WMF 2026: One of Europe's Largest AI Festivals Returns to Bologna

From June 24 to 26, BolognaFiere will host WMF – We Make Future, the International Trade Fair and Festival on Innovation spanning AI, technology, and digital. Across three days, the event packs in more than 90 stages and over 1,000 international speakers — what its organizers describe as the most comprehensive educational program in the world dedicated to AI, digital marketing, technology, and innovation.

Last year's edition drew more than 73,000 attendees from 90 countries, over 700 exhibitors, 1,000+ speakers and guests, and a network of roughly 3,000 startups, investors, and partners — with more than 2,800 pre-arranged B2B meetings. For founders, investors, and operators looking to plug into a genuinely international room, it remains one of the most concentrated opportunities on the European calendar.

The 2026 program is organized into four tiers of stages: Premium Stages for advanced, vertical training; Discover Stages for business and innovative solutions; Open Stages for dissemination and cross-disciplinary debate; and the Mainstage, which hosts the event's marquee keynotes, panels, and performances.

"It is no longer enough to just acquire new skills: we need to develop the capacity to read change, understand its impact, and transform it into an opportunity," says Cosmano Lombardo, Founder and CEO of Search On Media Group and creator of WMF. "Our goal is to create an international space where professionals, companies, startups, creators, and institutions can discuss, update themselves, and contribute together to building the future."

AI takes center stage on the Premium Stages

The Premium Stages are where WMF concentrates its most specialized training, and artificial intelligence dominates the lineup with 12 vertical stages. They run the full stack of current AI practice: from Machine Learning to Agentic AI, from AI Marketing to AI Commerce, through to AI & Business Transformation on a stage powered by Dell Technologies and Intel.

The speaker roster leans heavily international. Confirmed names include Corey Ching of OpenAI, Yuval Dvir of SandboxAQ, Debanshu Das of Google, and Julian Wood and Salih Güler of Amazon AWS, alongside practitioners digging into AI agents, organizational change, and emerging AI-native software architectures.

AI also intersects with the disciplines around it — Search, Content, Social Media, Automation & CRM, and Data Analytics — with sessions framed around how these tools are reshaping organizational models and professional skills. Governance gets real airtime too: Brando Benifei, co-rapporteur of the AI Act at the European Parliament, joins legal, privacy, and policy experts to address regulation and AI's social impact.

The robotics and physical-AI track is one of the more notable additions, bringing Marco Pavone of NVIDIA, Marcello Majonchi of Arduino, and Giorgio Metta of IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) to the stage on automation and the interaction between AI and the physical world. Rounding out the Premium tier are stages on advertising, brand strategy, UX & UI, e-commerce, content marketing, and backend & cloud, plus deep dives on cybersecurity, legal tech, and work & HR.

Business, startups, and a 140-strong Startup Arena

The Discover Stages are pitched as the meeting point for entrepreneurship and new market opportunities, alternating strategic talks with concrete cases. Sessions span Tech for Business, Digital Marketing & Business Solutions, Entrepreneurship, Tourism & Travel, Content Creation, and the Impact to Business stage powered by COOPFOND, with topics from AI in retail and healthcare to fintech, HR tech, and the creator economy.

There's a distinctly cross-border thread here. Panels look at the future of European innovation and at new technological corridors linking emerging markets across Europe, India, Canada, Brazil, and Africa — a framing that should resonate with founders from smaller markets eyeing international scale.

The centerpiece for early-stage companies is the Startup Arena, where founders of more than 140 selected startups — drawn from Italy and 80 other countries — will pitch solutions built against WMF's 14 "challenges of the future." The surrounding program brings in a long list of ecosystem players, including Italian Tech Alliance, InnovUp, Invitalia, Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, and Allied for Startups, among others, with impact-focused organizations such as Save The Children and Startup for Africa featured on the Impact to Business stage.

Culture, governance, and society on the Open Stages

The Open Stages — the most widely accessible tier — are where WMF widens the lens beyond pure tech. The Start the Future stage anchors the debate on AI and global transformation, with voices including Sasha Luccioni, Siyabulela Mandela, Pegah Moshir Pour, and Cosimo Accoto.

Elsewhere, GovTech turns to institutions and digital geopolitics with figures such as Luigi Di Maio and Marco Cappato; EduTech examines how education and skills evolve in the age of AI; and the Space Economy stage, powered by the European Space Agency (ESA), looks beyond the atmosphere. Culture gets its own run of programming — a Music & Art stage in collaboration with Billboard Italia, an Innovation Film Fest, and Gaming & Esports treating video games as a cultural language — alongside book presentations and geopolitics sessions.

The Mainstage: leaders, journalists, and live performances

The Mainstage is WMF's synthesis act, blending authoritative discussion with entertainment across the three days. European and international institutions are represented by Henna Virkkunen, Michiel Scheffer, and the UAE Ambassador to Italy, Abdulla Ali AlSubousi, with research and design leaders including Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, Daniele Pucci, and Chris Bangle.

Major brands — Klarna, Trade Republic, Microsoft, Dell Technologies, Intel, LG Nova, and Google — bring the business perspective, while a strong journalism and geopolitics block features Cecilia Sala, Enrico Mentana, Francesca Albanese, and Nicola Gratteri. Global founders and operators round things out, including Brunello Cucinelli, 2026 Guest of Honor Mathew Knowles, and Alec Ross — capped by live performances from artists such as Dardust, Ditonellapiaga, and N.A.I.P.

What's new in 2026

This year's program introduces a batch of fresh verticals reflecting where the market is moving, among them Robotics & Physical AI, Search & AI, AI Commerce, Agentic AI, Fintech & Digital Assets, AI Tourism, Vibe Coding, Automation & CRM, Video & Connected TV, Management & Leadership, Geopolitics, and the Startup Arena.