Global AI Show 2026 (Riyadh): Speakers, Dates, and What to Expect

The Global AI Show 2026 is an artificial intelligence industry conference that runs in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on June 29 and 30, 2026, at the Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC Hotel and Convention. It is co located with two sibling events from the same organizer, the Global Blockchain Show and the Global Games Show, so a single trip covers AI, Web3, and gaming at one venue. This preview lays out the verified dates, the speaker lineup, the sovereign AI agenda themes, the ticket tiers, and a neutral comparison with the other Gulf technology conferences a US or European AI founder is likely weighing against it.

Global AI Show 2026 (Riyadh): the operator's preview of dates, speakers, and what to expect

FORKOFF is a media partner of the Riyadh edition of these three shows. That is the lens this preview is written from. We run the events stack end to end for sponsor and host clients across the 2026 conference cycle, and we publish operator side previews like this one to brief buyers on which events to attend, what to expect on the floor, and how to measure whether the trip pencils out. We did not invent any date, venue, or number in this post. The single locked date is Riyadh, June 29 to 30, 2026, the show runs under SCEGA event license number 1372558684, and every attendance figure is attributed to the organizer because that is who reported it.

A quick note on scope before the detail. This post is centered on the Riyadh edition because that is the edition we are a media partner of and the one with fully verified dates and venue. The series also runs in other cities, and the organizer has announced a second 2026 edition in Abu Dhabi later in the year, but the Riyadh week on June 29 to 30 is the anchor here. If you are deciding whether to fly to Saudi Arabia for an AI conference this summer, this is the page that answers the questions you actually have.

Operator noteRiyadh, June 29 to 30, 2026, Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC, SCEGA license 1372558684. The only locked date on this page., official event sites

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi: the two editions, and who is in the room

Global AI Show runs two editions, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, under the same organiser, and the two attract different buyers. The organiser positions the Riyadh edition on CXO attendance above seventy percent and on government access, with a speaker list drawn from Saudi ministries, sovereign-backed AI programmes and the regional offices of the large cloud and chip vendors; the Abu Dhabi edition is framed around launch positioning and regional market entry, with a larger exhibitor floor. If your goal is a procurement conversation with a Gulf enterprise or ministry, Riyadh is the edition; if it is a product launch to the region's investors and press, Abu Dhabi.

What to expect on the day. The programme is keynote-heavy in the morning and panel-heavy after lunch, with the useful conversations happening in the exhibitor lounges between sessions rather than in the halls. Speaker slots are announced in waves through the organiser's site, and the confirmed list changes up to the week of the event, so treat any speaker roster you read here or elsewhere as a snapshot and verify it on the organiser's page before you plan a meeting around a name.

How to get value without a booth. Register early enough to appear in the attendee app, book your meetings in the app before the event opens, and use the side-event calendar, which is where most of the founder-to-investor conversations happen. A media or speaker application submitted through the organiser's forms two months out is the cheapest way onto the stage; the Global Trading Show and Global Games Show previews cover the same organiser's sister events if your product fits those rooms better.

Reviewed 2026-09-22 against the live search results for this topic: the questions people ask about it, and the pages that rank for it, are reflected in the section above.

What is the Global AI Show 2026

The Global AI Show, often shortened to GAIS, is an artificial intelligence industry conference organized by VAP Group (registered as VAP Digital Media FZ LLC) and marketed as the "World's Number 1 Global AI Show" under the theme "AI 2030, Accelerating Intelligent Futures." It is built as a gathering point for founders, enterprise technology leaders, government and institutional buyers, investors, and researchers who are active in AI, and it programs keynotes, panels, an exhibition floor, and structured networking across two days. The 2026 calendar carries two editions, one in Riyadh in June and one in Abu Dhabi later in the year, both organized by the same company.

What makes the show distinctive is not the format, which will feel familiar to anyone who has worked a technology conference, but the co location structure. The Global AI Show runs alongside the Global Blockchain Show and the Global Games Show, and in Riyadh all three run on the same two days at the same venue. That means a single badge week puts three distinct buyer pools in one building, AI operators and enterprise technology leaders, Web3 founders and investors, and gaming and esports executives. For a product that sits at the seam of two of those worlds, an AI plus data infrastructure play or an AI layer for gaming, the co location is the reason to go rather than a footnote. If you also build in Web3, our companion Global Blockchain Show 2026 preview covers the blockchain track from the same media partner lens.

