Tech 7 November 2026

Web Summit's speaker list includes two robots, and China brings most of the hardware to Lisbon

The 11th Web Summit runs 9–12 November at FIL and MEO Arena in Lisbon, with Chinese robotics and AI firms (AgiBot, Unitree, Galbot, Xiaomi, Tencent, Pony.ai, Xpeng, Manus) prominent. The government deal secures FIL until the 2028 edition, and Paddy Cosgrave won't say what comes after.

Two of the names on the Web Summit 2026 speaker list are not people. The AgiBot A3 is billed as a humanoid robot and the Galbot G1 as a robot running an embodied large AI model, listed alongside the founders and executives of the companies that build them. The 11th edition opens on Monday 9 November and runs until Thursday across FIL and MEO Arena in Lisbon.

Which Chinese companies are at Web Summit 2026?

A lot of them, and most are in robots or AI. Beyond AgiBot and Galbot, the list includes Unitree (maker of the robots that danced at China’s New Year gala), Xiaomi, Tencent, the self-driving firm Pony.ai, Xpeng, MiniMax, ModelBest and Manus, the AI-agent start-up. That is no scheduling accident: China has turned AI built into machines into a political showcase, as it did when Xi Jinping gave his first keynote at the World AI Conference in Shanghai.

On the Western side, confirmed names include Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince and Replit president Michele Catasta. The advertised themes are this year’s usual suspects: AI agents that work unsupervised, humanoid robots, regulation and copyright.

Will Web Summit stay in Lisbon after 2028?

Nobody is promising that. The agreement with the Portuguese government secures FIL up to the 2028 edition, and founder Paddy Cosgrave told reporters this week, ECO reported, that talks on extending it are under way, without giving details. He called Lisbon a second home and, in the same breath, mentioned the other European cities that are interested.

Lisbon’s case rests on an EY study: roughly €250 million a year in economic impact since the event left Dublin a decade ago.

Who else is coming to Lisbon this week?

Brazil is bringing about 200 companies and a 324-square-metre pavilion in MEO Arena, according to Portugal’s trade agency AICEP. On Tuesday 10 November the 20 Brazilian start-ups picked for the second round of a Lisbon incubation programme will be announced.

Anyone without a ticket who would rather not pay full price still has the volunteer route the organisers run themselves. And anyone who just wants to see the robots will probably catch them on video long before they meet one on the Parque das Nações metro.

By Oliver Grant

Image: Web Summit / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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