Modernize. Secure. Innovate. Lead with the power of Agentic-AI
The IDC CIO Summit Sweden 2026 is the leading event for senior technology and business executives shaping enterprise strategy and digital leadership in one of Europe’s most forward-looking digital economies. Designed for CIOs, CTOs, and transformation leaders, this one-day summit delivers practical insights on Sweden’s top priorities for 2026: sustainable digital modernization, cybersecurity resilience, AI and Agentic AI adoption, and aligning IT with measurable business outcomes in a fast-evolving regulatory landscape.
As Swedish organizations accelerate investment in advanced technologies, CIOs face increasing pressure to modernize legacy systems, manage rising infrastructure costs, and ensure security, compliance, and sustainability. Withthe EU AI Act and NIS2 Directive taking effect, CIOs must build governance frameworks that balance innovation with transparency, ethical AI adoption, and operational trust.
Sweden continues to lead in responsible digital innovation, with enterprises moving from AI experimentation to large-scale, value-driven deployment across sectors such as manufacturing, energy, and public services. The emergence of Agentic AI marks the next step in intelligent automation. For Swedish CIOs, harnessing this technology safely andstrategically requires rethinking data architectures, upskilling the workforce, and strengthening governance.
Agenda
IDC analysts and industry experts will share guidance on how to architect adaptive technology foundations, reduce technical debt, and operationalize AI responsibly while aligning IT with strategic business goals. Through keynote presentations, panels, and peer-led discussions, the Summit equips Swedish CIOs with the research, frameworks, and leadership tools to build resilient, secure, and innovation-ready enterprises for 2026 and beyond.
2026 Prediction
By 2027, 55% of G1000 CIOs will be tasked to create enterprise AI value playbooks, featuring expanded ROI models to define, measure, and showcase AI impact across efficiency, growth, and innovation.
Main Themes
The CIO as Business Strategist
CIOs have evolved from operational leaders to enterprise strategists. As digital transformation reshapes every business model, technology leadership now defines competitiveness. Today’s CIO must align IT priorities with business outcomes, influence the boardroom agenda, and drive innovation that delivers measurable value.
Modernization, Legacy and Technical Debt
Managing technical debt is no longer just a maintenance concern, it’s a strategic priority. Modernizing legacy systems, simplifying architectures, and optimizing cost structures allow organizations to shift resources from upkeep to innovation. Streamlined technology portfolios create the agility needed to compete in a digital economy.
The Agentic AI Revolution
Agentic AI marks a shift from automation to autonomy. How CIOs can govern, scale, and integrate autonomous AI systems responsibly (balancing opportunity with oversight to create intelligent, self-directed enterprises.
Resilience by Design
Resilience is emerging as the defining capability of modern enterprises. Adaptive architectures, secure infrastructure, and integrated continuity planning enable organizations to withstand disruption (whether from economic uncertainty, regulatory shifts, or cyber threats) while sustaining growth and trust.
Cybersecurity, Trust, and Digital Sovereignty
As digital ecosystems expand, trust becomes a critical currency. CIOs must address cybersecurity, data sovereignty, and compliance in tandem, ensuring that cloud strategies and cross-border operations align with evolving regulations. Building digital trust creates both protection and competitive advantage.
Building the Intelligent Enterprise
Data is the foundation of every intelligent organization. Reliable, governed, and accessible data architectures enable AI, automation, and analytics to operate at scale. Enterprises that invest in strong data foundations are better positioned to extract insight, anticipate change, and deliver smarter, faster business outcomes.
2026 Prediction
By 2027, G1000 organizations will face an up to 30% rise in underestimated AI infrastructure costs, driving CIOs to expand the scope of FinOps teams to optimize expenses and enhance business value.
Speakers
Thomas Karlsson
Events Director
IDC
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Thomas Karlsson
Thomas Karlsson is since early 2015 Project Manager within Go-to-Market Services at IDC Nordic. He has extensive experience in producing custom marketing and lead generating activities from previous employments, among others, the business newspaper Dagens industri and the business magazine Affärsvärlden. At IDC Thomas key focus is on delivering, together with IDCs analysts, the right content-based marketing solution to help support IDC clients reaching new contacts, leads and markets.
Thomas Meyer
General Manager and Group Vice President, EMEA Research
IDC
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Thomas Meyer
Andrew Simpson
Principal Solutions Architect
Rocket Software
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Andrew Simpson
Andrew has worked in the computer software industry for over 30 years starting off as a programmer to development manager, moving to technical consulting and then to a pre-sales engineering role. Andrew is currently a Principal Solutions Architect at Rocket Software after being with Rocket for over 20 years, focussing on application and data modernisation, optimisation and process improvement solutions for enterprises across the EMEA region.
Jamie Devlin
Vice President, Sales Engineering EMEA
Rocket Software
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Jamie Devlin
Jamie Devlin is Vice President of Sales Engineering for EMEA at Rocket Software, where he drives enterprise transformation through innovative strategies in data, security, hybrid cloud, and infrastructure. Based in the UK, and with Rocket since 2014, Jamie partners with C-level leaders to unlock greater value and longevity from mainframe investments, guiding organizations through complex modernization journeys to deliver measurable business impact.
