Bitkom's annual Berlin summit on artificial intelligence, data and quantum computing, 22 and 23 September 2026 at the bcc Berlin Congress Center. Around 2,500 attendees across three programme pillars, in the second edition since the association merged its separate AI & Data Summit and Quantum Summit into one brand.
AIDAQ, officially Bitkom AIDAQ26: AI, Data and Quantum Summit 2026, is the annual Berlin summit run by Bitkom Servicegesellschaft, the event arm of Bitkom e.V., the German digital association. The 2026 edition runs 22 and 23 September at the bcc Berlin Congress Center and is expected to draw around 2,500 attendees. The AIDAQ brand dates only from 2025, when Bitkom merged two previously separate events, its AI & Data Summit and its Quantum Summit, into a single two-day programme; 2026 is therefore the second edition under this name. The programme is organised around three declared pillars covering strategy and governance, industry applications, and technology frontiers, with quantum computing sitting inside the third pillar rather than spanning the whole agenda.
Bitkom ran an AI & Data Summit and a Quantum Summit as separate fixtures before folding both into AIDAQ in 2025. The merger is the single most useful fact for deciding whether to attend. It means the quantum content is no longer a standalone event with its own dedicated audience but a track inside a much larger AI and data programme, and it means the room is dominated by attendees whose primary reason for being there is artificial intelligence, not quantum.
That has a plausible upside and a plausible downside. The upside is exposure: quantum vendors and researchers present to corporate decision-makers who would not have bought a ticket to a dedicated quantum summit. The downside is depth: two days shared across three pillars leaves less room for the technical detail a specialist audience expects. Anyone weighing AIDAQ against a dedicated quantum fixture should price that trade-off explicitly rather than assume the merged event replaces what the Quantum Summit used to offer.
| Pillar | Angle | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy, governance and competitiveness | Board and policy level | Digital sovereignty, regulation, resilience |
| Industry applications and readiness | Deployment level | Real-world use cases, scaling, organisational change |
| Technology frontiers | Technical level | Foundation models, data and compute infrastructure, quantum hardware-software co-design and benchmarking |
Quantum appears explicitly in one of the three pillars, alongside foundation models and infrastructure topics that will compete for the same session slots and the same audience attention.
Quantum computing is one component of the technology frontiers pillar, sharing that pillar with foundation models and with data and compute infrastructure. The quantum content Bitkom has signalled is oriented toward hardware-software co-design and benchmarking, which are the two questions corporate evaluators most often ask when trying to decide whether a quantum claim is meaningful. That framing suits an audience of buyers and industrial users better than one of physicists.
For a specialist, the honest summary is that AIDAQ is an AI and data summit that has annexed quantum, not a quantum event that also covers AI. Attending for the quantum content alone means paying for two days to access a fraction of the programme. Attending because your organisation is sequencing AI investment now and quantum investment later is a different and better reason to be in the room.
The organisations Bitkom has announced for 2026 group into five recognisable categories. The grouping below is ours, not the organiser's, and is intended to show the balance of the room rather than the running order of the agenda.
| Category | Organisations announced |
|---|---|
| Quantum hardware and software vendors | IQM, Quandela |
| IT platforms, infrastructure and consulting | IBM, Capgemini, Alteryx, NetApp |
| Telecoms and transport operators | Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Bahn |
| Industrial and corporate users | Merck, Ferrari, Airbus, Viessmann |
| Public institutions and association | Deutsche Bundesbank, Bitkom (Dr Ralf Wintergerst, President) |
Two observations follow from that list. First, only two announced names are pure-play quantum companies, IQM and Quandela, which is consistent with quantum occupying one pillar of three. IBM straddles the categories, running both classical and quantum computing programmes, and could reasonably appear on either line. Second, the industrial names skew toward large European manufacturers and operators rather than toward software firms, which suggests the applications pillar is pitched at established industry rather than at startups.
The audience is mixed by design: corporate technology and data leaders, industry practitioners, public sector and government representatives, and researchers. Bitkom's membership base gives the event a strong German corporate and Mittelstand skew, and the presence of the Bundesbank and of the association's own president on the speaker roster points to a programme that treats policy and competitiveness as first-order topics rather than as a closing panel.
