Senior United Nations leaders, including Secretary-General António Guterres, will participate in the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi from February 16 to 20, marking the first global artificial intelligence gathering of its scale to be hosted in the Global South.
Organised by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Summit aims to bring together governments, international organisations, industry, academia and civil society to advance the responsible development and deployment of artificial intelligence in support of sustainable development goals.
The UN system will convene more than 30 side events during the five-day Summit, focusing on themes such as agriculture and food security, gender equality, health systems, digital public infrastructure, disaster risk reduction and children’s safety.
Ahead of his visit to India, Guterres underscored the need for global cooperation on AI governance. “We need shared understandings to build effective guardrails, unlock innovation for the common good, and foster cooperation,” he said.
The Secretary-General will be joined by several senior UN and international leaders, including Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Amandeep Singh Gill, Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies; Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; Gilbert F. Houngbo, Director-General of the International Labour Organization; Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union; and Kamal Kishore, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Senior representatives from UNDP, UN Women, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA, FAO, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the UNICRI are also expected to participate.
The Summit follows a major development at the UN, with the General Assembly appointing 40 members to the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, recommended by the Secretary-General. The panel, the first global scientific body of its kind on AI, will assess how artificial intelligence is transforming societies and economies worldwide.
Selected from more than 2,600 candidates, the panel members will serve in their personal capacity and issue an annual report providing evidence-based assessments of AI’s opportunities, risks and impacts, including contributions to the new Global Dialogue on AI Governance. The panel includes Indian expert Balaraman Ravindran of IIT Madras.
The Union government’s recent Budget announcements underline India’s broader push to integrate artificial intelligence across education, skills and emerging industries.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement in the Union Budget 2026–27, on introducing artificial intelligence (AI) in education is not the Centre’s first attempt to embed emerging technologies into the learning ecosystem. In the Union Budget 2025–26, the government had allocated Rs 500 crore for setting up a Centre of Excellence for the purpose.
In the Budget 2026 speech Sitharaman mentioned “artificial intelligence” a record 11 times, the highest frequency the term has appeared in any Indian Budget speech.
The Budget outlined AI’s role across multiple domains, including governance, where it was described as a force multiplier for improving public service delivery, and the adoption of new technologies through initiatives such as the AI Mission and the National Quantum Mission.
AI was also highlighted as a tool for labour market analysis to assess the impact of emerging technologies on job roles and skill requirements. The Budget announced Bharat-VISTAAR, a new multilingual AI tool aimed at improving linguistic accessibility.
In agriculture, AI integration was proposed through AgriStack portals and ICAR agricultural practice packages. In healthcare and accessibility, the focus was on research and the integration of AI into assistive devices for persons with disabilities manufactured by the Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India.
The Budget also flagged the use of AI in customs and security through expanded non-intrusive scanning and advanced imaging for risk assessment. In education, it proposed embedding AI modules into the national curriculum from the school level onwards, alongside teacher training.
Professional upskilling and reskilling programmes for engineers and technology professionals were outlined, along with plans to deploy AI-enabled platforms to better match workers with jobs and training opportunities.
Over the past five years, the Union government has been working to promote AI across sectors, with a growing emphasis on integrating AI and other emerging technologies into curricula, supported by the large-scale rollout of e-content labs. Even as the government earmarked Rs 100 crore for AI in the education sector this year, the 2023 Budget had provided for the establishment of three Centres of Excellence in AI for agriculture, healthcare and sustainable cities.