Conference
FORWARD Summit 2026with Foment del Treball
The first edition of Foment del Treball's congress on artificial intelligence and business competitiveness, with every talk in each attendee's language, on their phone.
The congress
On 15 September 2026, Foment del Treball held the first edition of FORWARD, its congress on artificial intelligence and business competitiveness, at its headquarters on Via Laietana. It came out of the Innovation Department of the Catalan employers’ organisation with one idea: to go beyond what AI can do and talk about how companies are really adopting it. In other words, how to scale and govern it, what infrastructure it needs, how talent and work will change and what position Europe can take.
The day had several strands. In the auditorium, FORWARD Thinking brought together talks and conversations on strategy. Alongside it, FORWARD Labs took a hands-on approach to AI, with sessions on topics such as automation, sales, AI agents and quantum computing. There were also one-to-one meetings for SMEs and start-ups with technology experts from DIH4CAT, invitation-only small-group sessions and networking spaces throughout the day.
Foment’s President, Josep Sánchez Llibre, called for scale, investment, infrastructure and talent so that Europe can compete. Also speaking were the Generalitat’s Minister for the Presidency, Albert Dalmau; Barcelona’s Fourth Deputy Mayor, Jordi Valls; Daniel Calleja, Head of the European Commission Representation in Spain; and Maria Mora, Foment’s Director of Innovation and the driving force behind the congress.
International voices included Sasha Rubel, from Amazon Web Services; Professor Paolo Garonna, from the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation; and Will Rinehart, from the American Enterprise Institute. Román Orús, from Multiverse Computing, spoke about quantum computing, and Pep Martorell, from InvivoAI, closed the auditorium sessions. The congress was sponsored by Amazon Web Services, with the collaboration of DIH4CAT, and Foment intends it to continue.
What we set up
The congress was planned in Catalan, Spanish and English, and the programme showed the language of each session. At Foment’s headquarters we set up Speech: each attendee could follow the talks on their phone in whichever language they preferred, whatever language the speaker was using, by listening to them interpreted with AI or reading them live.
