20 heads of state, 45 country delegations: Who will attend India’s large-scale artificial intelligence summit | India News

New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Friday announced the list of countries whose leaders will attend the India AI Impact Summit 2026 to be held in the national capital next week.The summit, hosted at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is pitched as the first major global gathering of artificial intelligence in the Southern Hemisphere.

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 will be held from February 16 to 20 at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. National leaders, ministers, global CEOs and representatives of international organizations are expected to discuss the future of artificial intelligence, its economic impact and governance framework.

Leaders attending the summit

According to MEA, the following leaders plan to participate:

In addition, ministerial delegations from more than 45 countries will participate. The United Nations Secretary-General and senior officials from several international organizations are also expected to participate in the deliberations.The summit comes at a time when the global artificial intelligence ecosystem is undergoing a major transformation. Despite rapid progress in large-scale language models, policymakers and experts are increasingly emphasizing the need for stronger data governance, diverse AI architectures, and industry-specific deployments.Organized around three pillars: People, Planet and Progress, the event is divided into seven thematic working groups covering AI skills, social inclusion, security, scientific research, sustainable computing, democratizing access and economic growth.More than 700 conference proposals have been received. On February 17, the government will release an artificial intelligence outline documenting case studies on the application of artificial intelligence in fields such as health care, agriculture, education and energy. The summit will hold a GPAI Council meeting on February 20.Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw described the response to the event as “extraordinary”, with nearly 100 countries expected to participate. More than 100 global CEOs are likely to attend.Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and other well-known technology leaders are also expected to attend.The summit will also host competitions such as AI for ALL and AI by HER, with a top prize of Rs 250 crore, besides youth-focused initiatives such as YUVAi and India AI Tinkerpreneur. The exhibition area exceeds 70,000 square meters and will showcase more than 300 exhibitors from 30 countries.