Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), together with KADIN Yogyakarta Special Region (KADIN DIY) and a coalition of partner organizations, has officially launched the Global Innovation and Future Technology Summit (GIFTS) 2026 — a new innovation marketplace and business-acceleration event scheduled for 21-22 October at GIK UGM in Sleman, carrying the theme “CULTIVATION: Culture-Innovation-Business Acceleration.”
The launch brought together GIK UGM, UGM’s Business Development Directorate (PU UGM), KADIN DIY, Meet the Investor (MTI), and ICONIC, alongside supporting organizations including the Innovation and Creativity Agency (BIKTI) and the Asian Development Bank, which backs the summit’s PRIME STeP program.
Opening the launch, UGM’s Vice Rector for Research, Business Development, and Cooperation, Dr. Danang Sri Hadmoko, said the summit is meant to deliver more than just an event. “The hope is that this isn’t just an activity, but that there is output, outcome, and impact — social, economic, and academic,” he said. Prof. Ir. Wiratni, Director of UGM’s Business Development Directorate, added that GIFTS 2026 is designed to directly bridge innovators with potential investors and buyers.
At the heart of GIFTS 2026 is an Innovation Marketplace built on a pool of 177 research-based innovations, spanning the agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing ecosystems. Through KADIN’s curation process, that pool has been narrowed to 90 innovations, with 27 selected for on-site exhibition at GIK UGM during the summit’s main days. Ahead of that, an online pre-event session on 8 October will bring inventors and investors together for early discussions — an effort organizers hope will spark investor interest well before the main event opens.
Beyond the marketplace, a broader series of pre-event activities is planned through September and October, including startup and research-to-business grooming sessions, property forums, and evening sharing sessions, alongside a dedicated showcase for a 170-hectare cocoa plantation initiative.
The launch frames GIFTS 2026 as the latest chapter in a broader, multi-year push to turn Yogyakarta’s universities from a wellspring of academic research into a source of real, market-ready innovation — an effort organizers say has been building for three years. That same 177-innovation baseline is also the pool behind JNOF 2026’s own Innovation Summary catalog, and the two events now share the same dates and venue this October (21-22 October, GIK UGM) — pointing to a closely coordinated October innovation calendar for Yogyakarta, even if organizers have not spelled out exactly how the two are formally related.
For KADIN DIY, GIFTS 2026 marks another concrete contribution to that effort — reinforcing the idea that an innovation culture should become part of Yogyakarta’s identity, not just its research output, in line with JNOF 2026’s own theme, “Innovation to Growth.”