A three-day medical AI conference and hackathon at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, framing artificial intelligence in healthcare as a system-level question for 2050 rather than a set of clinical tools.
Medica AI is an annual conference on artificial intelligence in healthcare, organised by the Champalimaud Foundation, one of Europe's most established biomedical research institutions. The 2026 edition runs across three days: a Google-run hackathon on 15 July, the main single-day conference on 16 July, and a second hackathon session on 17 July. The 2026 programme is framed around a single question, what kind of AI-driven healthcare Europe wants by 2050, treating AI as a change to the health system rather than as a feature added to existing workflows. The event sits at the intersection of clinical practice, biomedical research, and health technology, and forms part of the digital health circuit tracked by Events Index.
The Champalimaud Foundation's research credibility anchors the conference's scientific tone. Rather than a vendor showcase, the 2026 edition is built around a forward-looking premise: it asks how today's clinical, technological, educational, economic, and regulatory choices will shape medicine over the next two decades. Sessions address practical questions inside that frame: how clinical roles shift from task execution to what the organiser calls clinical orchestration, what governance and education frameworks AI-literate teams require, and how Europe positions itself in global health innovation. The main conference on 16 July sold out ahead of the event, and both hackathon slots (day one and day three) give developers and clinicians a hands-on track alongside the lecture programme. The compact scale, roughly 250 attendees, is deliberate: the event trades exhibition-floor breadth for a curated single-room programme.
The 2026 format pairs a full-day scientific conference (16 July, 9:00 to 19:00) with two hackathon sessions run with Google. The Google Hackathon on day one (15 July, 14:00 to 18:30) is capped at 26 participants and lets physicians build AI solutions in Google AI Studio with no coding required; a second Extra Hackathon session runs on day three (17 July, 14:30 to 19:00). The conference day itself alternates keynote talks, real-world application case studies, and interactive discussions across the single main stage rather than parallel tracks. An optional morning yoga class (capped at 25 participants) is offered alongside the programme. The organiser positions the whole format around one framing question rather than a sector-by-sector agenda: what AI-driven healthcare should look like by 2050.
The 2026 edition confirms 27 named speakers, spanning Champalimaud's own scientists, external clinicians and academics, and industry figures from Google, Sword Health, and others:
The programme also gives platform time to medical students from the University of Lisbon (Fabiana Lu, Iara Caldeira, Maria Pinheiro) and to Portuguese Medical Association representation via Paulo Simões, President of its Southern Region. The full list of 27 speakers is published on the official event page.
Both, by design. The main conference on 16 July addresses clinical roles, governance, education, and health-system change, aimed at practitioners, administrators, and policy makers. The hackathon days are developer- and clinician-focused, using Google AI Studio to build solutions with no coding required, so they draw AI engineers, product managers, and technically minded physicians. The 2026 framing, healthcare by 2050, deliberately keeps the clinical and technical audiences in the same room rather than splitting them into separate tracks.
The Champalimaud Foundation is both the organiser and the host venue. The programme is shaped by the Foundation's own scientists, with Pedro Gouveia, Tiago Marques, and João Santinha forming the scientific committee, giving it a research-institution character rather than a commercial-conference profile. A large share of the speaker roster is drawn from Champalimaud's own labs, particularly its Digital Surgery Lab and neuroscience programmes.
The hackathon uses Google AI Studio and is explicitly designed so physicians can build solutions with no coding required, so clinical attendees can take part alongside engineers. That said, capacity is tight: the Google Hackathon on 15 July is capped at 26 participants and was sold out at time of verification. The main conference on 16 July is the more accessible route for non-technical attendees, though it too sold out ahead of the event.
The main conference on 16 July is sold out as of 7 July 2026. Prospective attendees should check the official event page for any released returns or a waiting list; the Extra Hackathon on 17 July had no confirmed public price at time of verification.
The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown sits at Avenida Brasília, 1400-038 Lisbon, on the northern bank of the Tagus River in the Belém district. Designed by architect Charles Correa, the campus combines research laboratories, a clinical centre, and event spaces with riverfront views, and hosts scientific conferences throughout the year. Its single-auditorium scale matches the conference's curated format, keeping the full audience in one room rather than dispersed across halls. Belém sits roughly 8 km west of central Lisbon and is served by tram, suburban rail, and riverside walking paths connecting it to the district's other landmarks.
