Read What Our Chairman Has To Say About EIC Berlin 2026. Unfiltered.

In European Identity and Cloud Conference lasting 4 days is really one of the hot meetings in the European IT space. In contract to the Cybersecurity conferences that miss the essentials on identity, this conference gathers experts and firms that make identity the center piece of firms digital challenges.

Identity is not the last leg of IT security, it is the core of the layered protection against cybercrime; is what we hear from our numerous conversations with players in the European space. I will try to extract our main take aways of the EIC Berlin 2026.

1. The process of preparing rolling out the EU wallet is running with full speed. However, not all countries are in as advanced stage as Portugal and Poland that are ready now for providing the EU Wallet to all citizens. The EU has mandated that all countries shall offer as option to all citizens a wallet with SSI (self-sovereign identity) features along the lines of the eIDAS2.0 legislation. Several standardisation bodies do the last efforts to ensure common understanding of standards and protocols. The first implementations will be in critical sectors like finance and infrastructure, mandating that firms shall accept the EU Wallet as the main tool for identification.

However - few really perceive yet that it´s a digital revolution going on yet. The magic will occur when the take up reach a certain volume and issuer and relying parties engage citizens in identification, authentication and signing through the exchange of credentials. Soon after the roll out of the first EUID Wallet, firms will prepare for the EUBW (Business wallet). These enormous efforts will transform the digital space in Europe, creating a truly secure, private and efficient digital infrastructure.

2. Some roll back of deployment of AI as firms recognise the needs for policies and compliance of AI autonomous agents, dubbed "agentic agent intelligence". Actors report a massive chaotic deployment of AI agents and the needs for scaling back initiatives coming out of the control. The most salient conclusion from all this is - Firms needs secure identities and policies to govern autonomous agents and the EU Wallets would be the ideal solutions as any agents can be connected to DIDs and cryptographically verified signatures.
3. The challenges related to managing identities and access are still enormous.

Firms have old legacy IAM system - that are passive and inadequate, the traditional vendors have not yet included an integration perspective with the SSI based EU wallets, and the load of data and the complexities of IAM are still challenging. The new IAM must be dynamic, with continuous live managements of IDs and access, and there needs to be an IAM for AI agents. EU wallets will facilitate a lot and allow a true governance with dynamic credentials to handle better new challenges of identities.

4. Digital sovereignty is again a key concern.