AI for Good Global Summit 2026

The AI for Good Global Summit is the United Nations' flagship AI event, organised by the ITU in Geneva in partnership with dozens of UN agencies. It is the leading platform for steering artificial intelligence toward the Sustainable Development Goals, and it stands apart from commercial conferences by foregrounding impact, inclusion and governance rather than product launches.

On the programme

The summit pairs high-level dialogue with a large, hands-on exhibition of robotics and AI applied to health, climate, education, agriculture and disaster response — one of the few places to see humanoid and assistive robots demonstrated alongside policy debate. Recurring pillars include the AI for Good Innovation Factory, a startup pitch competition for impact-driven ventures that culminates in a live grand finale; the AI Governance and standards programme, where the technical and policy communities work on international norms; the AI for Good Neural Network community; and deep-dive sessions and workshops led by UN bodies, frontier labs, academia, civil society and startups. The breadth of participants — from research scientists to ministries to NGOs — is what gives the summit its distinctive character.

Where it sits in today's AI

AI for Good matters because it is where the capability conversation meets the governance and equity one. As frontier systems advance rapidly, the summit presses the harder questions: how AI can serve the developing world rather than widen divides, how to build international standards and norms, and how to direct the technology at concrete global problems. Its 2026 themes — agentic AI for development, AI safety and governance, and bridging the global AI divide — sit at the centre of international policy debate, and its connection to the ITU's standards work gives those debates real institutional weight. For policymakers, technologists, UN and NGO practitioners and impact-minded founders, it is the essential venue connecting AI's frontier to the public good.