Global media leaders to gather in Abu Dhabi for BRIDGE Summit 2025

Abu Dhabi: The world’s largest debut media event, BRIDGE Summit 2025, will take place from 8–10 December, 2025 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC), bringing together more than 100 global media pioneers, founders, policymakers, and investors to discuss the future of information, credibility, and storytelling.

As part of its seven content pillars, the Media Track will feature 50+ sessions exploring how collaboration across technology, finance, and policy can rebuild a more resilient and trustworthy global media ecosystem.

The discussions come at a critical time for the industry — as streaming overtakes broadcast, social media outpaces newsrooms, and artificial intelligence reshapes how truth is created and consumed.

With audiences fragmenting and trust in decline, BRIDGE Summit will tackle urgent questions around ownership, influence, and accountability in the global information order.

Panels such as “Money Talks: Who’s Funding the News You Read?”, “Media’s New Centres of Gravity”, and “Who Pays When Journalism Goes Broke?” will examine how funding and ownership models are influencing editorial independence.

Sessions like “The Threshold of Truth” and “Who Can You Trust?” will explore evolving standards of credibility and transparency in the age of AI and algorithmic storytelling.

Meanwhile, “Memes as a Media Business” and “Winning Back Gen Z One Swipe at a Time” will look at how new generations and subcultures are redefining authenticity, attention, and engagement.

Among the high-profile speakers are Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman of VaynerX; Moira Forbes, Executive Vice President of Forbes; Jessica Sibley, CEO of TIME; Joanna Coles, Chief Creative and Content Officer at The Daily Beast; Justin Smith, CEO of Semafor; and Nancy Gibbs, former Editor-in-Chief of TIME.

They’ll be joined by Lamia bint Majid Al Saud, Dr. Julie Gichuru, Andrew Sollinger, Eric Schurenberg, and former UK ministers Lucy Frazer KC and Sir Liam Fox, alongside leading journalists, academics, and innovators from BBC, Harvard, and Oxford.

The Media Track reflects BRIDGE Summit’s broader ambition — to enable collaboration across sectors shaping the content economy. The event will serve as a meeting point for global thought leaders driving conversations around technology, culture, and the sustainability of information systems.

Hosted in Abu Dhabi, the Summit underscores the UAE’s growing role as a hub for international dialogue, innovation, and cross-industry cooperation.