2026 Global Inclusive Growth Forum
Scaling impact together
Hosted by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, the Forum will convene senior leaders from the public sector, civil society, and multilateral institutions alongside the Washington, D.C. IMF & World Bank Spring Meetings. It will serve as a focused, action-oriented dialogue on how inclusive digital economies can drive resilience, opportunity, and sustainable growth. This year's high-level program will focus on three interconnected themes, including small business growth and resilience, financial health, and digital transformation. The Forum will take place on April 15th, 2026 from 2:00-6:00 PM ET.
Featured Topics
Our impact agenda
This year's program will explore how global development, digital transformation, and evolving consumer behavior are reshaping inclusive growth. Discussions will highlight the critical role of SMEs as drivers of innovation and resilience, the opportunities and challenges of AI and digital finance in advancing financial health, and the ways technology is transforming how people and businesses engage, transact, and scale.
Financial health
Small business growth and resilience
Featured Speakers
Hear from purpose-driven leaders
Experience robust and thoughtful discussions on the most important inclusive growth topics from the experts themselves, and come away with insights you can't get anywhere else.
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ASEAN Inclusive Growth Summit
AIGS 2025 highlights
In case you missed it, watch the highlights of the 2025 ASEAN Inclusive Growth Summit showcasing some of the best discussions from visionary leaders on inclusive growth. See thought leaders share groundbreaking ideas and initiatives aimed at fostering economic development that leaves no one behind.
GIGS Summit Rewind
The 2025 summit's most memorable moments
In a turbulent economic, environmental, and human context, the Global Inclusive Growth Summit enables private sector, social impact, and government leaders to partner in new ways on meaningful solutions and approaches.
Snapshots
Revisit the global summit
Experience the summit through our official photographs of the most memorable and important moments, and celebrate the minds that champion growth all over the world.
Featured Session
A conversation with Trevor Noah and Melinda French Gates
Top Quotes
Insightful leaders, in their own words
“The future of our region, the future of Southeast Asia, is not going to be built by a few large mega businesses. It’s going to be built by millions of small ones, because when small/medium enterprises do well and they thrive, the region grows together.”
“To my colleagues in the ASEAN Business Advisory Council, help those at the bottom of the pyramid. Because the moment you help them and scale them up, the economy of each respective country will continue to grow. I call that the circle of prosperity.”
“There’s a saying if you want to look at the biggest amount of wealth, it is in America. If you want to look at wealth with the longest history, it is is in Europe. But if you look at the fastest growing amount of wealth, it is here in Asia.”
“SMEs and MSMEs are the lifeblood any country from an employment point of view, from a GDP point of view, and I think that’s where innovation is needed the most. And so, we are supporting social enterprises, but we also partnering with governments, public sector partners and other foundations, to really address some real problems facing society today.”
“ASEAN has the promise of being a real economic growth powerhouse in the world. For the Philippines to play a role in that, we need a competitive workforce.”
“It’s a very, very critical question for us and our communities, like, what are we going to do to make sure AI is a force for good and not something that creates further disruption and tension? We will have to help small businesses, and help the gig economy, to transition into an AI-enabled world, where they benefit from it.”
“Cyber security issues impact every one of us, and it’s going to take every one of us to get after them. No one sector, no one government, no one nation is going to be able to deal with this on their own. The cost of cyber crime, the intrusions, the insecurities, the vulnerabilities that it causes us, we are all in this together, and no one should or can deal with it alone.”
“Education is key, whether it’s cyber security or thinking about the proliferation of AI, and AI skills, and how important that is. There are so many organizations, foundations, companies working on this and trying to get the right education out in as many ways as possible, But you really can’t do it without the policymakers in government to actually scale and bring it to communities in a way that is relevant to them.”
“Profit with purpose. We don’t only preach it, we are kind of engineering it, with the heart in the right place, and with the discipline for depth.”
“As we align our purpose to how we want to make the customers feel, then we can grow business at scale.”
Related Content
Learn more about our Global Inclusive Growth partnerships
In partnership with
The Center for Inclusive Growth and Devex present
The Global Inclusive Growth Forum aims to inspire and innovate. Hosted by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and its partners around the world, the Forum advances real solutions to today’s most pressing challenges through collaboration and candid conversation among entrepreneurs, innovators, policymakers and emerging changemakers.
The Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth advances equitable and sustainable economic growth and financial inclusion around the world. The Center leverages the company’s core assets and competencies, including data insights, expertise and technology, while administering the philanthropic Mastercard Impact Fund, to produce independent research, scale global programs and empower a community of thinkers, leaders and doers on the front lines of inclusive growth.
Devex is the world’s leading independent news organization covering global development. Devex journalists deliver insider reporting from front lines of the fight to achieve the SDGs – driving the most important debates, providing the most critical analysis, and backing it all up with the events, career information, and funding opportunities professionals require. To keep up to date with the must-read global development coverage, join their global community.