The organizer is the same across all three shows. VAP Group also operates adjacent media properties that power the editorial coverage for each track, and convenes The Capital Circle, a curated forum that matches high-potential founders with investors at its events. The correct reference for the organizer is VAP Group (VAP Digital Media FZ LLC) as stated on the official contact pages. We mention that because there is an unrelated company with a similar name that has nothing to do with these events, and we want the record clean.

Operator noteThree shows, one venue, one badge week. Map your buyer to a track before you fly.

Dates, venue, and the Riyadh edition

The locked, verified details are simple. The Global AI Show 2026 Riyadh edition takes place on June 29 and 30, 2026, at the Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC Hotel and Convention in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, under SCEGA event license number 1372558684. The Global Blockchain Show and the Global Games Show run on the same two days at the same venue. That is the single date this preview treats as locked, and it is confirmed on the organizer's own Riyadh pages.

There is a second 2026 edition planned for Abu Dhabi later in the year. We are deliberately not publishing a venue for the Abu Dhabi edition because the organizer had not posted one on the official site at the time of writing, and inventing a venue would break the one rule this preview will not break. If you are tracking the Abu Dhabi edition, check the official site for the announced venue. The Riyadh week is the one with everything confirmed, so it is the one this page centers on.

For travel planning, the venue placement matters. The Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC sits within the Riyadh convention and exhibition district, which means hotel inventory, ground transport, and side room options cluster nearby. If you have worked a Gulf conference before, the practical advice is the same as it is for Dubai weeks, book accommodation early because the convention district fills, and lock any private side room or dinner venue well ahead of the dates rather than trying to find space the week of.

If you want the playbook for stacking a conference trip into measured outcomes rather than a two day blur, our event activation playbook for ETHConf in New York (June 8 to 10, 2026) walks through the same structure we apply to any conference week, and our curated side events directory for the same New York week shows how the side room circuit, not the main floor, is usually where the pipeline gets built. The mechanics travel cleanly from a New York Ethereum week to a Riyadh AI week.

The three co located shows explained

The reason to understand the three shows separately is that they concentrate different buyers, and your time allocation should follow your buyer rather than the agenda's default flow. The Global AI Show is the artificial intelligence track, the Global Blockchain Show is the Web3 and digital assets track, and the Global Games Show is the gaming and esports track. In Riyadh they share a venue and dates, but each carries its own speaker pool, exhibition zone, and session programming, and a buyer who tries to cover all three evenly tends to cover none of them well.

The Global AI Show is the anchor for anyone selling into or building AI. Its programming spans the innovation themes the organizer publishes for the Riyadh edition, sovereign AI and national AI infrastructure, generative and agentic AI, cloud and data centers, AI for critical sectors like pharma, healthcare, and finance, AI in energy, and human capital and AI nation building. The Global Blockchain Show concentrates Web3 founders, investors, and enterprise blockchain buyers. The Global Games Show is the B2B gaming track, with an esports and creator economy lean that maps directly onto Saudi Arabia's stated ambition to make gaming a strategic economic sector. The shared seam across all three is AI, which is the through line the co location is built on.

For a vendor whose product crosses two of these, the co location is leverage. An AI infrastructure team selling into financial services can work the AI floor in the morning and the blockchain floor in the afternoon without leaving the building. An AI plus gaming studio can move between the gaming track and the AI track in a single day. That cross track motion is the structural advantage of this event over a single vertical conference, and it is worth building your two day schedule around deliberately rather than letting the default agenda pull you through one track.

Who is speaking at the Global AI Show Riyadh 2026

The organizer reports 100+ speakers across the Riyadh edition, spanning sovereign AI, infrastructure, enterprise transformation, and AI for critical sectors. Rather than reprint the whole list, this preview spotlights the verified names that a US or European reader is most likely to recognize or want to track, drawn from the live Riyadh speaker pages as of June 2026. The full and current roster is at the organizer's Riyadh speaker page, and lineups always shift before an event, so treat this as a spotlight rather than a closed list.

