Citizens Shape Abu Dhabi's Future at Inaugural Liveability Summit Next Year

Abu Dhabi residents, including children, will have a direct say in shaping the city’s urban future when LiveX 2026 opens its doors at the Adnec Centre from September 29 to October 1 next year.

The inaugural Liveability and Investment Exhibition is designed as a multi-stakeholder conversation about how cities grow without sacrificing quality of life. Six core themes anchor the programme: liveability, culture, education, the economy, energy and health. That framework signals a broad understanding that urban wellbeing cannot be reduced to any single policy lever.

The public dimension is built in from the start. Ahead of the main event, a travelling installation will move across the emirate inviting residents to share what makes Abu Dhabi liveable. A cycling tour will take participants through various districts and public spaces, offering a ground-level view of the city’s neighbourhoods. These are not symbolic gestures. They are the mechanisms through which everyday residents feed into a conversation that will also involve more than 100 international speakers and a large cohort of investors.

Children get their own entry point. An initiative called Imagine What’s Next asks young people to illustrate one thing they would add to their neighbourhood. The submitted artwork will be compiled into a digital mural displayed during LiveX, giving the youngest residents a visible stake in discussions about urban development and community needs.

Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, framed the event’s purpose plainly: “Liveability is increasingly a defining factor in attracting investment, talent and long-term economic growth.” He added that Abu Dhabi has sought to create conditions where economic opportunity and quality of life reinforce each other rather than compete.

The speaker roster confirmed so far spans policy, technology, environment and culture. It includes three former city mayors: Anne Hidalgo of Paris, Enrique Penalosa of Bogota and Sally Capp of Melbourne, all of whom have navigated the tension between urban growth and resident wellbeing in major cities. Also announced are Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity; actor and environmental advocate Adrian Grenier; US media personality Tucker Carlson; YouTube co-founder Steve Chen; and actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds.

Meanwhile, the exhibition floor will feature walk-through pavilions showcasing neighbourhood masterplans, live demonstrations of mobility and robotics technology, and cultural programming including food and performance. An Investors Lounge, run in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and Mubadala, will host an invitation-only programme for more than 1,500 investors.

Al Shorafa described the broader intent: “By bringing more than 100 international speakers into the same programme as investors and decision-makers, LiveX connects a wide range of perspectives with the people and capital shaping the emirate’s continued development.”

What distinguishes the event from a conventional investment forum is the explicit effort to anchor high-level discussions in local experience. The community initiatives, the children’s mural, the cycling tour through residential districts, all of these are designed to ensure that residents are not simply the subjects of urban planning decisions but participants in them.

Whether that participatory ambition survives contact with a programme that also includes an invitation-only investor lounge is the question LiveX will have to answer when it opens in late September 2026.