Davos 2026 opens in Switzerland as global leaders and CEOs gather

Businessinsider reports the World Economic Forum annual meeting has opened in Davos, Switzerland, running January 19–23, 2026, with an inaugural concert at 6 p.m. local time featuring Jon Batiste, violinist Renaud Capuçon, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and an opening panel titled "Which 2050 do we want?".

The forum’s theme is "A Spirit of Dialogue," and organizers say they intend the meeting to be an "impartial platform for exchange of views and ideas." AI remains prominent on the program despite the broader theme: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Palantir’s Alex Karp, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and Mistral founder Arthur Mensch are listed as attendees.

Executives on the ground described rapid AI rollouts — EY’s Raj Sharma intends to grow the firm’s AI agents from 10,000 to 100,000 by 2028, and KPMG’s US chair Tim Walsh said 90% of staff adopted Google Gemini within a week — and NYSE’s Chris Taylor said 2026 "could be a banner year for IPOs." Security and travel remain major elements of the summit: local media report around 5,000 Swiss armed‑forces personnel will be deployed each day and airspace near Davos is tightly controlled, including deployment of antiaircraft weapons.

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