Daily Highlights
Day 1 | 06 July 2026
Here are the highlights from Day 1 of the WSIS Forum 2026, which opened to strong participation, packed sessions, and dynamic discussions across youth empowerment, gender equality, action-line implementation, and sustainability. Stay up to date with the latest developments in digital cooperation, AI policy, and global connectivity.
Key Takeaways
Crowds lined up outside ITU Headquarters today to kick off the first day of the WSIS Forum 2026. Attendees packed rooms throughout the day to address critical topics including youth, gender, action-line implementation, and sustainability.
Youth High-Level Dialogue
An emphatic discussion around the role of youth, who called for genuine partnership and not just token seats at the table — rooted in the idea that youth put more trust in community than in government or industry leaders. Speakers noted that roughly 90% of 2030 jobs will require digital skills, yet many young people lack access to those. Intergenerational labs, safe spaces to fail, AI literacy scaling alongside adoption, and real portfolios for digital natives all serve the C1 aim of including all stakeholders in ICT-for-development.
Women and Girls
Beyond facilitating access, decision-making power through enforceable, safety-by-design regulation is increasingly essential to protecting women and girls, particularly with respect to AI. Women need to be in the rooms setting AI and data standards. Concerns flagged included AI recruitment bias and automation risk to women’s jobs.
WSIS Action Lines Coordination
Turning the outcomes of WSIS+20 into concrete action, WSIS Action Lines Facilitators held a coordination meeting to advance the new mandates set out in the WSIS+20 Outcome Document (A/RES/80/173). Discussions also moved forward the development of Action Line road maps and measurable indicators, with the outcomes of this work to be reported to the CSTD at its thirtieth session in 2027.
C7: Reaching the Unconnected
The C7 sessions centred on reaching the unconnected. On e-government, 2.2 billion people remain offline even as 98% of member states offer a digital service, making multi-channel delivery essential through post offices, Huduma centres, and libraries. The e-waste session (ITU with Saudi Arabia’s CST), a three-year project across Paraguay, Rwanda, and Zambia, anchored the C7 e-environment strand, with only about 20% of e-waste recycled and Extended Producer Responsibility as the core regulatory model.
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Video Highlights
What’s on for Tomorrow?
Day 2 will dive into AI policy (youth-led and Global South framings, plus AI’s impact on jobs) alongside some C7 Action Line facilitation meetings on e-health, e-environment, and e-science, with strong Women and Girls in Digital and digital-identity threads throughout, alongside WSIS Action Lines Knowledge Cafe and implementation, Country Insights, and more.
Day 2 | 07 July 2026
Here are the highlights from Day 2 of the WSIS Forum 2026, the second and final day at ITU Headquarters, which kept up Day 1's momentum with full, lively sessions across AI governance, digital health, science, the environment, inclusion, and country insights. Stay up to date with the latest developments in digital cooperation, AI policy, and global connectivity.
Key Takeaways
The Forum's second and final day at ITU Headquarters kept up Day 1’s momentum, with full, lively sessions on AI governance, inclusion, and institutions, digital health, science, the environment, media in times of crisis, action-line implementation, and country insights.
The WSIS Action Lines Knowledge Café gathered facilitators from across the UN system to take stock of two decades of achievement and sketch visions for 2035, where with participants' headlines converging on one theme: collaboration through multi-stakeholder cooperation.
AI governance took centre stage at the Latvia Permanent Mission's session, where speakers called for frameworks that set objectives rather than prescribe solutions, flagged the shift from content to systems governance, and named AI literacy the essential tool for empowering citizens.
Country Insights spotlighted Rwanda's new Artificial Intelligence Agency, with panelists naming governance, domestic capacity, and funding as the core barriers to scaling AI, underscoring the urgency of turning strategies into public impact.
WSIS Action Line C7 was a big focus on Day 2. The WHO-led C7 e-health meeting showcased the Global Initiative on Digital Health, now 90 institutional members strong, alongside Zambia's transformation journey and a pointed reminder that AI healthcare models need region-specific training data to prevent clinical bias. On C7 e-science, UNESCO outlined its Global Quantum Initiative, drawing interest from over 30 countries, while the CERN-hosted Open Quantum Institute championed equitable access to quantum computing for underserved regions. The C7 e-environment session confronted digital's dual nature, in that it is powerful for environmental monitoring, yet has a growing footprint in emissions and e-waste. Additionally, UNESCO's C7 e-media session tackled platform governance in crises, calling for humanitarian communication channels embedded in international norms and support for local journalists facing threats and censorship.
