Eight EU leaders off to India as major AI summit kicks-off

16 Feb 2026, 17:35 · EUobserver

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, which runs 16 to 20 February, has an expected attendance of 250,000

Eight EU leaders off to India as major AI summit kicks-off

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By Owen Carpenter-Zehe,
Brussels
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French president Emmanuel Macron landed in India on Monday (February 16) where he will spend part of his trip participating in a week-long summit on AI — joining other world leaders, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and AI executives to discuss the global future of the technology.

The India AI Impact summit 2026 in New Delhi, which runs 16 to 20 February, has an expected attendance of 250,000. On the agenda is international cooperation frameworks, innovation, but also concern around the technology.

The India summit follows three previous meetings in the UK, South Korea, and France, with this year’s event the first to take place in a developing nation.

This is a point the event focuses on, aiming to highlight the current international AI divide and amplify voices from the global south.

“The AI Impact summit will enrich global discourse on diverse aspects of AI, such as innovation, collaboration, responsible use and more,” wrote prime minister Modi on social media Monday.

“The theme of the summit is ‘Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya’ [or welfare for all, happiness for all], reflecting our shared commitment to harnessing artificial intelligence for human-centric progress,” he added.

Macron won’t be the only EU representative either, with the major summit hosting at least seven other EU leaders, including presidents Pedro Sánchez (Spain), Alar Karis (Estonia), Peter Pellegrini (Slovakia); and prime ministers Dick Schoof (The Netherlands), Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Greece), Andrej Plenković (Croatia), and Petteri Orpo (Finland).

In total, 20 world leaders expected to attend.

Representing the European Commission, vice-president for tech affairs Henna Virkkunen will participate in a talk on international perspectives on AI governance on Friday.

The event comes as India is aiming to become a global player in AI, with the country aiming to gain more AI investment. Their current AI strategy is more tailored to specific application/ problem driven adoption rather than to competing directly with OpenAI.

US Big Tech companies are already investing in India, with Amazon and Google investing $35bn [€29.5bn] and $15bn [€12.7bn] respectively into AI infrastructure by 2030.

The EU leaders will join the chief executives of AI giants, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, among others, who will be speaking at the summit.

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The India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, which runs 16 to 20 February, has an expected attendance of 250,000

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Owen Carpenter-Zehe is a junior reporter covering technology and European politics at EUobserver. He is from the United States and has studied journalism in Sweden and the US.

Eight EU leaders off to India as major AI summit kicks-off