Research, agents, wilding: Europe's AI between lab and stage

On 15 and 16 October 2026, UCD O'Reilly Hall in Dublin becomes the stage for AI in scientific discovery. According to its website, the AI in Science Summit (AIS26) is an official event of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU and a flagship of the European AI Innovation Month; it is coordinated by University College Dublin and Taighde Éireann–Research Ireland.

The programme is organised into parallel strands curated by partners: the track on AI for physics and mathematics comes from CERN, the “AI, Creativity and Society” strand from EASSH and UCD; further focus areas include Data4AI (Big Data Value Association) and “Science for AI”. ELLIS is involved as a co-organiser. The site lists supporters including the European Commission, Helmholtz and NVIDIA.

Politically, the summit is accompanied by the EU's RAISE initiative, which aims to develop AI models for scientific disciplines; EU research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva has commented on it in the context of the summit. Note: according to the website, registration is currently marked as closed — worth checking the site before travelling on short notice.

On 28 October, Nuremberg's agentic coding meetup goes into its second round: doors open at 5 pm at club199, ending around 9:30 pm. The format is deliberately small — three short talks with Q&A, live demos and networking, 40 seats, drinks and snacks included; tickets cost 20 euros. The organiser is AXDN, the team behind AI Nights and this site.

In “Agents under the hood”, Paul Hernandez of Microsoft breaks an agent into language model, tools, memory, skills and instructions, and uses the Microsoft Agent Framework to show that the model — first local via Ollama, then in Microsoft Foundry — can be swapped while everything else stays put. Andreas Pabst (AXDN) reports from daily life with harnesses, agent loops and diff review.

Kristin Mann of xeomed closes with a practical case: “Not one agent, but a process” — specialised agents handle a real marketing process through defined stage gates, with the human staying responsible for quality and compliance. Anyone wanting to speak: according to the website, the series is looking for 15–20 minute contributions. Disclosure: the series is run by the operator of this site.

From 28 to 30 October 2026, Mozilla Festival returns to Barcelona, to the former industrial complex Recinte Fabra i Coats in Sant Andreu. The theme “Wilding” borrows the idea of rewilding from ecology: what happens when rigid, centralised digital systems loosen up and communities and technologies grow together? Think community-run mesh networks, federated platforms, open protocols and community archives.

According to the organiser, the programme runs across eight tracks — from Wilding Advocacy, Knowledge, Systems and With Nature via Youth and Creativity to Founders Wilding and Developers Wilding. Sessions are proposed and shaped by the community: debates, labs and workshops, forums, showcases, talks and installations. The festival takes place as part of Open Tech Week with the City of Barcelona.

According to the organiser, more than 2,000 people and over 200 experiences come together; festival director is Zeina Abi Assy. The site does not yet name 2026 mainstage guests — last year, Ruha Benjamin and Chelsea Manning appeared there, among others.

On 9 and 10 November, ISG invites decision-makers to the Pullman Paris Eiffel Tower — a day and a half for IT and business leaders. The central question: how do AI investments turn into demonstrable business value? According to the website, the programme is organised into four themes.

The first covers use cases, performance and ROI — including “CFO-ready” proof points. The second is devoted to sovereign AI for European companies, with a governance framework for when AI may act independently and when human oversight is required. Block three looks at skills, roles and decision rights in human–AI collaboration, block four at data, platforms and emerging agents — from observability to auditability.

The site names Erbin Lim (Pfizer), Laurent Gallo (Arianegroup) and Valentine Ferreol (Linxens) as speakers. Networking runs through exclusive 1:1 meetings with experts; all presentations are available after the event. The enterprise pass costs €1,295 (free in some cases subject to qualification), providers pay €3,495.

From 9 to 12 November, Web Summit Lisbon turns MEO Arena and FIL into Europe's biggest tech stage. On the website, AI dominates the speaker list: Tao Zhang (Manus AI), Michele Catasta (Replit), Dahai Li (ModelBest), Alex Mashrabov (Higgsfield) and Richard Socher (You.com) are among the announced names — plus representatives from robotics and mobility such as Pony.ai.

Besides the content tracks there is a dense supporting programme: Night Summit, meetups, a developer programme, Women in Tech and startup and investor programmes. On the exhibition side, the site shows two robot products — the Agibot A3 humanoid and the Galbot G1 embodied-AI robot.

Perspective: Web Summit is broader than a pure AI event — anyone looking for AI founders, investors and product demos in one place gets a high-reach showcase. According to the organiser, the general attendee ticket starts at €772 plus taxes.