The Champalimaud Foundation is a Portuguese private non-profit scientific institution, established through the Champalimaud endowment to advance biomedical research and clinical innovation. Its research programmes span neuroscience, cancer biology, and computational biology, and its Digital Surgery Lab, whose leads form the Medica AI scientific committee, works on AI and extended-reality applications in surgery, including breast cancer surgical planning. The Foundation runs specialised scientific conferences as part of its knowledge-sharing mission, and Medica AI is its primary annual event bridging AI and healthcare. That institutional origin explains the conference's tone: the programme is weighted toward research, governance, and long-horizon questions rather than product launches, and it recurs on a fixed mid-July slot each year, with 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions all anchored on 16 July.
Medica AI is a niche institutional conference, not a mass-market technology event, and it does not generate the national-press coverage that larger fixtures on the digital health circuit attract. There is no publicly disclosed accredited-journalist count or media-partner list, and no mainstream outlet coverage was found at time of verification. What exists is attributable specialist and first-hand coverage:
For readers tracking media reach specifically, this event is better understood as a peer-to-peer scientific gathering whose signal travels through its speaker roster and partner network than through press circulation. Named partners identifiable from the programme and partner materials include Google and Google Cloud (running the hackathon track), BMD Software (research partner), Sword Health, UpHill, United Imaging Healthcare, and Transform.health, all represented either as programme partners or via confirmed speakers.
Medica AI is a focused institutional conference with genuine scientific credibility, anchored by Champalimaud's research reputation and, in 2026, by a 2050 framing that treats clinical AI as a system-level question rather than a tool demo. Its small, sold-out scale and Google-run hackathon make it a niche but high-signal event for clinical AI researchers and health technology practitioners in the Iberian and broader European market, sitting alongside larger fixtures on the digital health circuit such as HealthAI 2026 in Prague and Frontiers Health in Berlin.
Registration for the main conference runs through the Champalimaud Foundation events page and its congress platform. The main conference sold out ahead of the event; the tiers below reflect the published pricing structure as of verification.
| Ticket type | Price (EUR) |
|---|---|
| Conference, early bird (until 16 Sept 2025) | 49 |
| Conference, regular (17 Sept 2025 to 30 June 2026) | 59 |
| Conference, late (from 1 July 2026) | 69 |
| Google Hackathon (day 1, includes conference) | 150 |
| Optional morning yoga class | 10 |
As of 7 July 2026 the applicable conference tier is 69 EUR, but the conference itself is marked sold out. The Google Hackathon (capped at 26 participants) was also sold out at time of verification. Pricing for the Extra Hackathon on 17 July was not publicly confirmed.
The three-day format creates extended networking across conference and hackathon sessions, and the single-room, roughly 250-attendee scale favours depth of connection over breadth. Because a large share of speakers come from Champalimaud's own labs and from partners such as Google, Sword Health, and UpHill, the audience skews toward people actively building or deploying clinical AI rather than general observers. The optional morning yoga class and the shared main auditorium reinforce the curated, high-contact character of the event. Attendees comparing options across the region also track HIMSS26 Europe in Copenhagen for health-IT breadth and the wider digital health circuit for scale.
The event has been described as hybrid in prior editions, but the 2026 main conference sold out its in-person capacity ahead of the date. Any virtual attendance option should be confirmed on the official event page closer to the event, as remote-access details were not published at time of verification.
The Foundation is in Belém, roughly 8 km west of central Lisbon. It is reachable by tram (Line 15E to Belém), suburban train (Cascais line to Belém station), or taxi and ride-hailing. Riverside walking and cycling paths connect it to other Belém landmarks along the Tagus.
They are registered separately. The Google Hackathon ticket (150 EUR) includes conference access, while the conference-only ticket (49 to 69 EUR depending on the tier) does not include hackathon access. Both the main conference and the Google Hackathon were sold out at time of verification, so availability depends on returns or a waiting list.
| Official website | https://www.fchampalimaud.org/events/medica-ai-conference-2026 |
| Register | https://congressos.leading.pt/geral/inseririnscricao.aspx?evento=285&formulario=650&lingua=en-GB |
| Champalimaud Foundation | https://www.fchampalimaud.org |
| Digital health circuit (Events Index) | /digital-health.html |
| Upcoming EMEA events (Events Index) | /upcoming.html |