Where is the Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027 taking place?

The Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027 is scheduled to take place in Doha, QAT.

What is the duration of the Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027?

The Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027 will run for several days, beginning in late January and concluding in early February.

Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027

Name: Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027
Start: 2027-01-31T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-02-03T00:00:00Z
Location: Doha

Jan 31 – Feb 3, 2027Doha, QatarIn-person

Registration open

The Government Summit, an integral part of Web Summit Qatar 2027, convenes global leaders and policymakers in Doha, Qatar. This event serves as a critical forum for discussing the intersection of technology, governance, and public policy. Participants engage in dialogues aimed at shaping the future of digital societies and addressing the complex challenges and opportunities presented by rapid technological advancement.

Committees & topics

Topics
Politics in the Digital Age: Governance, Trust, and Statecraft · Innovation: National Strategies for Technology and Growth · Regulation: Governing AI, Data, and Digital Markets · Leadership: Government Capacity in an Era of Compounding Crises · The Future of Work: Automation, AI, and Labor Markets · Ethics: Responsible Technology and Public Values · Society: Inclusion, Cohesion, and the Digital Citizen

Why it matters

The convergence of government and technology is a defining characteristic of the contemporary global landscape. Events like the Government Summit are crucial for fostering international cooperation and understanding on how digital transformation impacts national and international governance. As governments worldwide grapple with issues ranging from cybersecurity to digital ethics and the regulation of emerging technologies, platforms for high-level dialogue become indispensable.

This summit provides an opportunity for leaders to share best practices, explore innovative solutions, and build consensus on policies that can harness technology for societal benefit while mitigating potential risks. The discussions held here can influence national digital strategies and contribute to the development of international norms and standards in the digital realm. Understanding the perspectives and priorities of various governments, particularly those actively investing in technological infrastructure and innovation, is key to effective diplomacy in the digital age.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for the Government Summit should focus on understanding the digital policy landscapes of key participating nations. This includes researching the digital strategies of countries like QAT, which is hosting the event and has a vested interest in showcasing its technological advancements and regulatory frameworks. Familiarity with specific initiatives related to smart cities, digital infrastructure, and data governance will be beneficial.

Effective participation will require a strong grasp of current global technological trends and their implications for public policy. Reviewing lessons such as "Engagement Strategies" and "What Is Stakeholder Mapping?" can provide valuable frameworks for engaging with diverse governmental and technological stakeholders. Additionally, considering the "Hidden Stakeholders" in digital policy discussions, such as tech companies, civil society organizations, and international bodies, will enhance a delegate's ability to contribute meaningfully to the summit's objectives.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Qatar

Aims to position itself as a leader in digital transformation and smart governance, leveraging technology for economic diversification and public service improvement.

Role in topic

As the host nation, QAT plays a central role in facilitating discussions on digital governance, showcasing its advancements in smart city initiatives and digital infrastructure, and fostering international collaboration in the technology sector.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Politics in the Digital Age: Governance, Trust, and Statecraft

The relationship between politics and technology has been transformed over the past two decades by the rise of social media, mass data collection, and algorithmic curation of public discourse. Events from the 2011 Arab uprisings to the Cambridge Analytica revelations of 2018 and the contested 2020 US election demonstrated how digital platforms can both mobilize citizens and destabilize democratic institutions. Governments have responded with a patchwork of measures, from the EU's Digital Services Act (2022) and Digital Markets Act to national laws on disinformation in Singapore, Germany, and Brazil, while authoritarian states have used the same tools to tighten surveillance and censorship. The Gulf region, and Qatar in particular, has positioned itself as a convening ground for governments grappling with these shifts, hosting dialogues on digital diplomacy, sovereign AI, and platform accountability. Core disputes center on who governs cross-border information flows, how to balance free expression with protection from harm, and whether democratic and non-democratic systems can agree on shared norms for elections, lobbying, and political advertising in the AI era. Today the politics agenda is dominated by concerns over generative AI in election cycles, foreign interference, declining public trust in institutions, and the fragmentation of the global internet into competing regulatory blocs. Multilateral bodies including the UN, G7, and G20 have launched parallel processes, but enforcement remains uneven and contested.

