ICANN has outlined its participation in the 2026 Internet Governance Forum (IGF), scheduled for December 14—18 in Nairobi, Kenya, with sessions focused on multistakeholder governance, multilingual Internet access, and broader participation in the systems that support the Internet’s operation.

In its November 4 announcement, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers identified three sessions addressing government engagement, Universal Acceptance of domain names and email addresses, and technical-community participation. The discussions will also draw on its New Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Program: 2026 Round and Internationalized Domain Names.

Multilingual access is a central technical focus. A December 15 workshop will examine why many websites and applications still cannot correctly process domain names and email addresses using different languages and scripts, despite existing technical standards. Participants will discuss implementation barriers, technical capacity needs, and whether artificial intelligence tools could help developers make their systems compatible with Universal Acceptance requirements.

A December 17 open forum, featuring ICANN President and CEO Kurtis Lindqvist, will address barriers to participation in Internet governance and efforts to strengthen local technical ecosystems. The discussion will include ICANN’s work on the 2026 new-gTLD application round and initiatives supporting participation from Africa and other regions.

Africa’s technical community will have a prominent role. On December 14, ICANN will join a government-participation session organized by the African Telecommunications Union with partners including the Internet Society, the International Telecommunication Union, and Kenya’s Communications Authority. ICANN also plans to highlight its Coalition for Digital Africa initiative, which supports technical capacity development and the regional Domain Name System ecosystem.

The forum follows a change in its institutional status. The Nairobi meeting will be the first global IGF since the United Nations’ 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20), which resulted in the IGF becoming a permanent U.N. forum. The IGF’s 2026 preparations emphasize stronger connections between forum discussions and wider U.N. processes.

ICANN’s announcement sets out discussion priorities rather than new policy decisions or implementation commitments. It does not specify measurable targets for expanding African technical-community participation or improving Universal Acceptance deployment, leaving the practical outcomes of those discussions to be established beyond the December sessions.