Lebanon AI Festival 2026: Uniting Over 1,000 Innovators at the Beirut Digital District
The tech community in Lebanon is proving that innovation thrives against all odds. On September 24, 2026, the Beirut Digital District (BDD) transformed into a full-campus powerhouse as more than 1,000 founders, developers, industry professionals, students, and enthusiasts gathered for the Lebanon AI Festival 2026.
Organized by ZAKA, this year’s event marked a massive evolution from last year’s AI Career Fair, expanding into a comprehensive festival format that spanned multiple venues across the BDD campus.
Setting the Tone: People Over Algorithms
The festival kicked off with high-profile opening remarks highlighting Lebanon’s greatest asset: its human capital.
- H.E. Kamal Shehadi, Minister of State for Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence, opened the discourse alongside ecosystem leaders.
- Kim Mouawad, Chief Growth Officer at BDD, emphasized the unique resilience and talent pool found locally:
“The future of AI will not only be shaped by technology, but by people who are curious enough to learn, brave enough to adapt, and ambitious enough to build. And this is where Lebanon has something truly special: As always, its talent.”
- Larissa Abi Nakhle, Co-founder & Head of Partnerships at ZAKA, rallied the crowd with a powerful call to action:
“The future of AI in Lebanon will not be decided somewhere else by someone else. It will be decided in rooms like this one.”
Core Themes: Scaling, Adopting, and Building
The Main Stage hosted two marquee panel discussions that tackled the practical realities of integrating artificial intelligence into businesses and everyday operations.
- Building and Scaling AI-Powered Companies: Moderated by Elias Boustani (Zeal), industry leaders Alexi Akl (Aboard), Georges El Khoury (Journable), and Omar Hmaissy (Toters) discussed the engineering, product, and scaling bottlenecks unique to building competitive AI products.
- Getting Your Team to Actually Use AI: Moderated by Tarek Hoteit (Arabtronics), this panel featured Tarek Ayna (Edgebot), Maya Ali (maids.cc), and Wes Ezzeddine (AI Safety UAE). The conversation focused on organizational transformation, moving past the hype to successfully bake AI into standard workplace workflows.
Hands-On Learning: Technical and Non-Technical Tracks
Beyond high-level keynote panels, the festival offered deep-dive workshops catering to different skill levels:
- Technical Workshops: Developers rolled up their sleeves for advanced topics like AI agents, tool-calling loops (moving “beyond the chat box”), and agentic software engineering for production-ready code.
- Non-Technical Tracks: Professionals from non-coding backgrounds explored how AI can amplify productivity across diverse fields, including architecture, product management, education/classroom leadership, and AI-driven marketing.
The Big Picture for Digitrendz Readers
The Lebanon AI Festival 2026 demonstrated that Lebanon’s tech ecosystem is no longer just watching the global AI wave from the sidelines, it is actively participating, building, and upskilling at scale. By bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and cross-industry adoption, events like these cement BDD’s status as a vital tech hub in the region.
