On April 21, the 2026 Global 6G Conference, hosted by the Purple Mountain Laboratories and the FuTURE FORUM, opened in Nanjing.
6G represents a critical arena for global technological innovation and industrial competition, and is also a key focus for China’s future industrial development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. With the theme “Extreme Connectivity, Intelligent Integration, Scenario Co-Creation, and Industrial Win-Win,” this conference integrates intellectual exchange, achievement release, and talent interaction, aiming to accelerate the transition of 6G from vision to reality and from laboratories to industrial ecosystems.
Wu Hequan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, noted that 6G standardization is shifting from idealized targets to pragmatic implementation, with the core goal of achieving commercial viability and sustainable development. Compared with 5G, 6G offers limited improvement in bandwidth but significant enhancements in latency, reliability, energy efficiency (improving by approximately 90%), and security. It also drives the transformation of networks from “connectivity pipelines” to “native intelligent platforms.” Looking ahead, 6G must adapt to the multi-agent internet, supporting group collaboration, dynamic decision-making, and distributed computing, thereby bringing both new opportunities and challenges.
The FuTURE FORUM released its latest report, “Frontier Technologies and Industrial Ecosystem of 6G,” offering forward-looking insights for the next five to ten years. The report addresses global development trends, evolution of key technologies, restructuring of industrial landscapes, and ecosystem transformation, answering the question: “Where is 6G heading?” It highlights five major trends: 6G has entered a critical window where pre-standard definition and industrial ecosystem incubation proceed in parallel; the bidirectional empowerment of AI and 6G is moving from concept to engineering implementation; investment focus is shifting from bandwidth expansion to coordinated deployment of spectrum, computing power, energy, and infrastructure; four major global industrial camps have emerged, with collaborative capability becoming the core competitive factor; telecom operators’ business models are undergoing paradigm shifts, transitioning from traffic-based operations to tokenized services.
Nanjing is currently accelerating the development of new advantages in future industries through forward-looking planning, strong scientific research capabilities, full-chain transformation, and cross-domain collaboration. At the opening ceremony, the Southeast University Innovation Ecosystem and the Nanjing 6G Future Industry Cultivation Zone were unveiled. The 6G Innovation Consortium and the Nanjing 6G Future Industry Fund Cluster were also officially launched, with a total scale of RMB 3.312 billion.
Keynote speeches on the future development of 6G were delivered by You Xiaohu, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director of Purple Mountain Laboratories; Professor Regius Rahim Tafazolli, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Director of the 5G/6G Innovation Centre (5/6GIC) at the University of Surrey; and Gerhard P. Fettweis, Member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering and Professor at TU Dresden.
You Xiaohu emphasized that 6G is not only about achieving extreme connectivity but, more importantly, about enabling deep integration of data, control, and information and communication technologies. This integration will support the unified evolution of communication, sensing, artificial intelligence, computing, and control, meeting the needs of data cognition, decision-making, and closed-loop control in industrial and other B2B vertical applications. He proposed building a new data-driven integrated network architecture with endogenous intelligence, incorporating innovations such as wireless data knowledge graphs and embedded TSN mechanisms to enable knowledge-guided real-time intelligence and deterministic services. Validation based on a Pre-6G test network demonstrated orders-of-magnitude improvements in low-latency determinism, intelligent scheduling, and intelligent computing service capabilities, providing key support for scenarios such as wireless industrial control and networked embodied intelligence. This research offers a new technological pathway for the transition from “connected networks” to “intelligent networks.”
The conference attracted experts, scholars, and industry representatives from countries and regions including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, establishing a cross-regional and cross-disciplinary international exchange platform. During the event, two high-level roundtable forums were organized around key topics such as 6G technologies and standards, industrial cooperation, and ecosystem development. Representatives from international standardization organizations such as 3GPP, the China Communications Standards Association, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as well as global telecom companies, equipment manufacturers, and industry users from sectors such as embodied intelligence and transportation, engaged in in-depth discussions on standard evolution paths, key technology directions, and industrial collaboration mechanisms, further consolidating global consensus on 6G development.
At the opening ceremony, a series of books on frontier 6G technologies, organized by the FuTURE FORUM, was officially released. The series brings together contributions from research institutions, enterprises, and experts worldwide, systematically reviewing key technological directions and development paths of 6G. It aims to distill cutting-edge theoretical achievements and promote the deep integration of academic research and industrial practice. The series is scheduled for official publication by the end of this year.
In addition, the conference announced the 2026 “6G Rising Stars” young scientists and doctoral researchers. Through global solicitation and selection, the conference annually identifies promising young research talents worldwide, providing them with platforms for presentation and exchange, and further strengthening the talent pipeline in the 6G field.
A 6G frontier achievements exhibition was held alongside the conference, focusing on integrated innovation and key capability validation. It showcased the latest progress in 6G key technologies and system capabilities, and promoted the transition from proof-of-concept to engineering practice and industrial application through demonstrations of typical application scenarios.
Currently, 6G development is at a critical stage, transitioning from technological exploration to future industry formation. By bringing together global innovation resources, the 2026 Global 6G Conference is promoting deep integration of academic exchange, industrial collaboration,, accelerating the construction of future-oriented information infrastructure and industrial ecosystems, and injecting sustained momentum into the development of 6G.
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