Innovate or Perish - How can Europe compete in the race of the century?

AI, energy, trade, health, security. Experts and young innovators tackle the five races that decide Europe's future, at The Beacon, Antwerp.

The defining contest of this century is over technology. Artificial intelligence, clean energy and next generation industry are being built right now, and whoever builds them first will set the terms for everyone else.

The United States is investing on a scale Europe has never matched, and China already makes much of what the modern economy runs on. Europe has the science, the talent and the industry to compete, but it has too often been slow to turn invention into industry. Innovate, or perish.

Nowhere is that pressure clearer than at the Port of Antwerp, Europe's industrial engine. The technology that will run tomorrow's factories, the raw materials industry cannot yet source at home, the energy that keeps the chemical cluster here or sends it abroad, the medicines Europe invents but struggles to make at scale, and the security of infrastructure now openly targeted, all of it lands here first.

Innovate or Perish takes five fronts, AI, trade, clean industry, health and security, and asks one question. How can Europe compete in the race of the century?

It happens on 21 October at The Beacon in Antwerp. Five leading experts open each front, then the room takes over, founders, students and young innovators who will inherit the outcome and say what they would do instead. One evening to work out how Europe stays in the race, from the people who will have to keep it there.