WAIC 2026 — World Artificial Intelligence Conference

WAIC, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, is China's flagship AI event, held annually in Shanghai with backing from national and municipal authorities. It is one of the largest AI gatherings anywhere — a combination of high-level forum, vast industry exhibition and product showcase — and the clearest single window onto the Chinese AI ecosystem.

On the programme

WAIC pairs plenary and themed forums with an enormous exhibition spanning large language models, AI chips and computing infrastructure, autonomous driving, and a now-famous humanoid-robotics hall. Sessions cover foundation models, embodied intelligence, AI applications across industry, and AI governance, drawing companies, research institutes and international participants.

Where it sits in today's AI

WAIC matters because it is where China's distinctive AI trajectory is on display — a deep bench of domestic large-model developers, aggressive commercialisation of humanoid and service robots, and a strong push on open-weight models that increasingly shape the global open-source landscape. It is also where China articulates its approach to AI governance, a counterpoint to Western frameworks. For anyone tracking the global balance of AI — researchers, businesses, investors and policymakers — WAIC is the essential read on one of the field's two dominant centres of gravity, and on how fast Chinese models and robotics are advancing.