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Paris officially opens its doors to the tech elite and striving startups as the VivaTech conference kicks off on Wednesday.
From Jeff Bezos and Yann LeCun making appearances to artificial intelligence and tech sovereignty being high on the agenda, here is everything to watch out for at the 2026 edition.
10-year anniversary
VivaTech this year is making a big deal of turning 10, with a free event open to all on Sunday that turned the Champs-Élysées into a walkway of robots, the mobility of the future and all types of innovation.
The public event is not the only one as Saturday, 20 June, is also dedicated to the general public to explore the exhibition space.
To mark the anniversary, VivaTech also changed its name, which was previously Viva Technology.
The organisers say the name change reflects that, over the past 10 years, the event has become “much more than just a gathering: a true “VivaTech Generation” has emerged, a global community of entrepreneurs, startups, investors, thought leaders, countries and students, all united by a shared desire to innovate, collaborate and build the world of tomorrow”.
Key speakers
Some of the biggest names in technology and business will be attending, including the Co-CEO of Prometheus, Jeff Bezos, one of the so–called godfathers of AI, Yann LeCun, Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch, OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger, and LVMH boss Bernard Arnault.
There will also be a slew of politicians, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s digital minister Karsten Wildberger, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the European Commission’s tech executive Henna Virkkunen.
Key themes
AI will be a massive theme during the four-day conference, as will sovereignty and ethics, cybersecurity, mobility, health and longevity, and greentech.
As with every year, VivaTech picks a country to highlight and this year it is Germany. This year also brings an AI country partner and has selected India, which follows on the heels of the AI Impact Summit in Delhi and the French-Indian Innovation Year.
There will also be a European Centre for AI Excellence day this year, a platform initiated by VivaTech and the World Economic Forum to discuss AI in Europe.
Euronews will be moderating a couple of these discussions on this stage as well as a panel on longevity in science with Delphine Viguier-Hovasse from L’Oréal and Pauline Adam-Kalfon from PwC.
Euronews journalists will also bring you the latest from the conference.