Since inception in 2010, the CIO Leadership Summit has gained an outstanding reputation for presenting, year after year, an line-up of exceptional speakers – inspiring CIOs, influential digital trailblazers, maverick forward-thinkers and visionary industry experts. Learn from those who are harnessing the power of technology to definitely change the rules of the business, societal and innovation game, well beyond the conventional spheres.
13:00 – 13:30
WELCOME – REGISTRATION
Guests are welcome to join from 13:00 onwards. Once you have got your badge, enjoy a drink and meet with peers before the Summit starts.
This will also be the opportunity to review the program and select the sessions you find the most appealing to you.
13:30 – 15:00
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES (PART I)
Through a plenary set up, a first selection of keynote speakers will set the scenes of the Summit 2026 with a practical and enlightening tone.
Keynote speakers and panelists will share their respective views on which technologies are top ranking for IT departments, and how CIOs should best seize their full potential and value to conquer complexity and build new critical capabilities beyond the conventional spheres.
Keynote 1
TOP-3 TRENDS UNDER SCRUTINY: TECHNOLOGY DEBT, AI DEMOCRATIZATION, AI-ENABLED CYBER-RESILIENCE
CIOs and Technology Leaders are facing a pivotal year where disruption, innovation and discipline are the pillars of every digital and AI strategies. This CIO Panel will examine how 3 particular trends -technology debt, AI democratization, AI-enabled cyber-resilience-reflect the realities and complexities of the AI-enabled, hyperconnected and hyperautomated world where IT organizations must drive responsible innovation, operational excellence and AI trust as catalysts for business transformation.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Keynote 2
ARCHITECTING THE AGENTIC ENTERPRISE TO THRIVE IN THE AGE OF TRANSFORMATION & INNOVATION
While enterprise applications are shifting from rule-based automation to autonomous orchestration, a key challenge for CIOs is to build a foundation that scales with intelligence. This keynote will explore how application platforms should embrace agentic enterprise architecture principles and become the fundamental pillar of tomorrow’s agentic enterprises and adaptive experiences.
Keynote speaker: Jens LÖHMAR, Chief Technology Officer Continental Europe & DACH, Workday
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Keynote 3
A BILLION TIMES SMARTER: THE RISE OF SUPERINTELLIGENT AI
Current research confirms that the global race for artificial superintelligence leads toward the singularity of intelligence, marking the point where technology autonomously outperforms its creators and presenings existential risks like the loss of human agency and the rise of technocratic tyranny. Through his keynote address, Ingo Paas will envision a comprehensive structural response through ‘the fight for control’ for a practical and trusted human-AI fusion for a future beyond imagination.
Keynote Speaker: Ingo PAAS, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Green Cargo (Swedish Railways) | Author of best-seller technology & business book ‘The composable enterprise’ | International Technology Awards Winner
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
15:00 – 16:30
CIO MASTER CLASSES
Every year, the program of the CIO Leadership Summit includes a series of top-level CIO Master Classes that deliver both strategic insight and critical nuance on emerging trends, new technologies, inspiring cases, etc.
Held in streams of parallel sessions and in partnership with leading providers, CIO Master classes combine vision, expertise and guidance in an easily digestible and time-convenient format.
Explore the program below, select the master classes of your choice and secure your seat! Pre-registration is highly recommended as room capacities are not unlimited.
Stream 1 || 15:00 – 15:30 || Master Class MC1.1 || Organized with IBM
DATA & AI ANYWHERE – HYBRID IS HERE TO STAY
This Master Class will explore how to effectively enable a sovereign AI organization through smart data strategies & re-archictecture for the AI era. More specifically, it will address:
- How to shape your sovereign digital backbone
- Adopting AI with confidence through EU‑based, GPU‑ready private AI platforms. Data classification is key.
- How to run hybrid and multi-cloud on your way
- Leveraging proven sovereign architectures like e.g. IBM Sovereign Core + Cegeka private datacenters.