The lineup reads as a map of where Saudi AI spend is being steered. Nate Busa speaks as Director of AI and Automation at NEOM, the flagship giga project, which puts national scale automation buying in the room. Sultan Moraished, CTO of Red Sea Global, brings the smart city and tourism infrastructure side of the Kingdom's build out. Dr. Ibraheem Sheerah speaks as Chief Transformation Officer at Saudi Arabian Airlines Holding, an enterprise transformation buyer at national champion scale. Dr. Mohammed Nasser appears as Executive Advisor to the Minister at the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, which sits close to where Vision 2030 policy and capital allocation are decided. Dr. Moataz BinAli, CEO of Magna AI, anchors the commercial AI vendor side of the roster. The table below collects the verified spotlight names in one place.

The speaker voice ahead of the event is worth reading directly, because it tells you what the regional operators think the show is for. The cross sector pull is visible in how speakers frame their own sessions, including a fireside chat on AI in medicine that captures the show's reach beyond pure infrastructure into the critical sectors track.

“

Tomorrow I will be joining the Global AI Show in Riyadh for a fireside chat on the next era of medicine, when AI, pharma, and healthcare systems work together.

G

Global AI Show

@GlobalAIShow

Sovereign AI built for the Kingdom, by the Kingdom. We are glad to introduce @SigmixAI as an official exhibitor at the upcoming Global AI Show in Riyadh! Sigmix is a Saudi software company building a sovereign, Arabic-first suite of AI tools for ambitious teams across the

Why Riyadh, why now, and why sovereign AI

The choice of Riyadh is the whole story of this edition, and it is not arbitrary. Saudi Arabia has spent the last several years pulling AI and data infrastructure spend forward under Vision 2030, the national diversification program, and artificial intelligence has moved from a line item to a national strategy. A conference that holds its 2026 edition in the Saudi capital and leads its agenda with Sovereign AI and National AI Infrastructure is positioning itself in front of that spend rather than chasing it from the outside, and the speaker roster reflects how much of the regional decision making sits in the room.

Sovereign AI is the thesis the agenda is built on, so it helps to be precise about what it means. The idea is that a nation owns its own AI stack, the data centers, the compute, the models, and the data, rather than renting capability from foreign providers. For a country with the capital and the policy will of Saudi Arabia, much of it coordinated through the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), that translates into national clouds, Arabic first model development, and data center build outs at giga project scale. The macro backdrop is the same one the broader market has been pricing in, that the Kingdom intends to become a regional AI compute hub.

r/artificial• u/ControlCAD

xAI CEO Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, announced a new 500 megawatt data center for xAI in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Humain AI company, powered by Nvidia’s computing chips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tSv0JbnCd0 >President and CEO of NVIDIA Jensen Huang added that "our partnership with HUMAIN is going incredibly well.. 500MW is gigantic, this company is off the charts, right away." >Musk initially announced a 500-gigawatt data center before clarifying that such a project would cost “eight bazillion trillion dollars.”

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For a US or European AI vendor, that backdrop changes the nature of the buyer. The relevant decision makers at a sovereign AI agenda are not only commercial CTOs, they are government advisors, national champion transformation officers, and giga project automation leads. The presence of NEOM, Red Sea Global, Saudi Arabian Airlines Holding, and the Council of Economic and Development Affairs on the lineup is the clearest signal of who is buying. The official account's own framing of the exhibitor base captures the register the show is selling into.

“

Sovereign AI built for the Kingdom, by the Kingdom. We are glad to introduce Sigmix as an official exhibitor at the Global AI Show in Riyadh, a Saudi software company building a sovereign, Arabic first suite of AI tools.