The day wrapped up with an engaging focus on AI inclusion, with "Last Mile of AI Inclusion for Local Impact," spotlighting a pilot in Juba, South Sudan. There, an initiative is using offline, human-in-the-loop real-time translation to improve communication across 50,000 peacekeeping personnel from 120 countries. UNESCO's new Coalition for Linguistic Diversity in AI pressed for community-led data collection to bring low-resource languages into AI models.
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Video Highlights
What’s on for Tomorrow?
Day 3 sees the Forum move to Palexpo for the rest of the week, opening with the Inaugural Session, the High-Level Plenary "The Future We Choose: Leadership for an Inclusive Digital World," and the handover of the chairship from South Africa to Egypt. The High-Level Track then kicks into gear with ministerial roundtables, Leaders TalkX sessions on ICT infrastructure and AI governance, and a High-Level Dialogue with mayors on localizing the twin digital and green transition, all running alongside the AI for Good Global Summit.
Day 3 | 08 July 2026
Here are the highlights from Day 3 of the WSIS Forum 2026, as the Forum moved to Palexpo for the Inaugural Session and the start of the High-Level Track, featuring the handover of the WSIS Forum Chair from South Africa to Egypt, the launch of the Leaders TalkX series, and major discussions on digital investment, AI governance, and localizing the digital and green transition. Stay up to date with the latest developments in digital cooperation, AI policy, and global connectivity.
Key Takeaways
Day 3 opened with the Forum moving to Palexpo, where the Inaugural Session's High-Level Plenary, "The Future We Choose: Leadership for an Inclusive Digital World," set the tone for the week's high-level segment. Speakers pressed for coherence the WSIS Action Lines with the SDGs and the Global Digital Compact objectives to avoid parallel tracks. The centrepiece was the handover of the WSIS Forum Chair from South Africa to Egypt, whose Minister of Communications and Information Technology called for practical, inclusive, and impactful cooperation focused on closing divides, strengthening skills, and expanding digital public infrastructure. Kazakhstan’s shared its ambition to becoming a fully digital nation within three years, Nobel Peace Prize laureate speaker urged leaders to build compassion into AI, and co-organizers UNESCO, UNDP, and UNCTAD closed with a shared message to move from dialogue to delivery.
UNESCO and ICANN launched their Universal Acceptance policy brief, noting only 12 percent of tested websites support local-language domains, while the IEEE Knowledge Café named affordability, trust, and geography as the core barriers to meaningful connectivity.
The day also saw the kickoff of the Leaders TalkX sessions, with five back-to-back discussions gathering ministers and senior leaders. They discussed ICT infrastructure development, the role of multistakeholder partnerships, policy, ethics, and global cooperation on AI, the accessibility of knowledge, and how to build secure and trusted digital public infrastructure.
The High-Level Dialogue on financial mechanisms put numbers on the challenge, citing a $2.66 trillion digital investment gap, met by commitments including Microsoft's $50 billion pledge for AI in the Global South and the Asian Development Bank's $20 billion for connectivity.
Mayors localized the twin digital and green transition, from Agadir's integrated data platform to digital twins for citizen participation, noting that 1 billion people in informal settlements remain missing from digital maps.
Finally, Partner Insights showcased the UAE Diamond partner whose AI-powered government transformation, improving service efficiency, accessibility, and digital trust. Following this was Malaysia's people-centric MCMC Five-Year Plan 2030 and Saudi Arabia's Generative AI Accelerator and 1 million citizens trained in AI, ending with Nigeria, which focused on strategic investments in digital talent, broadband, and responsible AI to drive inclusive growth.
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What’s on for Tomorrow?
Day 4 features a number of flagship moments, including the Official reception by Switzerland, as well as the WSIS Prizes 2026 Winners Ceremony on the Main Stage, where the ITU Secretary-General will unveil the 18 winning projects drawn from a record 1,595 submissions across 122 countries and more than 2.2 million votes. The Leaders TalkX series continues with sessions on skills for the future, policy frameworks that enable ICT development, and strengthening international cooperation, alongside further high-level dialogues, country insights, and action-line facilitation meetings, all running in parallel with the AI for Good Global Summit.
Day 4 | 09 July 2026
Here are the highlights from Day 4 of the WSIS Forum 2026, which put the high-level machinery into full gear at Palexpo, featuring the WSIS Prizes 2026 Winners Ceremony, the Ministerial and Regulators Roundtables, the UN Leaders Dialogue, and continuing Leaders TalkX sessions, all capped off by the official reception by Switzerland. Stay up to date with the latest developments in digital cooperation, AI policy, and global connectivity.
