After the huge interest in Grid Foundation Models at our Harvard GridFM workshop we are excited that we are getting back together for a GridFM Conference, hosted by INESTEC in Porto, Portugal on October 29th and 30th, 2026.

There are a few updates. We plan to publish all abstracts of the conference in special edition. In addition, the best posters will be invited to write a conference paper for this special edition. Finally, we will have best poster awards.

A tentative outline of the conference can be found below. Registration and poster submissions will open in the middle of August.

Times	October 29th		October 30th
9:00 – 9:30	Keynote 1 (Chair: Ricardo Bessa – INESTEC)		Keynote 2 (Chair: Ricardo Bessa – INESTEC)
9:30 – 11:00	Grid Foundation Models – State of the Union (Chair: Hendrik Hamann – SBU, BNL)		AI for Grid Industry Panel (Chair: Ricardo Bessa – INESTEC)
11:00 – 11:15	Break		Break
11:15 -12:45	AI Grid Ready Data (Chair: Elissaios Sarmas – EPU NTUA)		AI for the Control Room	AI for Grid Planning (Chair: Jonghwan Kwon – ANL)
12:45 – 14:00	Lunch with Tutorials (Chair: Alban Puech)		Lunch
14:00 – 15:30	Trusted Grid AI (Chair: Spyros Chatzivasileiadis – DTU)	Digital Twins for the Grid (Chair: Antonello Monti – RWTH Aachen)	GridFM Dynamics (Chairs: Francois Miralles – HQ, Jochen Cremer, TU Delft)	AI for Power Markets (Chair: Farzaneh Pourahmadi, DTU)
15:30 – 15:45	Break		Break
15:45 – 17:15	AI Grid Optimization (Chair: Thomas Brunschwiler and Alban Puech – both IBM Research)	AI for Distribution Grids (Chair: Pedro Vergara Barrios – TU Delft and Fei Ding – NLR)	Agentic AI for Grid (Chairs: Tianqiao Zhao – UTA, Jonghwan Kwon – ANL)	Digital Spines and Collaboration
17:15 – 19:00	Poster Session with Reception (Chair: Tiago André Teixeira Soares)		Conclusion with Poster and Hackathon award winners to be announced

Location: University of Porto; FEUP R. Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto; Faculty of Engineering – University of Porto – Google Maps:

Accommodations: For general hotel information please use this link.
We also have a block reserved at the Axis hotels.
Please use the Code: GRIDFM_2026 for a 10% discount at the booking website during 27 October to 02 November 2026.

Hackathon: A GridFM hackathon is planned to occur in parallel with the event. More details to come.

Organizing committee:

• Ricardo Jorge Bessa – INESTEC
• Hendrik F. Hamann – Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, GridFM.org
• Antonello Monti – RWTH Aachen
• Thomas Brunschwiler – IBM Research
• Spyros Chatzivasileiadis – Technical University of Denmark
• Farzaneh Pourahmadi – Technical University of Denmark
• Tiago André Teixeira Soares – INESTEC
• Elissaios Sarmas – EPU NTUA
• Francois Miralles – Hydro Quebec
• Jochen Cremer – TU Delft
• Jonghwan Kwon – Argonne National Laboratory
• Pedro Vergara Barrios – TU Delft
• Tianqiao Zhao – University of Texas at Arlington
• Alban Puech – IBM Research and ETH Zuerich
• Keith Benes – GridFM.org
• Jurij Paraszczak – GridFM.org