There are more than 1,000 sessions planned over four days from March 16–19, and we have the unenviable task of highlighting five sessions you should know about. 

Besides the usual generative AI and agentic AI suspects, the hot topics at GTC 2026 will include: AI infrastructure and " AI factories," robotics and physical AI, datacenter computing, inference, autonomous machines and digital twins. 

Kicking off with a must-see…

1. Jensen Huang’s GTC 2026 Keynote 

The kick-off session is a must-watch as the leather jacket-clad boss focuses on the future of accelerated computing and AI, the latest GPUs, AI infrastructure, and strategic directions for the industry.

2. From Concept to Production: Humanoid Robotics at Scale

We’ve come a long way from "I, Robot." Now, humanoid robots are powered by breakthroughs in reasoning AI, large-scale simulation, and real-time edge computing.

Experts from the world’s leading robotics companies including NVIDIA and Tesla, unpack the advances of humanoid robots as they evolve from prototypes to production-ready systems.

3. Disney’s Robotic Characters: From the Screen to Reality

Moritz Baecher, Lab Director of Disney’s Zurich-based robotics team, unpacks how Disney engineers bring animated characters into real-world robotic form. His team uses robotics, simulation and AI to bring characters to life, using principles that translate directly to real-world robotics, digital twins and enterprise automation projects. 

4. Open Models: Where We Are and Where We’re Headed

Close to a dozen panelists, including Huang and Harrison Chase from open-source framework company LangChain, explore the upsurge of open sourceAI models. They will delve into how open ecosystems are reshaping AI development, deployment, and customization. This promises to be a candid discussion on the state-of-the-art in open frontier models and what comes next.

5. Automotive Special Address: Advancing Level 4 Autonomy, the Path to Scalable, Safe AVs and Robotaxis

Level 4 autonomy, which hands over the driving tasks to the vehicle, within specific operating zones without human intervention, is on the horizon for tech companies and manufacturers producing autonomous vehicles (AVs) and NVIDIA is along for the ride. Company Vice-President of Automotive, Xinzhou Wu, will expand on how its DRIVE Hyperion platform can be used by OEMs tobuild scalable, safety-certified autonomy solutions. Wu will also shed light on how agentic AI is poised to transform AVs end-to-end and how NVIDIA is poised to accelerate their development and deployment.

NVIDIA GTC 2026 kicks off on March 16 online and in-person (San Jose, Calif.).