- Turning sovereignty into advantage with practical insights
Masters: Gregory VERLINDEN, Global VP Data&AI, Cegeka | Marty VAN DE KORPUT, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Technology
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 1 || 15:00 – 15:30 || Master Class MC1.2 || Organized with Outsystems
IS THERE A FUTURE FOR LOW CODE DEVELOPMENT?
Although some analysts predict that AI automation will bypass or even kill low code development, many on the contrary see an enormous potential in the integration of AI into low-code platforms, and even an exeptional driver to hyper-accelerated apps developent and innovation. If GenAI is fundamentally changing software development by creating huge productivity gains, pure AI code generation lacks the necessary governance, security, and lifecycle management. Analysts forecast a merger of GenAI and Low-Code into “App Generation” platforms by 2027, recognizing AI and low code as real complementary forces to create a powerful ecosystem for digital transformation.
Master: Wouter BAETEN, Manager Solution Architecture, Outsystems
Stream 1 || 15:00 – 15:30 || Master Class MC1.3 || Organized with Orange Business
AGENTIC AI: 5 KEY LESSONS FROM THE FIELD
What trully separates successful Agentic AI initiatives from costly experiments and POCs? This Master Class will share practical lessons from organizations scaling AI including:
- Choosing agents versus workflows
- How to escape from POC purgatory
- Establishing governance early as a prerequisite
- Turning AI initiatives into measurable business value
Master: Sander HUYSMANS, Director Data & AI Solutions, Orange Business
Stream 2 || 15:30 – 16:00 || Master Class MC2.1 || Organized with IBM
EMBRACING DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY: NAVIGATING THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY WITH CONFIDENCE AND CONTROL
This Master Class, formatted to be very interactiver, will explore:
- Digital sovereignty: more than just regulatory compliance, it is also about strategic flexibility and resilience
- Frameworks to proactively assess and mitigate threats, and build robust foundations across organizational, technological, operational, and data sovereignty dimensions.
- How to gain autonomy through hybrid cloud architecture tailored to your specific needs
- Empowering responsible AI Innovation by achieving control over data, operations, and technology
Master: Stijn VANSANT, Hybrid Cloud and Data Service Line Leader, IBM Consulting
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 2 || 15:30 – 16:00 || Master Class MC2.2 || Organized with ML6
THE AI DELIVERY ENGINE: A PRACTICAL ROADMAP TO CORPORATE SUPERINTELLIGENCE
Achieving ‘Corporate Superintelligence’ requires more than just technology; it demands a new operational model for innovation and delivery. This masterclass will unveil the ‘AI Delivery Engine’ – an internal framework used by ML6 to make this vision a reality. It will detail how to structure expert ‘AI Pods’ that merge strategy, data, and engineering to accelerate development from idea to impact, and how this agile approach drives high-velocity innovation by turning isolated projects into a cohesive, learning, and value-compounding enterprise.
Master: Nicolas DERUYTTER, CEO and Founder, ML6
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 2 || 15:30 – 16:00 || Master Class MC2.3 || Organized with Orange Business
WHEN IT MEETS THE FACTORY: THE CIO’s NEW FRONTIER
In the data & AI-driven world, and as factories become increasingly connected, IT departments are pursuing the major challenge to bridge the gap between IT and Operational Technology. This masterclass will explore how CIOs should approach IT/OT convergence from a strategic and architectural perspective, and how to design data architectures to allow industrial data to flow securely from machines to enterprise platforms. Moreover, it will stress out how to structure and standardize data flows, and how modern industrial protocols and architectures make this integration possible. By connecting shopfloor data with IT capabilities, organizations can unlock new levels of operational efficiency, visibility and innovation across their industrial environments.
