Tallinn Digital Summit 2025
9-10 October, Tallinn, Estonia
Collectively at the Crossroads: Towards Secure and Resilient AI Futures
The Tallinn Digital Summit 2025, an invitation-only global leadership forum hosted by the Prime Minister of Estonia, convenes at a critical moment in time. As artificial intelligence and exponential technologies become increasingly central to national power, economic prosperity, and global resilience, the international community finds itself at a decisive juncture. Divergent visions for technological development & governance have emerged across the transatlantic alliance and globally, with recent dialogues at the Paris AI Summit, World Economic Forum, and Munich Security Conference revealing competing priorities among key global actors.
The ongoing war in Ukraine continues to demonstrate profound impacts across digital, economic, and tactical domains, creating unprecedented challenges for European and global innovation, economic competitiveness, and security capabilities. In this context, technology and digitalization have evolved beyond practical tools to become strategic assets and weapons in the portfolio of major powers and global actors.
Summit Concept
The 8th edition of the Tallinn Digital Summit, taking place on 9th and 10th of October at the National Library, Tallinn, Estonia, offers a unique invitation-only forum for constructive and pragmatic dialogue among leaders from political, business, innovation, financial, digital, and defense domains.
The curated environment facilitates open exchange and confidential discussions and formats that transcend sectoral boundaries to advance global political and digital agendas.
Successful societies leverage technological innovation not just to strengthen the economy, future-proof education and protect one’s citizens, but also to uphold the very foundation of democracy and freedom of speech itself.
The TDS 2025 shall explore frameworks for beneficial, scalable, and interoperable implementation of AI across diverse societies and economies, examining the principles that should guide AI deployment in governance, education, economic development, welfare, security, and defense.
First, we focus on examples to drive government efficiency - smart govtech means leaner governments, better business environments, and more options to strengthen national security. The discussion will explore the best practices and solutions to drive innovative data use, but also organizational models and approaches that enable effective and secure data governance and accessibility, including open data. Efficient implementation of AI, including applications such as virtual assistants, depends on a well-structured and trustworthy data governance framework.
Second, we will assess viable applications of technologies in strengthening cybersecurity and resilience. Nowhere is this urgency more evident than in cybersecurity, where AI is both the tool of defense and the weapon of attack. Criminal actors, often protected and empowered by nation-states, are exploiting AI faster than our systems can respond. Meeting this challenge demands not only faster innovation but also smarter use of data to anticipate threats, guide decisions, and respond in real time.
Hence, our discussions will revolve around protecting democracy through digital strength free societies require secure, open, and resilient online spaces. Specifically. How to accelerate AI integration into cybersecurity - to stay ahead, not just to keep up, and unite like-minded nations to confront global cyber threats –fragmented efforts cannot meet unified threats.
Finally, and most urgently: invest in the next generation. Estonia has taken the lead with the AI Leap initiative, bringing AI tools directly into classrooms. Building on Estonia's pioneering February 2025 AI Leap initiative, we will examine how AI exponentially transforms and reimagines education, workforce, and economy, continuing Estonia's thirty-year journey as a digital society pioneer while ensuring critical thinking, cyber hygiene, and AI literacy become the foundation of modern education, without delay.
The Tallinn Digital Summit comprises a high-level conference featuring moderated panel discussions and keynote addresses, complemented by an extensive bilateral program facilitating state-to-state, state-to-business, business-to-business, and cross-sectoral meetings. This includes an innovation and business expo specifically focusing on showcasing Estonia's digital capabilities, and building strategic collaboration, dialogue, and relations between Estonian and global actors.
The summit will welcome 200 specially designated VIP and leadership guests alongside 1,000 carefully selected stakeholders from across the digital ecosystem. Notably, the Summit will coincide with the Arraiolos Group meeting, presided over this year by the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, welcoming heads of state and their delegations to Tallinn, further enhancing opportunities for high-level engagement on digital governance.
As Estonia is chairing the 42-member Freedom Online Coalition in 2025, the Ministerial meeting of the Coalition will also take place during the Tallinn Digital Summit.
As Estonia embarks on the AI Leap initiative, we invite your participation in Tallinn to help chart a course toward a digital future that is open, resilient, and thriving.
For further information, please contact:
Sten Kristian Saluveer
Director
Tallinn Digital Summit
tds@icds.ee
sten.saluveer@icds.ee