The concept itself is worth understanding before you pitch into it, because sovereign AI buyers ask different questions than commercial ones, about data residency, national security, and long term ownership rather than just price and performance. The thread below is a plain language explainer on why mid sized and large nations are building sovereign AI clouds, and it is a useful primer if your product has never been sold into a government AI program before.

r/saudiarabia• u/Pale_Pomegranate_163

Is anyone attending the Global AI Show in Saudi Arabia? Need visa advice

Hi everyone, Is anyone here planning to attend the Global AI Show in Saudi Arabia, or has anyone already applied for a Saudi visa to attend the event? I’m an Indian citizen currently living and working in the UK, and I’m looking for information about the visa process. I’d appreciate… Show more

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For a buyer based in the United States or Europe, the practical read is this. If your roadmap includes Gulf institutional capital, Saudi enterprise AI deployment, national infrastructure contracts, or a regional data center partnership, the Riyadh edition concentrates the relevant decision makers in a way no other 2026 AI conference does on these dates. If your buyer has no Gulf exposure, the trip is harder to justify on stage content alone, and you would be better served by a conference closer to your existing market. The honest framing is that this is a targeted event for a specific buyer, not a general purpose AI pilgrimage.

The Riyadh 2026 agenda and innovation themes

The organizer publishes a set of innovation themes for the Riyadh edition that double as a map of how the two days are structured, and reading them ahead of time is the fastest way to decide which sessions are worth your scarce floor time. The themes span the questions that dominate institutional AI conversations in 2026, and they tell you which conversations the organizer expects to anchor the room.

The published innovation themes for Riyadh 2026 include Sovereign AI and National AI Infrastructure, Generative AI and Agentic AI, Cloud 3.0 and Data Centers, AI for critical sectors such as pharma, healthcare, and finance, AI in Energy, and Human Capital, Talent Systems, and AI Nation Building. Read together, they describe a national program rather than a product expo, the AI buildout of a state working through what it owns, what it generates, where it runs, who it serves, and who it trains. The critical sectors theme is where a vendor with a vertical AI product, in healthcare or financial services, will find the most concentrated buyer.

The practical use of the theme list is triage. If you ship inference infrastructure or data center technology, the Cloud 3.0 and Data Centers theme is where your buyer concentrates, so anchor your two days there and treat the rest as opportunistic. If you build agentic AI tooling, the Generative and Agentic AI theme is your home track. If you sell a vertical AI product into healthcare, pharma, or finance, the critical sectors theme covers your full surface. Decide your home theme before you arrive, then let everything else be a bonus rather than a distraction, because the single biggest waste of a conference trip is trying to attend everything and retaining nothing.

If you want the deeper economics of how a sponsorship or activation at an event like this should be priced and measured, our crypto event sponsorship CPQL playbook breaks down cost per qualified lead at conference scale, and the crypto conference sponsor decision matrix gives you the framework for deciding whether to sponsor, host a side event, or simply attend. If you would rather hand the activation to a team that runs conference weeks end to end, our best event marketing agency comparison lays out the options. The same math applies to an AI conference, the only thing that changes is the buyer.

The Global AI Show 2026 by the numbers

Here is where attribution matters most, so we will be explicit. Every attendance and seniority figure in this section is reported by the organizer and is forward looking for the 2026 edition. We are repeating the organizer's projections, not independently verified counts, and you should read them as the organizer's ambition for the show rather than a guaranteed headcount.

The organizer reports 10,000+ expected attendees for the Riyadh edition, 100+ speakers, 100+ exhibitors, and 200+ media partners, with over 70% of attendees projected at CXO seniority. That estimated CXO figure is the headline claim worth weighing, because if it holds, it means the room skews heavily toward decision makers rather than practitioners, which changes how you staff and prepare for the floor. The proven baseline, again reported by the organizer, is the Abu Dhabi 2025 edition, which drew 5,000+ attendees across the co located shows. The honest planning move is to size your expectations against the proven 5,000+ baseline and treat the 10,000+ projection as upside.

The over 70% CXO figure is the one worth dwelling on, because it shapes who you should send and how you should pitch. If the room genuinely skews to chief level seniority, a booth staffed by junior reps misses the buyer, and a pitch built for practitioners lands flat. The right move for a high CXO event is to send someone who can hold a strategic conversation and close a follow up, and to build your materials for an executive who cares about outcomes and ownership rather than feature lists. The seniority chart below visualizes the reported breakdown.

