Prime Minister will today inaugurate fifth edition of Semicon India 2026, a three-day conference and exhibition which will be attended by investors, researchers and start-ups from across the semiconductor and electronics value chain.
The conference and exhibition brings together global and Indian companies, policymakers, investors, researchers, start-ups, academic institutions and students from across the semiconductor and electronics value chain, an said.
The conference begining Thursday will on advancing collaboration, investment, innovation and talent development in India. Parallel sessions will cover advancements in the display industry, six country roundtables designed to facilitate collaboration and joint ventures and a forum on women’s leadership.
Thursday, 17 September is also PM Modi’s 76th birthday.
Semicon India 2026 will adopt a comprehensive value-chain approach, showcasing the journey from semiconductor materials, equipment and chip design to fabrication, advanced packaging, electronics and systems.
The new “Sand to Silicon to Systems” Value Chain Experience will present this journey across the semiconductor ecosystem.
The ‘SEMICON India 2026,’ in its fifth editiom, is being organised by the , Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), in partnership with SEMI and industry associations
The three-day conference and exhibition, being held from 17 to 19 September 2026, will be organised on the theme ‘Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem’.
The conference will focus on advancing collaboration, investment, innovation and talent development in India. Parallel sessions will cover advancements in the display industry, six Country Roundtables designed to facilitate collaboration and joint ventures, a forum on women’s leadership, among other sessions.
will feature more than 600 participating companies and is expected to attract around 50,000 visitors, with representatives from 52 countries, more than 400 executives and over 150 speakers.
The exhibition will feature six country pavilions representing Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden, along with 12 state booths, a startup pavilion, innovation showcase, a student hackathon and a workforce development pavilion.
Modi will use the three-day Semicon event to display India’s fledgling chip and electronics industry that barely existed a decade ago, a Bloomberg report said. The prime minister is courting global semiconductor producers, potential partners and customers for India’s homegrown contenders, as well as equipment makers and parts suppliers all seeking to ride the artificial intelligence investment wave.
“Semicon in New Delhi is Modi’s way of signaling that India has a long-term commitment to growing the chip industry,” Pranay Kotasthane, deputy director of Bangalore-based think tank Takshashila Institution told Bloomberg. “That’s his message to global investors.”
The event comes just two months after India pledged a further in subsidies to boost local chip and electronics production. The first round of subsidies in 2020-21 helped Apple Inc. expand iPhone manufacturing in the South Asian region – it now makes 25% of its marquee device here.
India sought to replicate that momentum in semiconductors with an initial $10 billion fund that helped drive early initiatives, Bloomberg report said. Some of those are starting to bear fruit: conglomerates Tata Group and Murugappa Group have begun packaging and assembling chips, while US memory maker . has also commenced production, the news agency said.
Tata is also building a chip fabrication plant in western Gujarat state that’s due to become operational in early 2028.
The conference is being organised at a crucual time. As things stand, countries around the world are committing massive budgets to making chips at home as the race for AI supremacy heats up. The AI is already becoming ubiquitous in everything from self-driving cars and healthcare to finance and fraud detection. But as computing resources remain scarce, chips and chipmakers are fast becoming kingmakers in deciding who’s winning.
Chipmaking is a complicated and long-drawn process that countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, the US and Malaysia have taken several decades to develop and perfect. India started its campaign by making less sophisticated legacy semiconductors that are used widely in electronics and power systems, but it will have to move swiftly on to producing cutting-edge chips and advanced packaging to catch up.
Though India’s push is in early stages, it’s accelerating efforts to build a domestic industry spanning the entire supply chain. It’s offering seed funding to startups working on , support for chip-making gear as well as for new fabs and assembly plants.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
