2026 edition of the French Internet Governance Forum: cultivate optimism without naivety

What is special about this edition of FGI France?

FM: For me, what is most interesting about this edition is that it connects the important questions surrounding world Internet governance with concrete technical, political and democratic issues. These will include the future of infrastructure, technical transitions, sovereignty and European regulation, as well as democracy. And that is the key aspect of the Internet Governance Forum: bringing together diverse actors with fundamentally different roles, mandates, and priorities who do not share the same interests or viewpoints, but who all share the underlying goal of shaping the Internet.

This year, the focus will also be on cultivating optimism without naivety: faced with geopolitical tensions and the risks of network fragmentation, we need to show that cooperation and multi-stakeholder governance are not only still possible, but essential.

What will be the hot topics for this 2026 edition?

The schedule is very reflective of the tensions pervading the Internet today. The question of sovereignty will be addressed first, with a workshop on geopolitical rivalries and how to protect critical infrastructure (from undersea cables to the DNS), without the global network becoming fragmented. We will then turn to technical transitions, simplifying European regulation and the question of artificial intelligence, particularly in education and training. Lastly, a plenary session will be devoted to the Internet and democracy, just a few months ahead of the forthcoming Presidential elections in France: disinformation, interference and algorithm manipulation, but also the potential for citizen engagement.

These topics are all connected by one fundamental question: how to maintain collective control over digital developments, without compromising on safety, openness and freedoms?

That is also what we will be debating in the workshop I will be co-coordinating: how to strengthen resilience and control over infrastructures without jeopardising the foundations of a global and interoperable Internet.

The IGF recently celebrated its 20^th anniversary: what wish would you like to make?

My wish would be that the IGF continue to embody a conviction that is more important today than ever: that the Internet should not be governed by a handful of States or major corporations, but by multiple actors able to communicate and to develop solutions together. This multi-stakeholder model is being pressured by geopolitical rivalries, infrastructure concentration and a fragmentation mindset. Which is why it is important to endorse and reinvent this model, and endow it with the means to really influence decisions.

My other wish would be that we retain the capacity to envision alternatives: open infrastructure, digital commons, forms of cooperation that strengthen our autonomy without confining us to self-contained national or regional spaces.

In short, that the IGF remains a place where the transformations of the Internet are not just observed, but where actors, collectively, can ensure the means to shape its future.