Key players

Innovation: National Strategies for Technology and Growth

Since the 2008 financial crisis, governments have increasingly treated innovation policy as core economic statecraft rather than a sectoral concern. The US CHIPS and Science Act (2022), the EU Chips Act, China's Made in China 2025 and subsequent science and technology self-reliance drive, and the Gulf's sovereign wealth-backed tech bets reflect a global pivot toward industrial policy. Qatar's National Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, and the UAE's strategies on AI and advanced technology have channeled hydrocarbon revenues into venture capital, startup ecosystems, and frontier research. The core dispute is how states should support innovation without distorting markets, fragmenting global supply chains, or fueling a subsidy race. Export controls on advanced semiconductors, restrictions on outbound investment, and competing standards for AI, quantum, and biotech have created friction between traditional partners and complicated North-South technology transfer. Today, governments are negotiating how to combine open scientific collaboration with national security screening, how to attract and retain talent amid tightening immigration politics, and how to ensure that emerging economies are not locked out of the next wave of platform and AI value creation.

Key players

Regulation: Governing AI, Data, and Digital Markets

Regulatory architecture for the digital economy has evolved rapidly since the EU's General Data Protection Regulation took effect in 2018, setting a global benchmark for data protection. Subsequent landmark instruments include the EU AI Act (2024), the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts, China's Personal Information Protection Law and generative AI rules (2023), and a growing wave of national AI strategies and safety institutes following the 2023 Bletchley and 2024 Seoul AI summits. The US has relied more on executive orders, sectoral agencies, and state-level laws such as California's privacy regime. The central dispute is whether to converge around binding, risk-based regulation, voluntary standards and codes of practice, or state-driven licensing of frontier models. Cross-border data flows, content moderation duties, competition remedies against dominant platforms, and the legal status of AI-generated outputs remain unresolved, with implications for trade agreements and digital sovereignty claims. Today regulators are focused on operationalizing AI obligations, harmonizing definitions of high-risk systems, and building enforcement capacity. Gulf states and other middle powers are positioning themselves as pragmatic rule-makers, seeking interoperability with both Brussels and Washington while protecting domestic policy space.

Key players

Leadership: Government Capacity in an Era of Compounding Crises

The past decade has tested public leadership through overlapping shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic, energy and food price spikes following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, accelerating climate disasters, and the rapid diffusion of generative AI. Trust in government, as measured by the OECD and Edelman Trust Barometer, has stagnated or declined in many democracies, while citizens increasingly expect faster, more personalized, and more transparent public services. The core question for political leaders is how to modernize state capacity—digital infrastructure, civil service skills, procurement, and cross-agency coordination—while maintaining democratic accountability and social cohesion. Models range from Estonia's fully digital state, to Singapore's integrated government technology agency, to the Gulf's ministerial portfolios for AI, happiness, and future readiness. Each reflects different assumptions about the role of the state, the private sector, and citizens. Leadership debates today center on succession in long-tenured administrations, the political economy of reform, the use of AI in policymaking, and how to prepare cabinets and civil services for decisions involving deep technical uncertainty.

Key players

The Future of Work: Automation, AI, and Labor Markets

Labor markets have been reshaped by automation, platform-based gig work, and remote arrangements normalized during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023 release of widely available generative AI tools accelerated debates first triggered by earlier ILO and OECD studies on technological displacement, with new analyses suggesting that a significant share of tasks in advanced and middle-income economies could be augmented or automated within a decade. Strikes in the US entertainment industry, EU action on platform worker classification, and Gulf reforms to the kafala sponsorship system illustrate how varied the policy responses have become. The core dispute is how to distribute the gains from automation, protect displaced and informal workers, and update social protection systems designed for stable, full-time employment. Questions over reskilling at scale, portable benefits, working-time regulation, and the rights of platform workers remain politically contested, particularly where demographic pressures—aging in East Asia and Europe, youth bulges in parts of Africa and the Middle East—pull policy in opposite directions. Today governments are piloting AI-aware workforce strategies, expanding vocational and lifelong learning systems, and negotiating with unions and employers over the terms on which AI is deployed in workplaces. The Gulf states are simultaneously nationalizing labor forces and importing specialized talent, making the region a notable test case.

