VDS 2026: 600+ speakers, 17 unicorns and a bridge worth crossing for African tech
Valencia, 21–22 October 2026. The ninth edition of VDS has published its agenda. TekAfrika.tv will be on site as Media Supporter, for the third time.
On 29 September, VDS announced the full agenda of its ninth edition: more than 600 speakers, over 200 sessions and 100 hours of content across eight stages. For two days, the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia becomes one of Europe’s busiest meeting points for founders, investors and corporates.
The headline name is not a tech founder. Carl Lewis, nine-time Olympic gold medalist, leads an international lineup that also includes speakers from NVIDIA, Spotify, IBM, AstraZeneca, Rolls-Royce, ClickUp, Miro and Plug and Play.
The theme this year is GENESIS, with the tagline “Origin of What’s Next”. The idea: look at where the next generation of technologies, companies and business models is being born, and who is financing it.
VDS 2026 in numbers
VDS 2026 in numbers (organiser forecasts). Graphic: TekAfrika.tv
The figures are the organiser’s forecasts for this edition. The 17 unicorns are the detail that stands out: ClickUp, Harvey AI, Miro, Preply, ElevenLabs, Qonto, Kraken and OVHcloud are among them.
Capital is the other story. The 800+ investors expected in Valencia manage more than €300 billion in assets, and over 50 venture capital funds appear on the agenda itself. The startups taking part have raised more than €26.75 billion between them.
On the Main Stage, 25 finalists of the VDS Startup Competition will pitch for the title of best startup of the edition. They were selected from 1,560 applications from 87 countries.
What is on the agenda
The six themes of VDS 2026, with sample speakers. Graphic: TekAfrika.tv
Artificial intelligence opens the programme and gets the most stage time; the five other themes show how far it now reaches.
AI moves from generating to acting
The AI sessions go beyond generative tools. The focus is on agents that work on their own, models applied to the physical world, and the infrastructure behind them.
Yasmina Benkhoui of NVIDIA will speak in two sessions on agent networks. David Shim, CEO of Read AI, will cover agentic systems that act on a user’s behalf. Chris Cunningham, co-founder of ClickUp, and Jorge Bestard of Harvey AI will show what this changes for B2B growth and for legal work. Qualcomm, ElevenLabs and Poolside join the conversation on the Future Stage.
How global companies are built and funded
Ana Sandra Ruiz, Senior Director at Spotify, will explain what it takes to make a digital product global. Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play, and Dong-Su Kim, CEO of LG Technology Ventures, bring the investor view from Silicon Valley and Asia.
Partners from Cathay Innovation, JME Ventures and Kibo Ventures will discuss what a startup needs to attract international investment. Large groups are present too: IBM, AstraZeneca and Rolls-Royce will describe how they deploy AI and data at scale.
Defense and dual-use technology
Defense takes a larger place than in past editions. The Main Stage will host Teemu Seppälä of DEFINE Finland, Ukrainian MP Taras Tarasenko and Marco Grancagnolo of the European Innovation Council’s executive agency. The Future Stage will cover drones, electronic warfare, autonomy and supply-chain resilience.
Health and neurotechnology
The Innovation Stage gathers leading names in neurotech: José Carmena, a pioneer of brain-computer interfaces, Ana Maiques of Neuroelectrics, Javier Mínguez of Bitbrain and Carolina Aguilar of INBRAIN Neuroelectronics. The question they share: how to move science from the lab into industry, at scale.
Space and high performance
Carl Lewis will translate a career of nine Olympic gold medals into lessons on sustained excellence. Footballer César Azpilicueta and former NBA player Víctor Claver, now a startup investor, will connect elite sport with business. Analog astronauts Carmen Köhler and Iñigo Muñoz bring the view from space missions.
Industries in transition
Other sessions follow technology into specific sectors: semiconductors with Applied Materials, quantum computing with eleQtron, telecoms with Saily, digital finance with Qonto, Creditas and Brite Payments, and generative AI in film and TV with Mito AI.
Why it matters for African tech
VDS describes itself as a business bridge between Europe, Latin America and the United States. Africa is not in that sentence yet, and that is exactly why TekAfrika.tv goes to Valencia.
The subjects on stage are the ones African founders and decision-makers are working on now: AI agents in real business processes, digital finance, logistics and technological sovereignty. With 800+ investors in one venue over two days, VDS is also one of the most direct ways to reach European capital from the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
TekAfrika.tv is Media Supporter of VDS 2026, our third partnership with the summit after 2023 and 2024. This year we go a step further: our team will record interviews from the VDS Media Set on both days, in English, French and Arabic, with speakers, founders and investors.
Expect daily coverage from Valencia on our channels, then a recap, a highlights video and dedicated interview episodes after the event.
Practical information
| Event | VDS 2026, 9th edition, theme GENESIS: Origin of What’s Next |
| Dates | 21–22 October 2026 |
| Venue | City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia, Spain |
| Organiser | Startup Valencia |
| Tickets | vds.tech/get-tickets |
| Hashtags | #VDS2026 #VDS |
Follow TekAfrika.tv for interviews and daily coverage from Valencia.
