Initiated in 2003, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is an existing multistakeholder United Nations (UN) process on digital governance and cooperation with a vision of fostering people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information and knowledge societies.
What is WSIS Forum?
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. The annual WSIS Forum is a global multi-stakeholder platform facilitating the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing sustainable development. The Forum provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships, taking into account the evolving Information and Knowledge Societies.
Date and location of the WSIS Forum Geneva 2026
The WSIS 2026 Conference will take place in July 6-10, in Geneva (Switzerland). Our domain name events agenda indicates the date and location of the next WSIS as well as those of the main meetings, conferences and expos of the domain name sector.
WSIS Forum registration
WSIS Forum registration is handled through the official WSIS online platform (managed under the ITU-led WSIS process). The registration record is not just for access control: it is the identity that the Secretariat and session organizers use to link you to the programme, confirm your role in sessions, and route operational messages.
The fields that matter for WSIS are the ones tied to how the Forum is structured: stakeholder type, organization, country, and your role. These are used for Action Line coordination and for how you appear on session pages and participant-facing outputs. A clean profile means one consistent spelling of your name, one stable email address, and an affiliation line that matches your public-facing identity, because the same profile can be reused across participation, speaking roles, and WSIS workflows such as Stocktaking and Prizes.
If you are involved in a session, registration alone does not place you into the agenda. The session organizer must connect your registered profile to the session in the official programme workflow so that your name appears correctly and you receive session-specific instructions. This is the typical failure point at WSIS: people register, but are not properly linked to their session profile, so they miss speaker logistics and last-mile coordination.
For on-site attendance, registration feeds the badge and access process. The operational rule is simple: the registration name must match the identification document used at venue entry, and you should keep your confirmation available for check-in support. This matters more at WSIS than many events because of UN-style access controls and the volume of delegates arriving at the same time.
If your goal is outcomes, treat registration as the anchor for two high-leverage actions that are specific to WSIS: first, align your participation with the relevant WSIS Action Line community you want to engage; second, connect your identity to an implementation asset such as a Stocktaking entry or a Prizes nomination, because those mechanisms are how WSIS turns participation into visibility, replication, and partnerships.
WSIS Forum agenda
The WSIS Forum agenda is structured around the WSIS Action Lines. The official programme typically labels sessions by theme and by the Action Line(s) they contribute to, which makes it easier to follow the parts that match your objective: policy coordination, implementation, partnerships, or project visibility.
A standard WSIS Forum agenda usually combines a high-level track with action-line oriented working sessions. The high-level moments tend to include opening and closing segments, high-level dialogues or ministerial style discussions, and headline conversations on major digital cooperation priorities. Alongside that, the Action Line facilitation sessions are the operational core: they are where UN entities and stakeholder communities exchange implementation progress, identify gaps, and build cooperation around concrete areas such as access, capacity building, e-government and public digital services, cybersecurity and trust, content and knowledge, inclusion and gender, and enabling environments.
The agenda also commonly includes WSIS Stocktaking and WSIS Prizes-related moments. Stocktaking sessions showcase projects mapped to Action Lines, often with practical lessons and replication potential. WSIS Prizes elements usually appear as dedicated ceremonies or award-related sessions that highlight high-impact initiatives and give them visibility inside the WSIS ecosystem.
To read the programme efficiently, look for session pages that specify the session format, organizers, speakers, and the Action Line mapping. These pages are the most useful unit of information at WSIS because they tell you what community is behind the session and what implementation lane it sits in. The programme often allows filtering by theme, organizer, session type, and participation mode, which is the fastest way to build a personal agenda without getting lost in volume.
If you are planning meetings or partnerships, the highest value blocks are usually the Action Line facilitation sessions, the project-oriented Stocktaking showcases, and any networking or partner sessions attached to them, because these concentrate implementers, focal points, and organizations actively delivering projects rather than only commenting on policy.
WSIS Forum outcomes
WSIS outcomes are grounded in the two summit phases and the texts that still define the process. The Geneva phase in 2003 produced the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action, and the Tunis phase in 2005 produced the Tunis Commitment and the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. Together they set the people-centred development vision for the information society and define how implementation is organized and followed up.
The most operational WSIS outcome is the Action Lines framework, which is the backbone of how WSIS is implemented and how the WSIS Forum is structured each year. Action Lines create a shared map for implementation across themes such as connectivity and access, capacity building, trust and security, enabling environments, e-applications in public services, media and cultural diversity, and ethical dimensions. At the Forum level, this is not theory: sessions, facilitation work, and many partnerships are organized around these Action Lines, which is why the framework is the practical “language” of WSIS implementation.
Another durable WSIS outcome is the multistakeholder approach embedded in the process, including follow-up mechanisms that support ongoing dialogue and coordination. The WSIS Forum functions as the annual implementation and review platform where stakeholders translate the high-level WSIS framework into concrete cooperation, exchange of practices, and partnership pipelines tied to Action Lines.
Since the UN review cycle reinforced alignment with sustainable development, WSIS outcomes are also expressed through the WSIS-SDG linkage work. The WSIS-SDG Matrix is used to connect Action Lines to SDG targets so digital initiatives can be described in development terms, compared across contexts, and coordinated around measurable objectives rather than isolated projects.
WSIS produces outcomes through instruments that are specific to its ecosystem: WSIS Stocktaking and WSIS Prizes. Stocktaking works as the structured repository of projects mapped to Action Lines, and Prizes act as an accelerator by spotlighting replicable initiatives inside the WSIS community. In practice, these mechanisms are how WSIS turns participation into concrete downstream effects: visibility, partner discovery, replication, and scale.
Contact info for WSIS
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