Key players

Ethics: Responsible Technology and Public Values

Concerns about the ethical use of technology have moved from academic and civil-society discussions into core policy. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the OECD AI Principles, the G20's endorsement of human-centered AI, and the 2024 UN General Assembly resolution on safe and trustworthy AI mark a growing global consensus on principles such as fairness, transparency, accountability, and human oversight. At the same time, deployments of facial recognition, predictive policing, autonomous weapons research, and large-scale content generation have produced documented harms and sharp disagreements about acceptable use. The core dispute is how abstract principles translate into binding obligations, particularly across cultural, religious, and political contexts. Debates over bias and representativeness in training data, the use of AI in surveillance and border management, the ethics of biotechnology including gene editing, and the environmental footprint of large models all cut across traditional North-South and democratic-authoritarian lines. Today governments and international bodies are working on impact assessment frameworks, red lines for high-risk applications, and mechanisms for redress. Gulf states have emphasized values-based approaches that combine global standards with regional and Islamic ethical traditions.

Key players

Society: Inclusion, Cohesion, and the Digital Citizen

Technology has reshaped how citizens access services, form communities, and engage with one another, but its benefits remain unevenly distributed. ITU data show that roughly one-third of the global population is still offline, with sharp gender, rural, and income gaps. At the same time, hyperconnected societies face challenges around youth mental health, online harms, polarization, and the integration of migrants and minorities in increasingly digital public spheres. Major incidents—from documented impacts of social media on adolescents to algorithmically amplified communal violence—have prompted national inquiries and new duty-of-care laws. The core dispute is how to advance digital inclusion and social cohesion simultaneously: expanding connectivity, digital identity, and public-interest services while mitigating harms and respecting diverse values. Education systems, health systems, and urban planning are being redesigned around data and AI, raising questions about who decides, who benefits, and who is left behind. Today the society agenda spans accessibility for persons with disabilities, child online safety, gender equity in STEM and digital economies, support for aging populations, and the role of culture and sport in building shared identity. The Gulf hosting megaevents and investing in cultural diplomacy has made the region a visible laboratory for these debates.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Rahul Gandhi Defends Tamil Nadu's Autonomy

India's 131st Amendment Bill

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

West Bengal 2026 Election

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Qatar January 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027

Jan 31 – Feb 3, 2027Doha, QatarIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Politics in the Digital Age: Governance, Trust, and Statecraft · Innovation: National Strategies for Technology and Growth · Regulation: Governing AI, Data, and Digital Markets · Leadership: Government Capacity in an Era of Compounding Crises · The Future of Work: Automation, AI, and Labor Markets · Ethics: Responsible Technology and Public Values · Society: Inclusion, Cohesion, and the Digital Citizen

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Qatar

Aims to position itself as a leader in digital transformation and smart governance, leveraging technology for economic diversification and public service improvement.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Politics in the Digital Age: Governance, Trust, and Statecraft

Key players

Innovation: National Strategies for Technology and Growth

Key players

Regulation: Governing AI, Data, and Digital Markets

Key players

Leadership: Government Capacity in an Era of Compounding Crises

Key players

The Future of Work: Automation, AI, and Labor Markets

Key players

Ethics: Responsible Technology and Public Values

Key players

Society: Inclusion, Cohesion, and the Digital Citizen

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Government Summit | Web Summit Qatar 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Rahul Gandhi Defends Tamil Nadu's Autonomy

India's 131st Amendment Bill

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

West Bengal 2026 Election

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Qatar January 2027

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

International Conference on Conflict Resolution, Peacebuilding, and Human Rights (ICCRPHR)

International Conference on International Law, Diplomacy, and State Sovereignty (ICILDS)

International Conference on Public Policy, Globalization, and Freedom of Expression (ICPPGFE-2026)

International Conference on Human Rights and Armed Non-State Actors (ICHRANSA)

2026 Global Security Forum

Global Security Forum 2026

Frequently asked questions