Overview
- OMR 2026 drew about 70,000 visitors and more than 800 speakers in Hamburg, with artificial intelligence framing most talks and panels.
- Germany’s digital minister Karsten Wildberger called for digital sovereignty, saying the country must catch up in cloud systems, language models, and AI platforms.
- Finance minister Lars Klingbeil told attendees the federal government would help cover roughly €4.6 billion in planned Olympic costs for Hamburg.
- The show floor leaned into sponsor spectacle with Porsche bumper cars, Red Bull “Energy Breaks,” and broad vape marketing, while on‑site AI demos and livestreams were scarce.
- Business Insider’s new OMR‑Index of 69 listed exhibitors showed a 12‑month split, with many software and ad‑tech stocks down as Samsung rose 409 percent and Alphabet and Amazon gained 154 percent and 40 percent, while the index averaged a 2.4 percent loss versus a 26 percent rise in the MSCI World.