Local government leaders embrace AI challenges and opportunities at Global AI Cities conference
City and national government leaders have set out insights and innovations around how artificial intelligence is transforming urban services at a groundbreaking Global Government Forum event.
Global AI Cities 2026, co-hosted by GGF and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, explores the potential to transform how cities deliver services for residents and businesses, with speakers from cities including Liverpool, Hamburg, Madrid, Helsinki, Belfast, São Paulo, Aarhus, and the Canadian province of Alberta. Global AI Cities is supported by gold knowledge partners Granicus and Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. A full list of knowledge partners can be viewed here.
The conference focuses on how AI can help build more resilient places, create more responsive public services, and ensure technology is used responsibly in the public interest. Conference sessions include using AI to improve citizen experience of local services, unlocking AI-driven innovation and growth in cities, and boosting citizen trust in AI to scale what works.
Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester City Council and deputy mayor of Greater Manchester, and Tiffany St James, chief AI officer, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (left), opened the event. St James highlighted work in her authority to make responsible AI for good, with a focus on use cases in transport, health, social care, and education, and an approach of thinking about the strategic imperative of problems that need solving before looking at how AI can help deliver against them.
The conference also heard from Christine Bellamy, interim director general, Digital Products Group, Government Digital Service, and Shaukat Ali Khan, executive chief digital and information officer (CDIO) and executive director, NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and Integrated Care System, who discussed how to co-design services between national and local government following the launch of GDS Local.
Khan called for the development of a co-design approach with central government. “I think it’s very important that combined authorities or other regional technology colleagues should be on the table to explain to work with our national colleagues,” he said.
Other sessions throughout the day touched on making city data useable for AI; how local governments can get AI procurement right; the impact of AI and the changing face of cybersecurity threats; and boosting citizen, and officer, trust in AI to scale what works.
The Global AI Cities Conference took place on Wednesday 17 June 2026. Find out more about the event programme here.
Read interviews with Global AI Cities speakers:
‘Don’t let fear prevent you from working on the problems that matter most’: Five minutes with Rafael Carvalho de Fassio, São Paulo state attorney for science, technology and innovation
‘Producing great results despite constraints’: Five minutes with Martin Waudby, Chief Data Officer, London Borough of Camden
Prioritising people and movement: Five minutes with Peter Boulton, network director highways at Transport for Greater Manchester
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