIT Hyderabad. 
• AI for ALL: Global Impact Challenge is a competition identifying solutions that use AI to enable large-scale impact, with the best solutions displayed at a summit showcase. Applications are open to students, working professionals, researchers, and startups. 
• AI by HER: Global Impact Challenge invites women technologists to demonstrate solutions addressing large-scale, real-world public challenges. 
• YUVAi: Global Youth Challenge engages the 13-21 age group through virtual bootcamps, with successful participants presenting their AI solutions at a grand showcase during the summit. 
• SCALE IndiaAI4Good 2026, an initiative by Yuva Unstoppable (an Indian NGO), provides a platform for AI-native startups to address India's most pressing social challenges through AI solutions. 

These flagship events are complemented by various AI Impact Compendiums, including the WHO Casebook on AI Health, the IEA Casebook on AI in Energy, and the UN Women Casebook on AI and Gender Empowerment. 

Summit Schedule 

The Summit programming unfolds across five days: 

• February 16-18 feature flagship event finales, including the AI Impact Expo, competitions showcases, and the Research Symposium. 
• February 19 is designated for the leaders' plenary and CEO roundtables, bringing together heads of state, government officials, and business leaders for high-level discussions. 
• February 20 concludes the Summit with a Global Partnership on AI council meeting. 

The Summit will be housed in the Bharat Mandapam, an expo centre that has previously hosted a G20 summit, providing world-class facilities for this landmark gathering. 

The Summit has attracted prominent global leaders from technology, business, and civil society, including Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Bill Gates (Gates Foundation), Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries), and representatives from organisations including Zoom, Cisco, Royal Philips, Schneider Electric, and the World Economic Forum, among others. 

What This Means for Global AI Development 

The India AI Impact Summit comes at a moment in AI's evolution, as the first summit in this series to be hosted in a developing economy. This positioning ensures that conversations and focus will be anchored in AI opportunities and impacts for global majority countries, addressing the digital divide and ensuring that AI development serves diverse communities worldwide. 

The Summit's emphasis on impact over purely technical considerations reflects a maturation of the global AI dialogue. By structuring discussions around People, Planet, and Progress, India is positioning AI as a tool for inclusive development rather than solely as a technological challenge to be managed. 

The seven chakras provide a comprehensive framework that addresses key gaps in current AI development: from workforce transitions and cultural inclusion to governance tool access and resource democratisation. This holistic approach recognises that realising AI's potential requires addressing infrastructure, education, equity, and sustainability simultaneously. 

The Summit is also being used to promote India's flagship Digital India initiative, which aims to provide government services electronically to citizens through improved online infrastructure and connectivity, as well as the INDIAai web portal launched in 2024 as a hub for AI-related developments in India. 

As we approach the Summit, the focus on tangible impact and inclusive development promises to advance the global AI conversation in meaningful ways, ensuring that AI's transformative potential serves all of humanity rather than concentrating benefits among a few.