Master: Thibault MEUR, Business Lead Operational Experience, Orange Business
Stream 3 || 16:00 – 16:30 || Master Class MC3.1 || Organized with Denodo
BUILDING A SMART DATA STRATEGY TO ENABLE AGENTIC & GENAI AT FULL SCALE
Master: Vincent FAGES GOUYOU, Sr. Director Product Management EMEA, Denodo
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 3 || 16:00 – 16:30 || Master Class MC3.2 || Organized with Commvault
BEST PRACTICES FOR OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE
Modern enterprises face escalating threats to business continuity – from cyberattacks and ransomware to infrastructure failures. Operational Resilience (ResOps) goes beyond traditional disaster recovery, providing a holistic framework for maintaining operations under any circumstances. This Master Class will explore some essential best practices for building robust operational resilience, including:
- Implementing immutable backups and cyber recovery architectures
- Automating recovery workflows to minimize downtime
- Conducting effective resilience testing without disrupting production
- Measuring resilience metrics that matter to leadership
Master: Bastien BOBE, Chief Technology Officer Security Field CTO, Commvault
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 3 || 16:00 – 16:30 || Master Class MC3.3 || Organized with element61
WE ARE AUTOMATING OURSELVES IN IT – THE ELEMENT61 CASE
Agentic AI will be omnipresent in 2026, and fundamentally shift how we work & how business run their operations. But today, software engineers & data professionals are automating themselves first.
In the last 6 months, element61 chose to automate its own data & AI workflows first, using agentic AI systems. This internal transformation showed that scalable AI is impressive, but also that it requires more than technology. This Master Class will outline element61’s internal process of the AI Factory and show ‘Ralph’, the agentic assistant. Ralph enables to cut down 40% of workload focused on significantly reduced repetitive engineering work and improved delivery consistency.
Today, software engineers & data professionals are automating themselves first. Once done, the same approach & learnings can be applied to any business processes.
Master: Sien DE NEVE, Manager Customer Relations & Business Development, element61
Stream 4 || 16:30 – 17:00 || Master Class MC4.1 || Organized with Workday
ACCELERATING AI MATURITY: AGENTS, GOVERNANCE & OPEN EXTENSIONS
This Master Class, especially dedicated to CIOs, architects and IT leaders, will deliver practical insights and guidance with Workday’s AI capabilities as real-wwworld example and case. Building on Workday’s vision of the Agentic Enterprise, it will unpack how AI works under the hood—covering embedded AI features, Agents, Sana Enterprise, the Agent System of Record, and the Agent Gateway.
Master: Kwinten JOLY, Enterprise Architect, Workday
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 4 || 16:30 – 17:00 || Master Class MC4.2 || Organized with Hitachi Vantara
ENSURING AI SOVEREIGNTY AND CONTROL: A NEW CIO BALANCING ACT
When AI sovereignty is top-ranking in most CIOs’ agenda, keeping full control over AI & IT infrastructure with auditability, governance, and explainability is another battlefield and a strategic balancing act. It will deliver insights on how to ensure implementation of responsible AI practices while preserving control over data, models and infrastructure. Moreover, it will explore how to streamline AI solutions from prototype to production in days instead of months to build a governed, sovereign AI environment that keeps data, models and innovation under enterprise control.
Master: Johnny KOEN, Senior Global Director Product & Engineering Centre of Excellence, Hitachi Vantara
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Stream 4 || 16:30 – 17:00 || Master Class MC4.3 || Organized with Kyndryl
POLICY AS CODE: NEW AI GOVERNANCE RULES FOR DEPLOYING MISSION-CRITICAL AGENTS
This Master Class will explain the innovative capability for creating policy-governed agentic AI workflows to enable enterprises to scale agentic AI across complex and highly regulated environments. ‘Policy as code’ translates customers’ organizational rules, regulatory requirements and operational controls into machine‑readable policies that govern how agentic AI workflows execute, to support consistent, auditable and trustworthy outcomes. The objective is to help reduce costs, accelerate decision-making, eliminate errors, and power AI-native workflows within defined policy guardrails.
