Almedalen is the week when Sweden talks to itself. In Visby, politics, business, media and civil society gather to decide what kind of country Sweden is becoming. We are there for the same reason we are everywhere this year: because the next twenty-five years of security, competitiveness and climate progress will be built on electricity, and Sweden already owns more of that layer than almost any country in Europe.
This is our chapter of The Next 25, told from the place where the Swedish story is set. The public conversation still pictures Sweden as an exporter of design, music and consumer tech. The newer story, of an industrial nation supplying the physical infrastructure of the European transition, has not yet been told to the country itself. Almedalen is where that retelling begins.
The Next 25: From Petrostate to Electrostate
High-voltage direct current and grid technology, much of it made in Ludvika and Västerås, is the connective tissue of the European energy transition. It is what lets heavy industry electrify on Gotland, a turbine in the North Sea power a smelter on the continent, and a truck fleet pull from a grid no longer dependent on imported gas. The order book is enormous, the projects are gigantic, and the jobs are real. Yet almost nobody frames this as a national story. Almedalen is the room in which that changes.
Across the week
Electrostatehood: What Sweden can teach the world
Date: Wednesday, 24 June 2026, 15:30
Location: Focus Stage, TechArena, Visby
Format: Panel conversation, co-hosted by Hitachi Energy and Monocle
A conversation about Sweden, sovereignty and the next industrial era, co-hosted with Monocle. Why the next decade of European sovereignty is being decided in transmission corridors rather than pipelines, and why the Nordics, with fossil-free generation, advanced grid technology and electrified industry, sit at the centre of that shift. A panel of Swedish industrial leaders, with HVDC and grid technology as the underplayed central character and Hitachi Energy as the convening anchor.
The Role of Business in Securing Sweden’s Resilience
Date: Thursday, 25 June 2026
Time: 13:00
Stage: Main Stage, TechArena, Visby
Format: Panel Discussion
A moderated discussion on the foundations of Swedish resilience: critical infrastructure, energy, data and supply chains, and the collaboration between the state and the private sector that the country’s security, and its role in European resilience, now depends on. The session puts energy security and the industrial base in the same conversation, where the sovereignty-stack framing makes them belong.
Energi × AI-datacenter: en svensk affär?
Date: Thursday, 25 June 2026, 10:30–11:15
Stage: Ruinen, Arena Energi (S:ta Karins kyrkoruin), Stora Torget 2, Visby
Moderator: Niclas Sigholm
Format: Own-hosted panel on Energiföretagen’s Arena Energi stage
Our own-hosted panel on Energiföretagen’s Arena Energi stage. AI has a physical reality: behind every model sits a data centre that needs vast amounts of power, grid connection at record speed and a robust system behind it. The question is not whether this infrastructure gets built, but where. Sweden faces perhaps its largest external investment opportunity ever.
Hitachi x Monocle Studio
Where: Donnersgatan 6
Dates: 23–25 June
A live broadcast studio with Monocle, recording, editing and publishing video, audio and editorial in real time across the week.
Gelateria
Where: TechArena, Visby
Dates: 23–25 June
Not every conversation at Almedalen happens on a stage. Under the TechArena banner, our fossil-free gelateria is the draw that turns footfall into dialogue: an artisanal glassbar serving scoops made with the same fossil-free electricity the week is really about. The flavours play on the theme (“Lysande glass!”), the seating invites people to linger, and the queue becomes the room: customers, partners and policymakers talking grids and AI over gelato rather than across a conference table.
Hitachi House
Where: Visby
Dates: Across the week, 22–26 June
Our home base for the week. Space for bilateral meetings and roundtable discussions, with room for mini-mingles and fika between sessions.
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