PM Modi to speak at opening ceremony of India AI Impact Summit at 10:25am

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is being held in Delhi from February 16 to February 20, the first global AI Summit being hosted in the Global South.

Updated on: Feb 19, 2026, 06:56:26 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the opening ceremony of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 on Thursday morning and will address the ceremony where 20 heads of the state are expected to be present.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Union Minister of Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw during the India AI Impact Summit, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. (PMO)

Modi will welcome the leaders at the summit being held at Bharat Mandapam and a family photo will be taken at around 9:15am, following which he will participate in the opening ceremony of India AI Impact Summit 2026 at around 9:40 am. Modi is scheduled to address the ceremony at at around 10:25am.

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Wednesday was a rather packed day for PM Modi as he held nine bilateral meetings with world leaders and CEOs. Modi held seven meetings with leaders of countries including Spain, Finland, Serbia, Croatia, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Bhutan on the sidelines of the Summit

He also held two meetings with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Vinod Khosla.

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is being held in Delhi from February 16 to February 20, the first global AI Summit being hosted in the Global South. the summit has attracted government policymakers, industry AI experts, academicians, technology innovators, and civil society representatives from across the world to advance global discussions on artificial intelligence.

The event aims to reflect on the transformative potential of AI, aligning with India's national vision of "Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya" (welfare for all, happiness for all) and the broader global principle of AI for Humanity.

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Earlier on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is in India for the AI Summit, shared an AI-generated photograph with PM Modi on his official X handle with the caption, “When friends connect, innovation follows. Ready for The AI Impact Summit!” The text on the image read, “Yes, it is AI.”

As PM Modi met his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez , the two leaders emphasised the need for cooperation to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) for inclusive development.

Eleven European countries, including France, the Netherlands, Spain, Estonia and Switzerland, are being represented by heads of state or government at the AI Impact Summit. A total of 26 European countries are participating in the summit, including 12 at the ministerial level. People familiar with the matter highlighted the importance of this participation in view of Europe’s role as a hub of digital governance and responsible AI frameworks, and the European Union (EU)’s contributions to global norms for AI.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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