Master: Jacqueline SCHOFIELD, Data & AI Lead Strategic Markets, Kyndryl
17:00 – 17:30
NETWORKING ZONE
Enjoy a 30 minutes break to assimilate what our have learned and heard so far, discuss with the speakers, and connect with peers
17:30 – 19:15
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES (PART II)
Guests will come back in plenary set up for a second selection of inspiring keynote speakers and panelists.
Keynote speakers and panelists will share their respective views on which technologies are top ranking for IT departments, and how CIOs should best seize their full potential and value to conquer complexity and build new critical capabilities beyond the conventional spheres.
This second part of the plenary program is organized in VIP roundtables while participants will enjoy a light dinner with a selection of wines.
Keynote 4
DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY: RECLAIMING CONTROL IN AN AI-DRIVEN WORLD
Digital sovereignty determines who truly controls the intelligence behind your business — your data, your models, and your operations. As AI becomes deeply embedded in mission‑critical workflows, the question is no longer where your technology runs, but who truly governs it. This keynote will explore why digital sovereignty has become a top C‑suite priority, and what it means for CIOs who are navigating globalized cloud platforms, emerging regulations, and the growing dependency on AI supply chains. It will examine the risks, strategies, and architectural decision points to activate sovereignty by design and elevate digital control.
Keynote Speaker: Dennis LAUWERS, Distinguished Engineer, VP and CTO Sovereign Technologies & Hybrid Automation EMEA, IBM
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Keynote 5
QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY: CURRENT STATE, PROMISES, RISKS, MISCONCEPTIONS
The future is already here. Quantum technologies are leaving laboratories to join engineering and offer new innovations. Simulation, detection, metrology, computing, cryptography, communications… quantum technologies has the potential to completely reshape the digital economy, and companies really need to prepare for it. This keynote address will explore where Quantum technology really is today, what are its real promises beyond the hype, what are the misconceptions and inherent risks, and finally how CIOs must prepare this major supercomputing upheaval.
Keynote Speaker: Frank DE JONG, Tech Evangelist, Program Director Edge & Quantum Safe Network Lead, Orange Business
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Reflection Time & Meal
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS AND EXPERIENCE SHARING
Enjoy a reflection break to share views with peers at your VIP table, challenge respective views, comment on the last keynotes, share experiences and refine your beliefs while enjoying a light dinner with appetizers and a selection of wines.
° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° ° °
Keynote 6
SEIZING THE FULL TECHNOLOGY POTENTIAL AND VALUE
This executive panel will examine how to effectively set up a game-changing technology strategy, how to assess the real potential of each technology alone and combined, and how to define the critical success factors that really help creating but also capturing value beyond traditional boundaries. More specifically, this panel will examine:
- How to amplify the technology potential to accelerate innovation, productivity and customer experience
- What does technology value really mean from a CIO perspective?
- Vision 2030: which technologies will really reign?
Keynote panelists: Joris PEETERS, Chief Information Officer, Umicore | Isabelle ROUCOU, General Director, SPW Digital | Others to be confirmed soon
19:20 – 19:45
CEREMONY OF THE CORPORATE IT AWARDS 2026
In a complex geo-political and economic context, the Corporate IT Awards 2026 will honour the IT organizations that are going the extra mile by e.g. optimizing and scaling up their IT assets, rethinking their IT operating models, repurposing their IT infrastructure, improving corporate agility, creating new user experiences, reprioritizing their technology adoption roadmap, rearchitecting their IT talents, …, as a response to business and societal changes. And the winners are…
19:45 – 21:00
CIO NETWORKING COCKTAIL
Enjoy this ultimate part of the Summit agenda to greet and meet with peers from other organizations, share views and experiences, gain new ideas and inspirations, and return back home with a fresh blend of actionable ideas in mind and that you can test and implement within your own organization.