Autumn kickoff: from Hamburg via Linz and Berlin to Zurich

On 8 September, Hamburg's Chamber of Commerce hosts the KI-SUMMIT, organised together with the Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Hamburg, the Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg (ARIC) and ThIS e.V. The morning belongs to the pre-event "GrowAP! Hamburg — Growing with Agents": from 9:15 to 11am, a promptathon has participants work with AI agents on concrete development theses for Hamburg — spanning logistics, retail and urban development — before results feed into a presentation and panel discussion from 11am.

The main summit from 12:30pm in the Börsensaal favours practice over stage shows: the afternoon runs two rounds of breakout sessions across four tracks — technical (sovereign, local AI knowledge systems), legal (AI governance and AI Act practice), organisational (the shift from industrial company to AI company) and societal (values and responsibility) — separated by a coffee break with a mini trade fair. According to the organiser, speakers include Dr Miriam Putz from the Chamber of Commerce and Prof Tilo Böhmann from the University of Hamburg.

From 9 to 13 September, downtown Linz turns into three festival districts — OK Quarter, MED Campus and Danube Triangle — where the Ars Electronica Festival debates art, technology and society under its annual theme "Negotiating Humanity". The programme opens, according to the organiser, with the ceremony at Linz's Mariendom cathedral on 9 September at 7pm, featuring the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, cathedral organist Gerhard Raab, TANZ LINZ and Japanese sound and light artists evala and Ayako Tanaka.

The annual theme runs through several AI-adjacent programme strands: a panel organised with CARE Austria addresses "AI for Social Impact", a dedicated conference track covers disinformation, and a panel within the European STARTS programme links AI to sustainable, regenerative practices around water. Announced keynote speakers include, according to the organiser, scholar and author Radha D'Souza with a talk on "The Flows of Law, Technology and Empire Through Water and History", alongside artists Robertina Šebjanič and Laura Colmenares Guerra.

On 22 and 23 September, Bitkom merges two previously separate summits into one format at the bcc Berlin Congress Center: the AI & Data Summit and the Quantum Summit. According to the organiser, more than 200 speakers and around 140 programme sessions are expected across four stages; this year's patronage comes from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, and the opening keynote is delivered by Federal Minister Dorothee Bär.

AIDAQ's programme rests on three pillars: "Strategy, Governance & Competitiveness" (digital sovereignty, regulation, resilience), "Industry Applications & Readiness" (real-world cases, scaling, organisational change) and "Technology Frontiers" (foundation models, data and compute infrastructure, MLOps, and quantum hardware-software co-design). Sessions such as "Will the Agent Take the Jobs of Our Data Engineers?" or "Towards Scalable Quantum Systems" show the range; further announced speakers include, per the programme, Dr Daniela Brönstrup (Federal Network Agency), Andreas Nauerz (IONOS), Clemens Utschig-Utschig (Boehringer Ingelheim) and Jasper Krauser (Airbus).

On 23 and 24 September, Olympia London becomes Europe's largest free-to-attend data and AI exhibition: according to the organiser, Big Data LDN brings more than 400 sessions and over 300 speakers to 15 conference stages, including two keynote theatres running in parallel at opposite ends of the hall. Entry to the show floor and conference programme is free, registration only.

Those after something quieter and deeper can book the paid pre-day: "Data Driven LDN" runs on 22 September at the Clayton Hotel Chiswick as a standalone conference for senior data and AI leaders, with longer deep-dive sessions, hands-on workshops and a closing reception. Announced speakers include, per the programme, mathematician and author Prof Marcus du Sautoy OBE; the main show's speaker line-up is still being added to, according to the organiser.

On 29 and 30 September, ETH Zurich's Center for Law & Economics and RegHorizon host the seventh edition of the AI Policy Summit — hybrid, at the ETH main building and online. According to the organiser, the goal is a multi-stakeholder dialogue between policy, research and society on capturing AI's benefits while limiting its risks. For the second year running, the summit forms the flagship of the Zurich AI Festival, hosted by the Canton of Zurich together with the Greater Zurich Area and the ETH AI Center.

A detailed 2026 programme had not yet been published by RegHorizon at the time of writing — past editions covered themes from AI governance to model regulation and international standard-setting. Those attending the full festival week will find further flagship formats around the Policy Summit, such as the AI+X Summit by ETH and the University of Zurich; details follow once confirmed by the organiser.