Operator note10,000+ and over 70% CXO are the organizer's projections. The proven baseline draw is 5,000+ from Abu Dhabi 2025., organizer reported

Is the Global AI Show worth attending

This is the real question behind most of the searches that land on a page like this, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a brochure. For AI founders, enterprise AI vendors, and infrastructure providers with business activity in the Gulf or targeting Saudi institutional and government AI spend, the Riyadh 2026 edition is worth attending because it concentrates regional decision makers alongside a layer of international AI figures on dates and at a venue where no competing AI conference is running. For a buyer with zero Gulf exposure, the case is weaker, and the trip should clear a higher bar than stage content alone.

The Visitor Pass at $49, per the official ticket tiers, changes the math for anyone already in or near Riyadh, because it removes the ticket cost as a serious barrier and lets you test the exhibition floor and networking without committing the VIP or Delegate spend. For a buyer flying in specifically, the Delegate and VIP passes add the structured session access and premium positioning that justify the trip only if you have done the pre work, mapped your buyer to a track, lined up the conversations you want before you land, and set a target for what a successful trip looks like.

That last point is the one most attendees skip, and it is the one that separates a measured outcome from a two day blur. Before you commit a budget, you should pressure test what attention at this event is actually worth to you, which is exactly what the tool below is for.

The way we coach clients to work a floor like this is mechanical, not magical. Pick one home track and one home theme. Target eight to twelve high fidelity conversations a day rather than a hundred badge scans. Book your follow ups on site, inside fourteen days, before you leave the venue. Bring a working product, not a deck of promises. And measure the trip thirty days later on qualified pipeline created, not on the photos or the badge count. The checklist below is the same one our events team runs against every conference week.

AI and technology conferences in Saudi Arabia and Dubai 2026

If you are comparing the Global AI Show against the other Gulf technology conferences on the 2026 calendar, the honest summary is that they serve overlapping but distinct purposes, and the right choice depends on which buyer you are chasing. The notable shows include the Global AI Show in Riyadh, LEAP in Riyadh, and GITEX Global in Dubai, and each one concentrates a different crowd at a different scale. None of these is better in the abstract, they are better for different jobs.

LEAP is one of the largest technology events in the world by attendance and runs as a broad horizontal showcase across the full technology stack with a heavy government and startup presence. GITEX Global in Dubai is among the largest technology trade shows on the planet and pulls enterprise, startup, and ecosystem players at massive scale. Both are pan technology events where AI is one of many tracks. The Global AI Show Riyadh occupies a narrower, more specific position, it is AI focused specifically rather than horizontally, it co locates three shows on the same dates, it reports an unusually high CXO concentration, and it is explicitly aligned with Saudi Vision 2030 and the sovereign AI agenda. For a vendor whose only job at the event is to reach AI decision makers in the Kingdom, that focus is the feature, and the smaller, more concentrated room can be more efficient than a sprawling general tech expo.

Gulf technology conference comparison

AI and technology conferences in Saudi Arabia and Dubai 2026 at a glance

Event	2026 city	Reported scale	Distinct angle
Global AI Show	Riyadh	10,000+ expected, over 70% CXO	AI focused, three shows co located, Vision 2030 and sovereign AI
LEAP	Riyadh	One of the world's largest tech events	Broad horizontal tech and government showcase
GITEX Global	Dubai	Among the largest global tech trade shows	Pan tech, enterprise and startup scale

Scale figures vary by source and are organizer reported where stated. Confirm current figures and dates on each event's official site before booking travel.

The pre event positioning frames the show as a hub for sovereign AI buyers and high value networking, and the regional media framing reinforces that. The official account has lined up the Gulf business press as strategic partners, which gives you a sense of who the organizer expects in the room before you book.

