India AI Impact Summit 2026: Live Updates From Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi
India has opened one of the world’s most closely watched artificial intelligence summits today, with the India AI Impact Summit 2026 beginning at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the five-day event and set the tone for a shared roadmap on global AI governance, collaboration and responsible innovation.
The summit brings together top political leaders, global tech CEOs, AI researchers, regulators and startups to discuss everything from job disruption and employability to child safety, security and data infrastructure. For readers who want background on how AI is shaping India’s digital economy, you can also guide them to your detailed article on India’s AI growth story.
Key Highlights At A Glance
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Five-day India AI Impact Summit 2026 is being held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. This section is a great place to internally link to your general “technology news” or “AI news” category page.
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PM Narendra Modi will inaugurate the India AI Impact Expo this evening at 5 pm. You can naturally connect this line to your existing post on major government initiatives in AI and digital infrastructure.
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Over 500 sessions and 3,250-plus speakers and panelists are scheduled across multiple venues. Consider internally linking the phrase about “AI conferences and events” to a blog where you cover top tech events in India.
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13 international country pavilions, including Australia, Japan, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Serbia, Estonia, Tajikistan and Africa, are showcasing their AI ecosystems. If you have content on global tech collaborations or India–foreign tech partnerships, plug it here.
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Over 2.5 lakh visitors, including international delegates, are expected during the summit.
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Major themes: AI jobs and employability, AI safety, child safety, security, data centres, youth-focused innovation and global AI governance. Each theme can point to a separate in-depth blog (for example, a detailed guide on AI jobs in India or AI safety best practices).
Speaking ahead of the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has underlined India’s ambition to emerge as a major AI powerhouse backed by strong digital public infrastructure and growing compute capacity. If you have a pillar post on India’s digital public infrastructure (UPI, Aadhaar, ONDC, etc.), internally link that phrase here for added context.
He has invited the “whole world’s data” to reside in India, highlighting that data centres will be a massive job creator for the country’s youth. This is an excellent spot to internally link to your blog on data centre growth and cloud careers in India. Modi emphasised that India is expanding data centre and computing infrastructure to support a thriving AI ecosystem, with a focus on both ambition and responsibility in how AI is developed and deployed. His message frames the summit as a platform not just for technology announcements but also for long-term partnerships and investment in India’s AI future.
Global Tech Leaders Endorse India’s AI Potential
The summit is also seeing strong backing from global AI leaders such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has described India as a potential “full-stack AI leader”. If your site covers AI tools or platforms like ChatGPT, this paragraph is ideal to internally link to your in-depth guide on how Indian users can leverage AI tools for work and study.
Altman has revealed that India is already OpenAI’s second-largest user base after the United States and now has around 100 million weekly active users of ChatGPT, with the highest number of student users in the world. He also noted that India ranks fourth globally in adoption of Prism, OpenAI’s free tool for scientific research and LaTeX-based collaboration. Altman has stressed that OpenAI wants to build AI “in India, with India, and for India”, keeping tools free to ensure access irrespective of income, education or tech familiarity.
AI Jobs, Employability And Skills – What Experts Are Saying
At a session on “The Future of Employability in the Age of AI”, industry leaders discussed whether AI will replace jobs or create new ones. Here, you should internally link phrases like “AI jobs”, “AI skills” or “future of work” to your existing career or skill-development blogs.
The consensus is that while certain roles and repetitive tasks may become redundant, AI will open up fresh opportunities for those who reskill and upskill in time. Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, whose company owns Naukri.com, compared the current AI wave to the arrival of computers in banks, pointing out that jobs did not disappear but productivity increased. His message to young professionals is clear: “AI is happening, it is relentless… if you don’t do AI, AI will be done to you”, urging them to set a personal target of learning at least three AI platforms over the next three months to stay relevant. This is a strong place to internally link to your step-by-step guide on how Indian students and professionals can start learning AI tools.
Youth-Focused Innovation – Inside The YUVAi Challenge
One of the key youth initiatives being showcased at the summit is YUVAi, a youth-focused AI challenge. If your site covers student innovation, hackathons or startup contests, internally link “youth-focused AI challenge” to a page listing such opportunities.
The programme aims to build the right mindset and core AI skills among students and young innovators so that they can become responsible creators and users of AI technologies. Top finalists of the challenge will present their AI-led solutions to real-world problems during the summit, underscoring India’s strategy to nurture AI talent early and embed ethics and responsibility into the innovation journey. You can also point readers to your blog about AI project ideas for students.
AI For Security And Safe Events
Security for the summit itself is being managed with the help of AI-enabled systems, making it a “for AI, by AI” event in many ways. If you maintain content on AI in surveillance or smart cities, link the relevant anchor text here to that resource.
Over 10,000 personnel, including police and paramilitary forces, have been deployed, and the event area has been segmented into 10 zones and 22 sectors for better monitoring. Around 350 AI-enabled cameras and more than 750 CCTV cameras are tracking movement in and around Bharat Mandapam, supported by 25 anti-sabotage teams, bomb squads, five anti-drone systems and four air defence guns. Senior officers are personally overseeing operations, demonstrating how AI is now integral to large-scale security management.
Structure, Venues And Country Pavilions
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is spread across multiple venues including Bharat Mandapam, Sushma Swaraj Bhawan and Ambedkar Bhawan, where keynotes, panel discussions and closed-door roundtables are taking place. If you have a general “events in New Delhi” or “tech events guide”, this sentence is a natural place to link it.
Day one has been designed to frame national priorities, spark collaborations and set the intellectual foundation for the rest of the summit. The India AI Impact Expo, held alongside the summit from 16–20 February, brings together global technology companies, Indian startups, academia, research institutions, Union ministries, state governments and international partners under one roof. The 13 country pavilions highlight global collaboration in AI, from Europe and Asia to Africa, with a focus on joint research, products and policy dialogue. Here you can link to any blog where you discuss India’s role in global tech diplomacy.
Focus On Safety, Ethics And Governance
This Delhi summit is the fourth in a series of major international AI meetings that began with the AI Safety Summit in 2023, where preventing real-world harm from AI was a central concern. If you publish content about AI ethics, bias and regulation, internally link “AI safety” or “AI governance” directly to that pillar post.
Safety, ethics and governance remain at the heart of discussions in 2026, especially around child protection, misinformation, surveillance and military use of AI. Over 500 sessions with more than 3,250 speakers are scheduled to explore how AI can be harnessed for healthcare, education, agriculture, governance and enterprise in a way that benefits every citizen. The goal is to move from broad principles to concrete action plans and cross-border cooperation on standards, regulations and best practices.
