The Future of the AI Summit Series: One Year Later

One year after the publication of the 2025 memo, this policy brief assesses how the AI Summit Series has evolved through the Paris AI Action Summit and the 2026 Delhi Summit. It finds that participation, visibility, and hosting continuity have expanded, while governance structures remain informal, agendas remain host-driven, and accountability for prior commitments is weak. Against a backdrop of fragmented international AI governance and rapid advances in frontier capabilities, the brief argues that the series retains a distinctive role as a nimble forum where governments, AI developers, and experts can incubate concrete cooperation that complements broader United Nations processes. It renews recommendations for a two-track participation model separating advanced-AI governance from public-interest applications; a hybrid secretariat with institutional memory; coordinated multi-year agenda setting among successive hosts; annual leaders’ summits supported by interim technical and ministerial meetings; and systematic engagement with the UN and AI Safety Institute Network. These reforms would preserve inclusive participation while creating sustained capacity to address frontier-AI risks, review previous commitments, and develop implementable agreements when political opportunities arise.