Key Takeaways
Day 4 at Palexpo put the high-level machinery of the Forum into full gear, with the WSIS Prizes ceremony, ministerial and regulators roundtables, a UN Leaders Dialogue, and the continuing Leaders TalkX series.
The morning opened with a flagship moment: the WSIS Prizes 2026 Winners Ceremony on the Main Stage, where the ITU Secretary-General presented awards to the 18 winning projects, drawn from a record 1,595 submissions across 122 countries and more than 2.2 million public votes.
The Ministerial Roundtable brought ministers together around AI strategy and policy, digital transformation, and infrastructure and inclusion. A common thread ran through the room: readiness, trust, and cooperation. Ministers called not for identical systems but interoperable ones that respect national circumstances, with ITU as a trusted platform translating shared principles into practical cooperation. AI must remain human-centered, ethical, and accountable, with growing momentum behind sovereign AI models and local-language datasets. Ministers warned of a structural divide as AI infrastructure funding concentrates in a few large private firms, and stressed that success should be measured not by technology deployed but by lives improved, calling for blended finance, compute sharing, and investment that reaches underserved communities.
The UN Leaders Dialogue gathered senior leaders from across the UN system to align priorities for WSIS+20 implementation, reaffirming the commitment to work as one system for an inclusive, people-centered digital future.
The Regulators Roundtable focused on putting governance essentials into practice, introducing the Actionable Core Toolkit to help regulators move from assessment to action across the seven governance essentials of the GSR-26 best practice guidelines, with concrete approaches shared from Nigeria's network intelligence ecosystems to Singapore's regulatory sandboxes and Ukraine's adaptive regulation sustaining resilience.
The Leaders TalkX series continued with sessions on skills for the future, enabling policy frameworks, and strengthening international cooperation.
Today was truly a day about collaboration and partnership with co-Chairs joining both Ministerial and Regulators discussions, workshops, and the official reception by Switzerland to cap off an eventful day.
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Video Highlights
What’s on for Tomorrow?
The Forum wraps up its week on Friday with a final Leaders TalkX on co-creating tomorrow through digital and AI partnerships, followed by the WSIS Prizes Champions' Ceremony celebrating the 72 Champion projects. The WSIS Action Lines Facilitators will hold their closing meeting, and the High-Level Track Facilitators will present their summary of the week's discussions before the Closing Ceremony, where the Chair will deliver the official WSIS Forum 2026 summary, bringing the first post-WSIS+20 Forum to a close.
Day 5 | 10 July 2026
The WSIS Forum 2026, the first edition since the WSIS+20 Review, concluded today in Geneva after five days of high-level dialogue, action-line meetings, and landmark ceremonies. The Forum carried a single, unmistakable message: the time for commitments has passed, and the decade of implementation has begun. Egypt's Chair distilled the week into five priorities, and the Forum closed with a call to turn dialogue into delivery.
Key Takeaways
The first Forum since the WSIS+20 Review carried a single, unmistakable message: the time for commitments has passed, and the decade of implementation has begun.
Across the week, a few big ideas kept surfacing. Inclusion emerged as the true measure of progress. Connectivity alone is not enough; people need affordable access, digital skills, relevant content, and safe online spaces. Youth demanded genuine partnership rather than token seats, and speakers insisted women and girls belong in the rooms where AI and data standards are set.
Artificial intelligence dominated discussions, but with a development lens. Leaders pushed for interoperable systems rather than identical ones, warned of a widening AI divide as infrastructure funding concentrates in a few private firms, and championed local languages, regional data, and human-centered design. The financing challenge was made concrete: a $2.66 trillion investment gap, met by early pledges including Microsoft's $50 billion for AI in the Global South.
Above all, the Forum embraced a new metric of success: not technology deployed but lives improved.
Takeaways from the Chair's Summary
Egypt's Chair distilled the week into five priorities: digital inclusion as the central goal, AI in service of development, digital finance as a tool for opportunity, youth as partners, and closing the gender divide. He called for better measurement of real-world impact and pointed to the WSIS Prizes, 18 winners from 1,595 submissions across 122 countries, as proof the Action Lines deliver.
Carrying WSIS through the year
The Forum's worth will be proven between now and 2027. Road maps, indicators, pledges, and toolkits must become services, skills, and jobs. WSIS stays relevant because it brings people together; it stays powerful only if that togetherness turns into action. The year ahead is where dialogue becomes delivery.
