25 Aug 2026 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2026

The following summary of the WSIS Forum 2026 outcomes, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 6-10 July, was issued by the ITU Secretariat.

The first Forum since the WSIS+20 Review carried a single, unmistakable message: the time for commitments has passed, and the decade of implementation has begun.

Across the week, a few big ideas kept surfacing. Inclusion emerged as the true measure of progress. Connectivity alone is not enough; people need affordable access, digital skills, relevant content, and safe online spaces. Youth demanded genuine partnership rather than token seats, and speakers insisted women and girls belong in the rooms where AI and data standards are set.

Artificial intelligence dominated discussions, but with a development lens. Leaders pushed for interoperable systems rather than identical ones, warned of a widening AI divide as infrastructure funding concentrates in a few private firms, and championed local languages, regional data, and human-centered design. The financing challenge was made concrete: a $2.66 trillion investment gap, met by early pledges including Microsoft’s $50 billion for AI in the Global South.

Above all, the Forum embraced a new metric of success: not technology deployed but lives improved.

Takeaways from the Chair’s Summary

Egypt’s Chair distilled the week into five priorities: digital inclusion as the central goal, AI in service of development, digital finance as a tool for opportunity, youth as partners, and closing the gender divide. He called for better measurement of real-world impact and pointed to the WSIS Prizes, 18 winners from 1,595 submissions across 122 countries, as proof the Action Lines deliver.

The Forum’s worth will be proven between now and 2027. Road maps, indicators, pledges, and toolkits must become services, skills, and jobs. WSIS stays relevant because it brings people together; it stays powerful only if that togetherness turns into action. The year ahead is where dialogue becomes delivery.”

Photo: ITU/Pierre Albouy

WACC panel discussion at the Forum

• WACC organised a hybrid session on “Access, Agency, Voice. How communities in the Global South are shaping another technological world”. Key questions discussed were:
• Digital sovereignty – the collective ability of nations and communities to shape, govern, and safeguard the digital infrastructures, data, and standards that underpin their societies, including Artificial Intelligence – is a principle of the UN’s Global Digital Compact.
• For this to happen, the Minority World will have to relinquish its grip on the development and deployment of digital technologies and encourage the Majority World to develop and deploy its own. The World Summit on the Information Society’s principles of inclusion, openness, and people-centred governance offer a clear path towards a global architecture which is more balanced and capable of addressing the thorny issues of decolonization and digital sovereignty.
• What does the WSIS process need to do concretely to strengthen cultural integrity and community resilience in the context of digital communication and AI?
• What do concrete examples of how “other technological worlds” are possible and already being created by local communities and indigenous peoples of the global South tell us about what works.

Insights and findings

• There is no single technological world or one technological future. Multiple technological worlds are possible.
• Digital transformation will only succeed if communities are not merely connected, but empowered to shape, use, and benefit from digital technologies
• Connectivity is not an end in itself: it is a tool to strengthen community development, culture, and participation.
• Concrete examples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America show that communities can be protagonists of digital change and, with the necessary support, are capable of managing and sustaining their own connectivity projects
• Technology must reflect the diversity of communities.
• The challenge now is to articulate public, private, and community efforts to ensure that no one is left behind.

Key recommendations

The organizations participating in the WACC session highlighted their ongoing collaboration and reaffirmed their commitment to continue working together to strengthen capacity-building efforts and create enabling conditions for communities to create, operate, maintain, and sustain their own communication media, connectivity infrastructure, and meaningful digital inclusion initiatives.

Participants emphasized the importance of continued cooperation among community actors, civil society organizations, governments, academia, and international institutions to advance local agency, digital sovereignty, cultural integrity, and inclusive digital transformation towards 2035. The following actions were proposed:

Action 1: Invest in community-driven digital ecosystems.

Action 2: Put communities at the centre of technology design.

Action 3: Respect diverse solutions – respect the agency of communities and protect the community governance of their own technology.

Action 4: Build digital capacities that foster empowerment and enable autonomy.

Action 5: Establish funding sources to support community-centred sustainability.