A four-day gathering of emerging leaders, professionals, and changemakers in Barcelona, Spain — exploring global governance, AI ethics, and sustainable development, aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Days of Programming
Global Focus Areas
Expert-Led Workshops
Cultural Showcase
One Future Conference Spain 2026 was designed as a platform for young leaders to test ideas, build practical skills, and collaborate on responses to shared global challenges. Rather than a lecture-style format, the programme prioritised participation — placing delegates inside discussions, hands-on workshops, and reflective exercises rather than in front of them.
Held in the cultural hub of Barcelona, the conference drew participants from a wide range of academic, professional, and cultural backgrounds, producing a programme shaped by many perspectives at once. The agenda reflected One Future Inc.’s continuing focus on youth leadership, ethical innovation, and international cooperation in service of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Setting the tone for four days of collaboration
The programme opened with the arrival of delegates and hotel check-in through the afternoon, followed by event registration and welcome-desk check-in, where participants collected their conference materials.
The Formal Opening Ceremony followed in the early evening, officially welcoming the delegation to Barcelona and setting out the conference’s guiding themes of collaboration, leadership, innovation, and cross-border cooperation.
The day closed with a Welcome Dinner and Networking session, giving delegates their first opportunity to meet across cultures and disciplines ahead of the working sessions to come.
From panel discussion to policy design to creative exploration
Day Two began with a moderated panel discussion on leadership for sustainable and inclusive development, before moving into a hands-on policy masterclass and an interactive creative workshop.
Delegates examined how governance, policy, and youth participation intersect with the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals, and considered what inclusive decision-making looks like in practice. The session closed with an open floor, giving delegates the chance to bring the discussion back to challenges facing their own countries and communities.
Learning strategic policy formulation for the Sustainable Development Goals. This interactive session introduced delegates to the building blocks of strategic policy formulation, from framing the problem and mapping stakeholders through to weighing trade-offs and planning for implementation.
Working in small teams, delegates then applied the framework directly, drafting mock policies in response to real-world sustainable development challenges before presenting their proposals to the group for feedback and discussion.
Exploring Human Creativity, Identity and AI
Dancer, magic-art painter, and author of the Oracle series and the Dancing on the Edge series
The workshop asked a central question: how can we use AI consciously while strengthening our own creativity, intuition, identity, and capacity for decision-making? Delegates moved through five stages over the course of the session:
Delegates set a personal intention and identified a goal to explore during the session.
An experiential exercise in observation, followed by reflection on how human awareness differs from AI-generated analysis.
A hand sketch made without AI assistance, compared against AI-generated interpretations — opening a discussion on originality and imagination.
Guided movement and breathing exercises exploring rhythm, intuition, and self-expression.
A closing conversation on reconnecting with oneself before collaborating with AI, and on identity as both stable and evolving.
The session reinforced a theme that ran throughout the conference: technology can support human creativity, but it cannot replace the perception, intuition, and self-awareness that only people bring to the creative process.
The conference's fullest day — from design thinking to AI ethics to celebration
Associate Professor of Economics, UAB & UPF · President, Mediterranean Youth Council · Founder, ImpulsEurope
Francesc Almendros is a youth activist and social entrepreneur specialising in international relations, with a particular focus on human rights, digitalisation, democratic processes, and youth participation. He represents young people in international forums, including United Nations climate conferences, and his founding of ImpulsEurope — an initiative promoting youth participation, mobility, and expertise — has been recognised with the Medal of Honour of the Presidency of the French Republic.
Drawing on that background, Francesc led delegates through an Innovation Lab built around design-thinking methodology, guiding teams from problem definition through ideation to a workable concept — a skillset many carried directly into the Global Delegate Speech and grant-pitch activities later in the programme.
Delegates took the floor to deliver personal statements on issues facing their home countries and communities, touching on education, climate change, youth employment, mental health, gender equality, technology, and community development. The session underscored the range of perspectives represented across the delegation and the shared value delegates placed on international cooperation.
Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders
Artificial Intelligence expert and CEO, NEEMA AI
Neema opened with AI’s origins at Dartmouth in 1956 before turning to its capabilities today — data analysis, medical diagnosis support, fraud detection, and automation at a scale no human team could match. Her core message: greater AI capability raises the stakes for human leadership, not lowers them. Empathy, judgment, integrity, and ethical reasoning remain uniquely human, and leaders must ask not just “can we do this?” but “should we do this?”
Delegates worked through seven ethics principles, each anchored to a real case:
Delegates set a personal intention and identified a goal to explore during the session.
Microsoft, 2016 — the Tay chatbot pulled offline within a day
Safeguarding personal data across AI-driven systems
Ensuring consistent, trustworthy AI performance
Protecting systems against misuse and manipulation
Keeping people in the loop on consequential decisions
Google Translate — added gender-specific options after biased defaults
The takeaway: not humans versus AI, but humans plus AI — AI supplies intelligence, people supply wisdom. Delegates then applied the framework to a live case, Patagonia’s use of AI in hiring, forecasting, and logistics, working in groups to weigh stakeholders, risks, and safeguards before reporting back. The session closed with a personal reflection and a shared pledge to use AI responsibly, protect human dignity, and lead with integrity.
The Cultural Showcase gave the international delegation a platform to share elements of their own cultures through dress, music, performance, and storytelling, reinforcing the mutual respect and intercultural understanding that had built up over the course of the conference.
The showcase led directly into the Certificate Distribution Ceremony, where delegates formally received their Certificates of Participation — a moment that closed the working portion of the conference on a note of celebration before delegates moved into free time for the remainder of the evening.
Not an ending — a starting point
The final morning was set aside for hotel check-out, followed by departures and farewells as delegates began their journeys home. Rather than an ending, the close of the conference was treated as the starting point for the international partnerships and youth-led initiatives set in motion over the preceding days.
Strengthened leadership and public-speaking skills through delegate statements and panel engagement.
Developed a working framework for evaluating the ethics of AI systems in real organisational contexts.
Expanded international professional networks across cultures and disciplines.
Left with a shared, personal commitment to responsible, human-centred leadership in the age of AI.
Built a practical, repeatable design-thinking process for turning ideas into action.
Reconnected creativity, intuition, and identity as human capacities that complement — rather than compete with — AI tools.
Deepened understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals and inclusive policymaking.
After two successful international editions, we’re returning to Toronto for our biggest conference yet. Taking place 12–15 May 2027, the event will bring together 300 participants from across the globe, including 50 funded scholarship recipients.
