The full Opening Night schedule will be announced soon, stay tuned.

Coming soon... Opening Night

One of Rio’s very own, Luana Lopes Lara represents a new generation of Brazilian founders making their mark far beyond home. In this fireside chat, she reflects on her journey from Brazil to co-founding one of the most closely watched companies in modern finance, her role in Kalshi’s stellar growth, and where the company goes next as prediction markets shape a new future.

In dialogue with Luana Lopes Lara: Trade the future

Join Replit President & Head of AI, Michele Catasta, as he shares how Replit, now valued at $9 billion, is giving every person on the planet the power to build anything they can imagine – making us all builders, creators, and architects of what comes next.

Vibe coding for the next billion

If your content looks like an ad, your audience has already scrolled past it. Rodrigo Moran, Fábio Porchat and Juliette Freire Feitosa discuss the death of the curated grid and why the most successful creators are trading studio lights for the raw power of authentic and unpolished storytelling.

The polished feed is dead

Brazil's most ambitious companies aren't waiting for the AI revolution – they're already inside it. Milena Leal, country manager of Google Cloud Brazil, and Graciela Kumruian, CEO of Netshoes, get into what actually happens when global tech leader meets local ambition: the decisions, the bets, and the results that don't make it into the press release.

The next leap: From hype to results

The rules of journalism are being rewritten in real time: AI floods the internet with synthetic content, legacy publishers cut deals with tech giants, and trust in media hits historic lows. Leading voices from across the media landscape converge to debate who controls the narrative, who's paying for it, and what AI is doing to the newsroom.

Who owns the truth?

Clara did not copy and paste a Silicon Valley model into Latin America. It built for a region where finance teams still face fragmented systems, manual processes, and deep operational complexity. In this conversation, co-founder and CEO Gerry Giacomán Colyer and Michael Gilroy who led the startup's series B unpack what it takes to build fast, scale across borders, and turn regional friction into a company-defining advantage.

Built for LatAm: Inside the rise of a fintech heavyweight

Born in China, unstoppable across Asia, live commerce is arriving fast in Latin America, and it's one of the most powerful selling machines ever built inside a phone. Three of the women defining this new category in Brazil sit down to celebrate the opportunity, challenge the algorithm, and ask what happens when shopping becomes indistinguishable from scrolling.

Lights, camera, checkout

The story used to go one way: Brazilian founders pitch, foreign capital decides. Kaszek's Santiago Fossatti and Norte Ventures' Gustavo Macedo Ahrends are dismantling that story - in a conversation about what changes when the conviction and the capital are homegrown.

Spotting Brazil's AI moment

Take a seat – literally – on Center Stage at Web Summit Rio. Panda Boi, with over 80 million subscribers to his channels, is bringing his Royal Chair live to the audience, picking strangers, guessing careers, and reading people in 120 seconds flat.
The chair then meets its match, as Channel 4 News editor Esme Wren takes the stage – the woman who put Prince Andrew in a hot seat and watched a royal unravel.

Gen Z, scandals, and the Royal Chair.

OpenAI's technology is reshaping how Latin America works, learns, and creates. But who decides how it develops, who it serves, and what rules govern it? Ronaldo Lemos - the legal architect of Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet and one of the world's sharpest voices on digital rights - sits down with Bruno Lewicki, OpenAI's Head of Public Policy for Latin America, for a conversation that doesn't stay easy.

Can we open AI?

L'Oréal didn't crack Brazil by selling product, it did it by speaking the language - humor, community, and creators who actually mean something to their audience. Marcelo Zimet, president of L'Oréal Group Brazil, joins actress Deborah Secco and creator Ricardo Cubba to break down how 22 brands built relevance in one of the world's most culturally specific markets and what that blueprint means for beauty globally.

Beauty, redefined

While Latin America has proven it can build massive regional champions, the next frontier is whether these companies can dominate on the global stage. This session provides a high-look at how top-tier firms manage the risk-return profile of cross-border expansion and what it takes for a LatAm founder to justify a Silicon Valley-sized cheque.

LatAm vs the world

The open-source revolution promised to democratize artificial intelligence. But who decides what "open" means – and on whose terms? A builder at the heart of Brazil's sovereign AI movement; the general manager of CENIA, creators of LatAm GPT and a growing force in regional AI development; an executive from one of the world's highest-ranked open-source LLM labs, z.ai; and the World Economic Forum's global head of AI sit down to untangle the contradiction.

