GENEVA, 9 July 2026 — Thursday is the day of the finals. The Innovation Factory names its overall winner, the Film Festival names its own, and much of the Summit’s year-long work reaches the room in the same afternoon. Around those two ceremonies, day three keeps its usual pace: youth on the floor, agrifood in the morning, longevity in the mid-afternoon, and the final day of the Kaleidoscope academic conference running in parallel. Here is a guide to what to make time for.
Hear from global leaders
The centrepiece of Thursday is the AI for Good Innovation Factory Grand Finale at 15:00 CEST, where four finalists selected from a year of monthly pitching sessions present in front of a jury of world-renowned experts for the top prize of the Innovation Factory. Each pitch is two minutes, followed by a five-minute jury Q&A. The winner takes home a USD 20,000 grand cash prize. Seizo Onoe, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), opens the session, alongside Ebtesam Almazrouei, Chair of the UN AI for Good Impact Initiative.
Delegates tracking policy and infrastructure conversations will also want to plan around the Centre stage panels running through the day. The Summit programme remains the fastest way to filter Thursday’s Centre and Solutions stages by track.
Discover AI innovation up close
The Grand Finale is the headline, but Thursday is a Startup day well before 15:00. The Startup accelerator programme continues into its final day, and the Young innovators revolutionizing agrifood systems in the Global South session at 11:00 brings founders working on AI for food security into direct conversation with the wider community. The session will be judged by Abir Kharrat (FAO), Agustina Maria Grossi (FAO), Po Bronson (SOSV), and John Martin (Extreme Tech Challenge), who will evaluate the innovative AI solutions presented by participating startups. Delegates who want a preview of Innovation Factory finalists across the different categories can revisit the AI for Good site’s finalist coverage before heading in.
At 15:30, just after the Grand Finale, Century careers: Japan’s AI powered longevity blueprint, led by Figen Ulgen, Group Chief Data and AI Officer at Dai-ichi Life Group, offers a look at how one of the world’s oldest societies is using AI to think about work, health and later life together. It is a short session with an outsized amount of applied thinking behind it.
Experience AI beyond technology
At 16:00, the AI for Good Film Festival 2026 screening begins on stage. Held in partnership with PixVerse, ten finalist films from ten countries, drawn from more than 1,300 submissions, will be presented by their directors, with reflections after each screening and a jury of filmmakers and AI experts weighing in. The winning film, along with the second and third place awards, is announced at the ceremony. Readers coming to the room fresh can meet the finalists in our earlier feature on the ten films and the people behind them.
Frederic Werner, Chief of the Strategic Engagement Division and AI for Good at ITU, opens the session, followed by a keynote from Jaden Xie, Co-founder and President of PixVerse. The screening is programmed by Guillem Martínez Roura, AI and Robotics Programme Officer at ITU, and moderated by Lindsey Mastis, founder of Blue Moves Media.
From 16:00 on a different stage, The sound of intelligence: John Legend and the leaders shaping the AI music revolution brings Grammy-winning artist John Legend into conversation with Michael Nash (Universal Music Group), Richard Kerris (NVIDIA), Prem Akkaraju (Stability AI), Kakul Srivastava (Splice), and Andrew Sanchez (Udio). The hour-long session takes on the questions the music industry has been circling for a year: how to protect artists while embracing AI-driven creativity, what new forms of collaboration these tools might make possible, and what music itself becomes when intelligent systems can help write, produce and discover it.
Elsewhere across the venue, the Canvas of the Future AI-powered art exhibition remains on display, and the wider exhibition halls stay open with robotics demonstrations, interactive installations and startup showcases running through the day.
Learn from experts
Thursday is the closing day of the Kaleidoscope academic conference, which has been running inside the Summit since Tuesday under the theme “AI and frontier technologies for good.” Delegates who have not yet dropped in can catch the final paper presentations and closing sessions, spanning intelligent network infrastructures, applications and services for sustainable development, and the broader social, economic and policy dimensions of AI.
Running from 09:00 through the afternoon, the Future Networked Car symposium is Thursday’s mobility deep dive. Organised by ITU with UNECE, the day brings the automotive and telecommunications sectors together on the standards, safety and connectivity questions shaping the next generation of vehicles, from newly adopted regulations on automated driving to the AI powering intelligent transport systems. It is one of the more substantial technical strands of the week for anyone tracking AI in mobility.
The technical programme also runs alongside a full slate of Summit workshops on standards, testing and infrastructure. For those working directly on AI deployment, this is one of the strongest days of the week to move between deep-dive rooms and the main stages.
Meet the AI for Good community
From 09:00, the Youth Zone hosts Girls in ICT Day at AI for Good, welcoming sixty selected girls aged eight to twelve for a day of hands-on discovery, creativity and inspiration at the intersection of AI and STEM. It is one of the most visible expressions of the Summit’s expanded youth focus this year, and one of the friendliest rooms in the venue to spend a break between sessions.
As the Grand Finale, the Film Festival awards and the closing sessions wrap up, the exhibition floor and networking spaces move into evening mode. Thursday is the day the Summit’s year-long competitions find their winners, and it is a good day to stay late. Tomorrow closes the week.
