Semicon India 2026 opens this week. Here is what to watch

Semicon India 2026 opens at Yashobhoomi in Dwarka, New Delhi, on 17 September 2026, and the organising team says the three-day show has been built with students and startups in mind as much as fab owners. Amitesh Kumar Sinha, Additional Secretary at MeitY and CEO of the India Semiconductor Mission, told Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory and The Bharat Project, that this year's edition has more than 575 participating companies, up from 350 in 2025, a dedicated Workforce Development pavilion, company-funded hackathons and an app with AI matchmaking to set up meetings on the floor.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the event on 17 September, a day after holding his annual Country Round Table with global semiconductor CEOs on 16 September 2026.

How Semicon India 2026 got this big

When the India Semiconductor Mission was launched in 2022, SEMI, the global body that runs Semicon conferences in seven countries, was not interested in adding India. "There was no industry, so it had little meaning for them," Sinha said. ISM ran the 2022 and 2023 editions itself for domestic ecosystem players. By 2024, with 12 manufacturing projects approved and traction visible, SEMI came on board in partnership with ISM and the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, and the partnership continues in 2026.

The growth since then is what Sinha keeps returning to. Of the 575-plus companies this year, he said, roughly 300 are international and 275 Indian. Of the 300 international companies, 86 have a headquarters in India and 214 do not. "That means everyone now sees their role, as a supply chain partner, a fab partner or a packaging partner, and takes India very seriously," he said. Participation has grown from 40 countries last year to more than 50, and from four country pavilions to seven, including Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Sweden. Twelve states are present, up from nine last year, among them Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Assam and Bihar.

The organisers' latest release, issued on 14 September 2026, puts the count at more than 600 exhibitors, around 300 of them international, across 15,000 square metres of exhibition space, with over 150 speakers, six country pavilions, 12 state pavilions and a Startup Pavilion showcasing around 40 startups. Sinha counted seven country pavilions; the organisers' latest list has six.

What is new for students at Semicon India 2026

A Workforce Development pavilion has been carved out inside the exhibition area. It will run student mentorship sessions and training on the full fab process, from design through fabrication to packaging. Experts from Singapore are conducting a day-long mentorship session on 18 September 2026. Company-funded hackathons are being held alongside, with results announced at the event.

Sinha's pitch to students is blunt. "See the products of 575 companies, understand what a semiconductor is and how fabrication, design and packaging work," he said. He wants students from every stream, chemical, materials, mechanical, electronics, electrical, computer science and AI, to come and see what the systems that build their applications look like. There is also a session for women, with senior Indian women leaders of global chip companies speaking to girl students about how they built their careers.

For startups, the value is the matchmaking. The event brings the state governments where plants will come up, the 12 approved companies that need supply chains, foreign companies looking for Indian partners and Indian companies looking for partnerships onto one floor. Sinha said order negotiations for plants entering commercial production are already at an advanced stage, with some global companies ready to use entire facilities.

What to watch over the three days

The Prime Minister's inaugural address on 17 September is the obvious headline moment, coming a day after his closed-door roundtable with global CEOs and six weeks after the notification of Semicon 2.0, the Rs 1,27,500 crore second phase of the mission. A dedicated session on the Semicon 2.0 policy is on the programme, and it is where the first signals on how the new co-investment and ecosystem incentives will be applied are most likely to surface.

The Day 1 keynote line-up, per the published agenda, includes MeitY Secretary S Krishnan, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, Applied Materials' Satheesh Kuppurao and Tokyo Electron's Takeshi Okubo, followed by a panel on the fab supply chain and a session on advanced packaging with Micron's Gursharan Singh. Day 2 opens with the workforce development panel and moves through state investment policy, a fireside chat on display semiconductors with IIT Madras and Dixon Technologies, and a session on product creation with Tata Electronics CEO Randhir Thakur and a panel on making India a product nation moderated by HCL co-founder Ajai Chowdhry.

Watch also for the order announcements. Sinha said global companies are in advanced negotiations to use entire facilities at the plants now entering commercial production, and Semicon India has become the venue where such deals are signed; the organisers say last year's edition produced hundreds of MoUs. The six country roundtables, the women's leadership session and the hackathon results round out the programme, and the full schedule is on the ISM and Semicon India portals.

Registration is still open on the Semicon India website, with passes issued automatically and printed badges collected at the counter after the inauguration, but with the event opening on 17 September most people will follow it remotely. The organisers are webcasting the main sessions and panels across all three days, and a Semicon India 2026 mobile app carries every session and its timing. For those watching from outside Delhi, the sessions to follow are the ones where the money and the orders get announced.