AI for All, AI for Each

LatAm built PIX before the US built FedNow. It adopted mobile payments before Europe. The infrastructure advantage has flipped – and the investors and founders building on it know something Silicon Valley doesn't yet.

Why the next Stripe will come from São Paulo, not San Francisco

Unlock the power of Agentic AI with NVIDIA. Dive into the capabilities of Nemotron, the engine behind the world’s most advanced autonomous systems. Learn how NVIDIA is bridging the gap between raw data and intelligent action to power the next wave of global innovation.

How NVIDIA NEMOTRON is powering the next wave of AI agents

One transformed living spaces onscreen for a global audience. The other built Brazil's most-followed entertainment platform from a single tweet. Bobby Berk and Hugo Gloss explore the business of cultural influence – how personal brands scale, why content without community doesn't last, and what the creator economy looks like when the algorithm changes everything.

A chat, between the attention architects

She's the most decorated Brazilian Olympic athlete in history. But Rebeca Andrade's story was never just about gymnastics – it’s about what you build when the world keeps telling you the ceiling is lower than you think. Rebeca sits down with the renowned anthropologist and bestselling author Michel Alcoforado for a conversation that goes beyond the medals, and what comes next. This session is brought to you by Itaú Unibanco.

Money, dream, supreme: Raise the bar with Rebeca Andrade

From autonomous AI agents reshaping how Brazilian companies operate, to a skilling program that has already reached more than six million people, Microsoft Brazil general manager Priscyla Laham makes the case that Brazil is no longer waiting for the future to arrive – it's building the infrastructure the future runs on.

R$14.7 billion in - and counting

Live from the ground, Denílson, 2002 World Cup champion, brings the raw, inside view of football’s biggest stage, while Renato Ribeiro, Executive Director of Sports at Globo reveals how the spectacle is crafted for millions watching around the world. From pitch to broadcast, this is where the World Cup comes to life.

Live from the World Cup, with Denílson

10 group round winners take to Center Stage for the semi-final of PITCH brought to you by Finep, FNDCT and MCTI, our startup competition.

Each of the semi-finalists has three minutes to pitch their businesses. Our judges then choose three finalists to battle it out in the PITCH final.

Semi-finalists will be revealed following the group stages of the competition, taking place on day 1 of the event.


PITCH semi-final

Europe is strengthening its tech competitiveness at home while also looking outward to build a more competitive tech landscape. In this fireside chat, EU executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy Henna Virkkunen explores how Europe believes that global cooperation among trusted partners is an essential complement to investments made at home. Discover this new approach to digital sovereignty, and why the companies ignoring it will be left behind.

The new tech sovereignty: Building strength at home and global partnerships

Belonging and judgment-free listening. Communities built on active listening don’t just connect people; they help guide decisions. In an environment where trust is mediated by people rather than institutions, community stops being about audience and amplification and becomes infrastructure. When placed at the center of conversations, it brings brands closer to reality, makes products more relevant and services more intelligent.

Ask community, by OpenAI

Our three finalists battle it out to see who will be crowned winner of the greatest pitch competition in the world. Brought to you by Finep, FNDCT and MCTI.

PITCH final

Nature is the backbone of business, and it’s under threat. While tech races ahead, Indigenous leaders already protect 80% of global biodiversity. Join Felipe Villela, Director of Latam at The Earthshot Prize, Professor Carlos Nobre, globally renowned Earth System scientist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, to discover why the most effective "operating system" for economic and planetary survival is ancestral.

The biodiversity crisis is a business crisis

Every AI startup is racing to lock customers in, ClickHouse and Temporal took the opposite bet – give the product away, build the community, and let the world sell it for you. Both reached unicorn status on the back of open source, and neither is slowing down. Join Alexey Milovidov and Maxim Fateev on why radical openness isn't charity – it's the sharpest weapon in enterprise software.

Free is a strategy

The winner of the greatest startup competition in the world takes to Center Stage to be crowned 2026 PITCH champion. Brought to you by Finep, FNDCT and MCTI.


PITCH winner announcement

Just one year from now, Brazil will host the FIFA Women's World Cup for the first time. It won't be just a tournament. It's a turning point. Join former captain of the Brazil national team Aline Pellegrino – now driving FIFA's Women's World Cup legacy – alongside the executives, Gal Barradas & Thiago Januzzi, shaping the tournament's commercial and operational future. The women's game is done waiting.

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