India will be hosting the third global India AI Summit 2026 in the month of February. The two-day summit will be held on 19th February, 2026, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, determining numerous AI developments taking place across the globe. The emphasis will be upon its use-cases for comprehensive growth, equitable development along with sustainability. The Summit will outline its commitment to make Artificial Intelligence (AI) beneficial and available for the welfare of the public.
Ashwini Vaishnav, the Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister informed Parliament that the summit aligns with the vision of Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi of utilizing technology to facilitate all divisions of the society. Moreover, the event will concentrate on harnessing AI to address real-world challenges within areas like governance, climate change, agriculture, education and healthcare. The huge-scale summit is anticipated to witness the involvement from industry innovators and experts, policy makers, global leaders and heads of states.
On Thursday, Ashwini Vaishnav unveiled the theme along with the logo for the Global AI Summit. The logo features the Ashoka Chakra with shining neural network patterns, signifying the impact of AI throughout regions along with sectors. The logo signifies the strategic vision of India for People, Planet and Progress via AI.
The discussions are being focused across 7 thematic chakras- Social good, Democratizing AI resources, Science, and Resilience. Safe & Trusted AI, Inclusion and Human Capital, underscoring the ways through which AI could be an impactful force for citizens, the planet, and communities alike.
In order to sustain AI for social impact, a scalable creativity and AI governance framework, the Minister stated that the government is also striving hard to extend the AI infrastructure of the nation and AI safety and ethics. This involves enhancing greater access to Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computing power and improving the AIKosh Datasets platform that presently hosts greater than 1,000 datasets as well as 208 AI models.
List of events will be organized
The numerous initiatives which will be observed at the India-AI Impact Summit will involve UDAAN, an AI terrain fest where international AI startups, involving those from the nation’s Tier 2 and 3 cities will display their creativity.
Along with this, number of International Innovation challenges will also be held by targeting women and young entrepreneurs, with the intention to increase interest for AI-driven solutions for real-world public challenges throughout sectors.
Among the two days, one day will be dedicated to a research conference, an interdisciplinary assembly for practitioners along with researchers from India, the global community along with AI for the Global South. This in turn will involve leading edge AI research, teamwork prospects, evidence sharing along with methodology swap over.
Furthermore, like Startup Bharat Mobility and Mahakumbh, the summit will also host an AI Expo which will feature 300 exhibitors representing India as well as 30 nations. These will be segmented into theme-based pavilions.
Under the IndiaAI Foundational Models pillar, eight ground-breaking projects have been introduced in order to develop indigenous AI models skilled on India-specific data. Chosen from about 506 proposals, these initiatives extent domain- and multilingual-specific models, industrial innovation, healthcare and scientific innovation laying the foundation for India’s AI leadership.
This model will develop first huge reasoning model of India of up to 70B parameters, created for medical problem-solving, STEM disciplines and prearranged analysis. It will also involve creating a proficient 8B constraint model for Indic languages along with an agentic AI platform, Orion for administration applications. Another one will be creating BrahmAI, a science-driven multimodal foundation model to develop industrial innovation, scientific computing, and advanced engineering intelligence.
It also includes proposing a 20B parameter model for EEG signal analysis to enable preliminary screening of advanced brain-computer edge research and neurological disorders.
The Three Sutras
The Summit will be anchored on three guiding Sutras or principles:
- People: AI should serve humanity within all its diversity, assuring no individual is left behind, preserving dignity and admiring cultural identities. The focus areas involve human growth within an AI-enabled universe, available and multilingual systems, along with trusted and safe operation.
- Planet: AI development and use should be resource efficient while also accelerating scientific inventions, ecological prevention and climate flexibility. AI should align with international sustainability objectives and environmental stewardship.
- Progress: Assure equitable distribution of AI’s advantages, democratize access to models, compute and datasets and also apply AI to agriculture, governance, education, and healthcare.
Dedication of 30 IndiaAI Labs and Data: 30 AILabs and Data have been introduced pan-India, creating the initial wave of a 570-lab network. The first 27 labs are in collaboration with NIELIT, set throughout Tier 2 &3 cities, along with three state-of-the-art labs being established within Mohali, Mhow and Mokokchung with Intel. Furthermore, under the FutureSkills Initiative of the IndiaAI Mission, these labs will serve as initial data training as well as AI courses.
Initial courses on data curation and data annotation: Distributed via the AI and Data labs network, novel foundational courses intend to provide learners to take part in the AI economy by facilitating entry-level training into data curation (labelling and organising datasets) as well as annotation (audio, text, images).
Declaration of IndiaAI Fellowship Portal and Program: IndiaAI Fellowship Program has been extended to sustain 13,500 scholars, covering 8,000 undergraduates, 500 PhD researchers, along with 5,000 postgraduates from different disciplines. This brings the IndiaAI Fellowship at par with PM Research Fellowships.
Currently, these fellowships are open to students from different disciplines across the liberal arts, business, commerce, law, medicine, and engineering. Moreover, the Fellowship Portal will allow digital applications, review, and mentorship, along with progress tracking. In order to examine your eligibility and apply, there is you need to visit fellowship.indiaai.gov.in.
