FUTURE FOOD500

• As the beverage market continues to grow, which beverages with unique flavours and formats are upcoming?
• From wellness to lifestyle fit, what formulations are Gen Zs drinking in 2026?
• Quality over quantity: Is there a demand for premiumization?
• What are the driving factors for hybrid beverages’ popularity?
• How are technological advancements aiding and creating new and appealing options?

• With consumers seeking food as medicine, what are the growing plant based and functional foods trending in 2026?
• How are brands expanding into new plant-based categories while maintaining their identity and customer loyalty?
• Building trust and meeting consumer demands with clean label ingredients
• Exploring benefits and disadvantages with using new and unique foods

• From enhancing efficiency to reducing waste how are we ensuring food safety throughout the supply chain?
• Understanding the roadblocks to support transparency and traceability
• What are the barriers preventing developing countries to adopt AI?
• Strategies for minimizing the unpredictability and volatility in food supply demand
• What are the key practical implementations and barriers for supply chain manager involved in deploying the technology?

• Strategic insights on translating food foresight and policy into scalable action

• Perspectives on investment, innovation, and leadership to create durable impact

• A high-level dialogue on moving from vision to measurable impact across health and sustainability

• What emerging insights reveal about how UAE consumers think, feel and act on health today
• Bridging the gap between healthy intentions and real behavior with clear implications for brands
• The rise of functional foods and beverages: which benefits resonate most in the UAE
• How these insights can empower the UAE to lead the global conversation on future health and nutrition

• Securing food systems amidst tariff pressures
• How resilient has trade in food been to sudden global issues?
• What are companies doing to tackle continuing climate change issues?
• How are policy makers helping to safeguard stability?
• How does rising costs and supply chain disruptions impact the future of food trade?

Forward Fooding officially unveils the 2025 FoodTech 500 - the definitive global ranking of the most groundbreaking companies transforming our food system. This keynote reveals this year's honorees while analyzing the evolution of AgriFoodTech investment, the shift from consumer apps to infrastructure-focused "Wave 3.0" innovation, and breakthrough technologies gaining global momentum. The session spotlights MENA's emerging role as a FoodTech hub and decodes what separates companies that scale from those that stall.

• What actions can be taken to give higher priority to ensure and maintain food safety throughout the supply chain?
• How can we better leverage technology to shape and transform food safety?
• Enabling consumers to understand the influence of emerging therapies in food
• Future Focus: Enhancing traceability to enable prevention

• Leveraging AI to create more engaging and tailored marketing campaigns
• Exploring innovative avenues to drive profitability
• Which technological initiatives are utilized to provide personalized product recommendations?
• Refining your distribution operations with the use of AI
• Exploring the connection between AI and human collaboration

• Know the landscape: Understanding the competitive landscape through a MENA lens
• Expecting the unexpected: budgeting, supply chain realities and why flexibility is critical in this region
• Distribution is not Plug-and-Play: Why building the right go-to-market model is key to your success
• Rules of the game: critical regulations, policies and compliance requirements you must be aware of
• Culture meets commerce: Key do’s, don’ts and on-the-ground realities of doing business in MENA

This hands-on workshop reveals how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing market research and product development, giving forward-thinking businesses a critical competitive advantage.

Learn to leverage AI tools to dramatically reduce research timelines while improving accuracy in trend identification. Through real case studies, you'll see how companies have successfully transformed emerging patterns into profitable product categories—often before competitors even recognize the opportunity exists. We'll guide you through practical frameworks for closing the gap between spotting a trend and launching a market-ready product, with specific focus on recognizing which patterns have genuine scale potential versus fleeting fads.

Participants will leave with actionable methodologies for integrating AI into their innovation processes, cutting research time in half while making more confident, data-driven decisions about product development and market entry.

A revolutionary workshop by architect and food design pioneer Martin Hablesreiter, who has focused almost exclusively on the cultural history and development of food design. This concise workshop will explore:

• The sensory perception involved in eating (tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, seeing) and its impact on food design
• Sensory trends driven by technological and sustainable developments
• The consequences of functional and technological aspects, such as preservation, production methods, logistics or AI, on the design of edible products
• Through examples, the necessity of analyzing cultural contexts is demonstrated. A product that does not fit into the everyday culture of a target market or align with foreseeable cultural conditions (lifestyles) will not sell.
• The importance of cultural frameworks: culturally influenced eating behaviors in different societies
• The significance of ecological sustainability for the current and future market with a focus on technology
• The untapped potential of food narratives and food aesthetics

An eye-opening workshop that will delve into why the world does craze over K-content like ‘Demon Hunters’ yet K-food often remains a mere curiosity.

The "Netflix Effect" vs. The "Kitchen Reality"

• The Content Boom: Everyone knows K-Drama (e.g., Demon Hunters, Squid Game). K-Content is already a global language.
• The Food Gap: However, K-Food is still "loading." Cultural curiosity hasn't fully translated into daily consumption yet.
• The Lesson: Moving beyond the "Netflix hype" and build a professional supply chain.

Regional Reality Check: Where is the money?

• Europe (The Early Stage): Europe is still a "Blue Ocean" but requires deep education and adaptation.
• South East Asia (The Red Ocean): Currently oversaturated. Competition is fierce, and margins are shrinking.
• The Middle East (The Land of Opportunity): Positioned perfectly between the two. High interest, high purchasing power, and ready for premium K-Food.

Why K-Food is not a "Plug-and-Play" business and how you can win in this market

• It’s Not Just Spicy: You cannot win by simply bringing "what sells in Korea." 
• The Chef’s Perspective (Survival of the Tastiest): The irresistible power of flavor and strategic localization.
• Real Talk: Don't enter the K-Food market just because it's "trendy." Discover the hidden strategic leverage for sustainable growth.

As global health concerns rise and governments seek to curb obesity and diabetes rates, sugar taxes have become a widespread policy tool. From Europe to Asia, numerous countries have implemented levies on sugary drinks and products, signaling a significant shift in consumer markets and regulatory landscapes. For businesses, this trend represents a fundamental change in how products are formulated, marketed, and consumed.

This workshop presents a holistic toolbox for high-intensity sweetener modification, built on a breakthrough scientific insight that taste can be smelled, enabling new approaches to product innovation, differentiation, and profitability in the food and beverage industry.

• Sweet taste functions as an evolutionarily conserved signal that guides humans toward foods rich in readily available energy.
• Sweet perception emerges from the dynamic interplay between bottom-up sensory signals and top-down cognitively mediated processes, including memory, expectation, and learned associations.
• Sweetness can be smelled via the retro nasal pathway unlocking a new strategy for sugar reduction.
• Mouthfulness is essential in sugar reduction. It is driven by oral tribology rather than rheology and accelerates the onset of sweetness.
• Sweet lingering from high-intensity sweeteners arises in both the oral and retro nasal cavities, calling for new tools that can suppress both pathways simultaneously.