The GeoAI Festival - Creating impact and opportunities in nature finance, sustainable agrifood systems, and spatial planning

Through a Build and Pitch cohort programme, insightful thought-leadership webinars, and three Salon Dinners at the Royal Society, the GeoAI Festival successfully brought communities and stakeholders together to create impact with shared purpose that culminated with a landmark showcase and conference at Space-Comm Expo Europe in March 2026, and industry report.

The GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme

Innovate UK and The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) set three targeted challenges:

• Unlocking Nature-Based Markets with EO & AI
• Harnessing GeoAI for a Resilient and Sustainable Agri-Food System
• Next-Gen Spatial Planning: GeoAI Solutions for Land, Ocean, and Climate

Companies with potential technological solutions were able to apply via the Innovation Exchange (iX) programme, which attracted 76 applications.

18 teams progressed as finalists to the GeoAI Festival Build and Pitch programme, which began with a 3-day Sprint hackathon style event in January 2026 at the University of Leeds and culminated in a celebratory winners’ pitch at Space-Comm Expo Europe in March 2026.

During the programme, each team was given tailored feedback and participated in workshops on user-centred design, the Earth Observation Data Hub, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Agentic AI tools, and networked with a wide variety of challenge holders and technology end users to refine their solutions.

With new knowledge, connections, and substantial AWS credits on dedicated sandbox accounts, the teams worked incredibly hard during a 6-week incubation period to prototype the products refined during the Sprint event.

Towards the end of the programme, the teams attended numerous Growth Studio workshops to develop their business model and finesse their pitch deck.

Finally, with the support of the Innovate UK ecosystem and Defra, all teams had the chance to pitch their solution during the GeoAI Festival Showcase and Conference at Space Comm Expo Europe in the London ExCel Centre – where the winning teams were also announced.

Commenting on her teams’ win, Abigail Hoover from Orbiventure had this to say:

Participating in the GeoAI Festival not only provided us amazing connections with other companies that are dedicated to using Earth Observation in terrestrial use cases, but introduced so many different elements, such as understanding and being provided resources to build out our technical backend to a minimal viable product.

The GeoAI Festival at Space-Comm Expo Europe 2026

The GeoAI Festival came to life at Space-Comm Expo; and what a day it was!

From a ministerial address by Dame Angela Eagle DBE MP to the launch of the GeoAI UK Outlook Report, we brought together government, industry, and academia to tackle the big questions shaping the future of geospatial AI. Across a packed programme of keynotes, panels, and live pitches, we explored what it truly takes to move GeoAI from promising pilot projects to decision-grade intelligence at scale.

We heard from world-class voices, including Nadine Alameh and Aravind Ravichandran, on the future of spatial intelligence, the barriers to adoption, and what responsible, investable GeoAI actually requires. We debated trust, explainability, dual-use technologies, and the commercial pull that will drive the next wave of adoption.

And at the heart of it all, we celebrated the winners of our Build and Pitch programme that dedicated themselves to applying agentic and multimodal AI to real challenges with the support of our partners (including AWS, the Satellite Applications Catapult, NCEO, and Defra):

• Agribot have built the most comprehensive agricultural map of the UK to address real-world challenges in food production, climate resilience and land-use management.
• EarthSavvy created a conversational platform through which to get unique insights from satellite data for supply chains, energy, agriculture and more.
• Native Squared have integrated EO and public datasets to enable rapid onboarding and low-cost analyses of nature projects, removing barriers to entry, and allowing millions of nature projects worldwide to access nature finance.
• Ocean OS provides predictive marine intelligence with species distribution models, habitat analysis and mitigation scenarios for offshore infrastructure development.
• Orbiventure delivers spatially resolved, predictive insights across fishing activity and monitored marine ecosystems to analyse future fishing viability while building effective feedback loops the ecosystem.
• x10NI is a digital assurance and environmental intelligence platform to turn everyday farm activity into continuous, verifiable evidence of nutrient, carbon, water and nature performance at farm and catchment scale.

The winning teams received tailored Commercialisation Credits redeemable against the Satellite Applications Catapult’s Space Commercialisation Engine – valued at up to £80,000 per company – to support them in developing market-ready products and preparing for future funding.

Find out more by watching the conference proceedings via our YouTube channel.

The GeoAI UK Outlook Report

We decide the future we want — and we can’t build it without geospatial data as the connective tissue between the systems that shape everyday life.

Innovate UK Business Connect, in partnership with LunateAI and Sparkgeo has published the GeoAI UK Outlook, a new report capturing insights and key takeaways from three roundtables held at the Royal Society in January 2026.

Leaders from government, industry, and academia explored how geospatial AI can transform decision-making, build trust, and unlock planetary-scale intelligence.

The UK has a significant opportunity to lead the way in responsible GeoAI, unlocking value across sectors, driving economic growth, and delivering lasting societal impact.

Discover more by downloading the report. and watching Nadine Alameh’s keynote presentation from the GeoAI Festival Conference.

Next Steps and How to Get Involved

For practical recommendations on how the UK can lead in responsible geospatial artificial intelligence, read the GeoAI UK Outlook and get in touch with Luca Budello to share your thoughts or explore collaboration opportunities.

You will also have the chance to meet the winners of the GeoAI Build and Pitch programme at the GEO Business Show in London on 3 and 4 June 2026, where Luca will also be speaking about GeoAI Festival and its key takeaways.

Subscribe to the Innovate UK Business Connect newsletter to stay informed on future editions of the GeoAI Festival as well as related programmes and opportunities, and follow the latest developments in the geospatial sector.