Anyone attending should expect a domestic centre of gravity. This is a German association's summit held in Berlin, and the digital sovereignty theme running through the first pillar is a German and European policy conversation before it is a global one.
Late September places AIDAQ in the autumn cluster of European technology events, after the summer break and before the year-end conference season. Within Germany, it is the broadest of the quantum-adjacent fixtures rather than the deepest: the Munich Quantum Software Forum addresses a specialist software audience, and Tech Tour Quantum & Defence, also held in Berlin, is built around investor and defence-application matchmaking. AIDAQ overlaps with neither directly, because its quantum content is aimed at corporate decision-makers who are also buying AI.
The practical consequence is that these events complement rather than substitute for each other. A German industrial user tracking quantum seriously would attend AIDAQ for the corporate framing and a specialist fixture for the technical substance.
Not primarily. Quantum computing sits inside one of three programme pillars, alongside foundation models and data and compute infrastructure. The event as a whole is an artificial intelligence and data summit that added a quantum component when Bitkom merged its Quantum Summit into the AI & Data Summit in 2025.
A mixed audience of corporate technology and data leaders, industry practitioners, government and public sector representatives, and researchers, weighted toward Bitkom's German corporate membership. The announced speaker roster spans IT vendors, telecoms and transport operators, large industrial users and public institutions.
The AI & Data Summit and the Quantum Summit stopped running as separate events and became a single two-day programme under the AIDAQ brand from 2025. In practice this widened the audience quantum content reaches while reducing the share of the agenda devoted to it.
The bcc is a conference venue in central Berlin, next to Alexanderplatz, recognisable by its circular main auditorium. Alexanderplatz is one of the best connected points in the city, served by S-Bahn, U-Bahn, regional rail, tram and bus, which makes the venue reachable without a car from anywhere in Berlin and directly from both main rail stations. Detailed hall allocation and capacity for the 2026 edition are not disclosed by the organiser.
Bitkom Servicegesellschaft is the event arm of Bitkom e.V., Germany's digital association, which represents companies across software, IT services, telecommunications and digital media. The association runs a portfolio of Berlin conferences and policy events, and AIDAQ is its combined annual fixture for artificial intelligence, data and quantum topics. Bitkom's association role means its events sit close to German technology policy debate, which explains the weight given to digital sovereignty and regulation in the first programme pillar.
An AI and data summit with a quantum wing attached, not a quantum event: useful for seeing how German corporate buyers rank quantum against the AI spending already on their books, thin if you came for hardware detail.
Registration runs through the official site at aidaq.berlin. Pricing could not be independently verified at last check: the official ticket page is cookie and JavaScript gated and did not return readable pricing. Third-party reports cite EUR 600 for an early bird ticket and EUR 700 for a standard ticket, but these figures are unconfirmed and should be treated as indicative only until checked against the official page. No member, public sector, academic or group rates are disclosed on the pages accessible at verification.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Early bird ticket | EUR 600 reported by third parties, unconfirmed |
| Standard ticket | EUR 700 reported by third parties, unconfirmed |
| Member, academic or group rates | Not disclosed by the organiser |
| Registration channel | aidaq.berlin |
Unconfirmed. Third-party sources cite EUR 600 early bird and EUR 700 standard, but the official ticket page is cookie and JavaScript gated and could not be read directly at verification. Confirm current pricing on aidaq.berlin before budgeting.
Nothing on the accessible parts of the official site indicates that Bitkom membership is a precondition, and tickets are sold publicly. Whether members receive a discounted rate is not disclosed.
Not disclosed on the accessible pages of aidaq.berlin. Given the German association organiser and the domestic audience, anyone who does not follow German should confirm session languages with the organiser before booking.
The bcc Berlin Congress Center is next to Alexanderplatz in central Berlin, served by S-Bahn, U-Bahn, regional rail, tram and bus. Both Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Berlin Brandenburg Airport connect to Alexanderplatz by direct rail services.
| Official website | https://aidaq.berlin/ |
| Registration and tickets | https://aidaq.berlin/ (ticket page is cookie and JavaScript gated) |
| Organiser (Bitkom) | https://www.bitkom.org |
| Programme | not disclosed |
| not disclosed |