Modi opens SEMICON India 2026 as 12 approved chip projects move forward

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates SEMICON India 2026 at Yashobhoomi in New Delhi on 17 September and addresses the hall at about 10am. The fifth edition of the conference and exhibition runs through 19 September. The official theme is “Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem.” The date is also Modi’s 76th birthday, which the government is marking separately as Seva Diwas.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology have published the scale they want the event to signal. More than 600 companies are listed as participants, including about 300 international firms. Organisers expect around 50,000 visitors, delegations from 52 countries, more than 400 executives and over 150 speakers. Six country pavilions are booked for Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden. Twelve Indian states have booths. There is a startup pavilion, an innovation showcase, a student hackathon and a workforce development pavilion. Exhibition space is put at 15,000 square metres.

The show is jointly run by the India Semiconductor Mission, MeitY and SEMI. A new “Sand to Silicon to Systems” walkthrough is meant to take visitors from materials and equipment through design, fabrication, advanced packaging and finished electronics. Company names on the published list include ASML, Applied Materials, Infineon, Jabil, IBM Research, NXP, Tata Electronics, Micron, Lam Research, Advantest, Tokyo Electron, Teradyne, Merck KGaA, Rapidus and CG Power.

The policy backdrop is the Semicon India Programme. The government says 12 semiconductor projects have been approved. Three projects from the first phase, Semicon 1.0, have begun commercial production. That last sentence is the one industrial buyers will test. Announcing approvals is easier than shipping qualified wafers and packaged parts on a schedule a car or phone maker can use. The event is designed to close that gap by putting equipment vendors, foundry partners and state governments in the same hall.

Demand numbers in the official brief are large. India’s semiconductor market is estimated at about $50 billion now and is projected at about $103 billion by 2030. The global market is projected above $2 trillion by the same year. Those figures are forecasts, not orders. What the three producing plants actually make, at what yield and for which customers, will decide whether the 2030 line is a plan or a slide.

The gathering also has a supply-chain politics. After several years of export controls and wartime disruption, governments have been shopping for “trusted” manufacturing locations. India is bidding for a slice of that relocation: assembly and test first, fabrication where capital and water allow, design where the engineering workforce already exists. Country roundtables at the event are meant to produce joint ventures rather than only photographs.

For three days Dwarka will be full of keynotes and booth lighting. The test comes after 19 September, in whether any of the 12 approved projects announce new tool orders, new offtake agreements or a fourth plant moving from paper to ground. SEMICON India can convene the room. It cannot substitute for yield data.