Sofia Edvardsen
VD/Grundare, Affärsjurist
Sharp Cookie Advisors AB
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Sofia Edvardsen
With a deep interest in law, technology and business strategy, Sofia Edvardsen engages passionately in understanding and explaining the world’s emerging legal regulatory landscape for technologies. How can businesses prepare today for the regulations of the future? What should be done short term to position the industry for the long term considering what rules that then will apply?
With extensive experience as an attorney, she has worked closely with a wide range of organisations. That enables her to provide practical and realistic solutions to emerging legal challenges, also aiming to help make the right decisions based on an understanding of what is possible today and what the future might bring. She is the founding partner of Sharp Cookie Advisors (https://www.sharpcookie.se/en), a technology and digitization law firm based in Stockholm, Sweden. In her role there she represents sellers and buyers of cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models), software licensing and other technology transactions.
She also holds the role as Data Protection Officer for several global companies as well as start-ups. In addition, she provides services to Data Protection Programs for health care providers and companies in media, marketing, retail and tech. Sofia also leads the Swedish chapter of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). In that role, she facilitates the development of privacy-enhancing practices for the Swedish industry and the public sector.
Sofia Edvardsen graduated from School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg and has a degree from Chalmers University of Technology. She is a certified privacy professional and holds a CIPP/E certification. She has served as in-house legal counsel of a global telecom company, in-house legal counsel at a technology investment fund and as a lawyer in the Stockholm and London offices of Baker McKenzie law firm.
Susanne Grahn
Head of People & Organization
Specsavers
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Susanne Grahn
Annsofi Eriksson
CIO
Sveriges Radio
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Annsofi Eriksson
Jens Zerbst
Group CIO
Vattenfall
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Jens Zerbst
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-zerbst-a1061516/
John Lagström
Innovation Leader
Domstolsverket
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John Lagström
Ingo Paas
Technology Executive/ Award Winning Author
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Ingo Paas
Knowledge Hub
The AI homework nobody asked for (but everyone’s getting anyway)
Artificial Intelligence has officially reached the “you can do anything with it” stage of technological hype. Judging just by AI vendor narratives, and by some of the media, it’s the golden key to productivity, efficiency, optimization and innovation.
The Agentic Business Future: Driving Resilience, Sovereignty, and Innovation in EMEA
As organizations navigate an era defined by economic uncertainty, geopolitical shifts, and relentless technological change, one truth stands out: the future belongs to those who can harness AI, automation, and sovereignty to build resilience, drive innovation, and unlock growth.
EMEA’s Tech Evolution – 7 Key Themes Transforming Business in 2025
The technology landscape across Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) is changing rapidly in 2025, with innovations actively reshaping industries and creating new business opportunities.
Meet Our Partners
Rocket Software
Rocket Software partners with the largest Fortune 1000 organizations to solve the most complex IT challenges across applications, data, and infrastructure.
Rocket Software brings customers from where they are in their modernization journey to where they want to be, by architecting innovative solutions that deliver next-generation experiences. Trusted by over 12,500 customers and 750 partners, and with more than 3,200 global employees, Rocket Software enables customers to maximize their data, applications, and infrastructure to deliver critical services that power our modern world.
Insight
Insight Enterprises is a leading Solutions Integrator that helps clients solve technology challenges by combining the right hardware, software, and services. As a Fortune 500 technology company, backed by 35+ years of expertise and a deep network of 6,000+ partners, we deliver secure, end-to-end IT solutions for organizations around the world.
Ping Identity
Ping makes it possible to trust every digital moment. Our enterprise-grade identity platform secures customers, employees, partners, and non-human identities at scale across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem. From passwordless to AI-ready, we help you fight fraud, simplify access, and accelerate growth.
With us, trust is built in.
Learn more at www.pingidentity.com.
NetApp
NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data, operational and workload services to turn a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. NetApp creates silo-free infrastructure, harnessing observability and AI to enable the industry’s best data management. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in the world’s biggest clouds, our data storage delivers seamless flexibility. In addition, our data services create a data advantage through superior cyber resilience, governance, and application agility. Our operational and workload services provide continuous optimization of performance and efficiency for infrastructure and workloads through observability and AI. No matter the data type, workload, or environment, with NetApp you can transform your data infrastructure to realize your business possibilities. Learn more at www.netapp.com or follow us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
1Password
Trusted by over 150,000 businesses and millions of consumers, 1Password offers identity security and access management solutions built for the way people work and live today. 1Password is on a mission to eliminate the conflict between security and productivity while securing every sign-in for every app on every device. As the provider of the most-used enterprise password manager, 1Password continues to innovate on its strong foundation to offer security solutions relied upon by companies of all sizes, including Associated Press, Salesforce, GitLab, Under Armour, and Intercom.
Venue
EpiCenter Stockholm
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