G

Global AI Show

@GlobalAIShow

The publications shaping the regional business conversation are backing the Global AI Show Riyadh - proud to welcome our official Strategic Partners! @ArabianBusiness @biztodayme @EntMagazineME @thesauditimes_ 🗓️ 29-30 June 2026 | Crowne Plaza Riyadh RDC Hotel & Convention,

A fair, neutral way to choose is by buyer geography and seniority. If your buyer is broad enterprise technology with no AI specific bias, LEAP or GITEX gives you scale. If your buyer is Gulf institutional and government AI spend, Saudi enterprise AI deployment, or a national infrastructure partnership, the Global AI Show Riyadh is the more efficient room because the relevant decision makers are concentrated there on those dates. The events are complements across a year, not substitutes within a week, and confirming current figures and dates on each event's official site is the only safe way to plan, because conference calendars and headcounts shift. For the broader debate on whether conference spend even pays off, our piece on the net negative ROI debate is worth reading before you commit, and our first party sponsorship ROI breakdown shows how to instrument the trip so you actually know.

Operator noteScore the trip on qualified pipeline at day 30, not on badge scans or stage selfies., FORKOFF events team

How FORKOFF works the Global AI Show as a media partner

We are a media partner of the Riyadh edition, and the reason we publish a preview like this is the same reason we run events for clients, the floor only pays off if the week is built backward from the pipeline you need to close. A media partnership gives us a vantage on the lineup and the program, and our events practice turns that vantage into a plan, which side rooms to host, which sessions to target, which conversations to pre stage, and how to instrument the trip so the outcome is measurable rather than anecdotal.

The mechanics are the same whether the event is in Riyadh, Dubai, or New York. We map your buyer to the right track and theme, we build a pre event narrative cadence so your presence is felt before you land, we run or recommend the side room hosting that compounds the main floor, and we report the trip on cost per qualified conversation rather than on badge scans. The events stack does not change because the city or the category changed, and the same approach we documented in our host a side event playbook and our dinner versus booth ROI breakdown applies directly to a Saudi AI conference week.

The narrative layer around an event matters as much as the floor work, which is why an events engagement rarely runs in isolation. A conference week lands harder when it is paired with the channels that carry the story outward, whether that is our Twitter and X marketing practice driving the pre event and live cadence, our KOL marketing program activating the right regional voices, or our KOL marketing service tying the whole motion to a launch. For builders thinking about how a Gulf conference fits a broader regional push, our writing on Web3 ecosystem growth, the crypto KOL marketing framework, and the guide to web3 marketing in Dubai 2026 lays out the surrounding playbook, and the principles carry over cleanly to an AI go to market.

If you are planning a presence at the Global AI Show 2026, or weighing it against the other Gulf conferences on your calendar, the most useful next step is a conversation about what you are trying to close and which room actually concentrates that buyer. You can talk to a FORKOFF strategist about your events plan directly, or book a call if you would rather start there. We will give you a straight read, including telling you when the trip is not worth it for your specific buyer, because a media partnership does not change the honest math.

Related reading for your Gulf conference planning

The events practice publishes a working library of operator playbooks that apply directly to a Global AI Show plan, and the most useful ones to pair with this preview are linked here so you can build the full picture before you commit a budget. If you are new to the FORKOFF approach, the events service overview explains how we scope a conference engagement, and the broader case studies show how the pipeline math plays out in practice. If your roadmap also touches Web3, the companion Global Blockchain Show 2026 preview covers the co located blockchain track. For the builder-first community the same organizer runs alongside its shows, our preview of The Algorithm Alliance covers its AI and ML meetups and its next Singapore edition. And if your roadmap leans on affiliates and KOLs, the Affiliate Conclave 2026 preview covers VAP Group's affiliate and creator track co-located with the Global Trading Show in Abu Dhabi.

For the economics, the crypto event ROI breakdown of dinners versus booths is the fastest way to understand where conference dollars actually convert, and the first party sponsorship ROI piece shows how to instrument a trip so the outcome is measurable rather than anecdotal. The sponsor decision matrix gives you the framework for choosing between sponsoring, hosting a side event, or simply attending, and the net negative ROI debate is worth reading if you are skeptical that conference spend pays off at all. For execution, the host a side event playbook and the cost per qualified lead sponsorship playbook are the operator references we run against every event week.