The 16th Russian Internet Governance Forum was held in Moscow.

On April 7-8, Moscow hosted the 16th Russian Internet Governance Forum (RIGF 2026). The event was held in a hybrid format: over 600 participants visited the site in two days, and the number of online participants exceeded 5,000 people. Over the course of two days, 9 sections were held at the forum, where 67 experts spoke.

The forum participants were greeted by the Director of the Coordination Center of the .RU/ domains.Russian Federation Andrey Vorobyov. He noted that RIGF traditionally takes place on the domain's birthday.RU, which has more than 6.1 million names registered. In 2025, the increase amounted to almost 253 thousand (more than 4%), while the regions provided the main contribution to the growth.

Tatiana Matveeva, head of the Presidential Administration for the Development of Information and Communication Technologies and Communications Infrastructure, said that more than 130 million people (93% of the population) use the Internet, and Russia is one of the three countries where digital sovereignty is built. "In many ways, it consists of already familiar services: search engines, electronic public services, mail services, mobile application stores, the national payment system, domestic social networks and video hosting. We can say that a sovereign digital ecosystem has been built in Runet," she stressed.

Sergei Boyarsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, noted that the Internet is cross-border by nature, but it is important to create safe spaces within it. "Our committee, together with the Digital Development Committee, the Ministry of Finance and the Presidential Administration, devoted the past year to combating fraudulent activities on the Internet. We have taken a comprehensive package of measures against this destructive phenomenon in a short time," he said.

Alexander Shoitov, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Finance, spoke about the ongoing work to counter cyber attacks and fraud. "The government is taking systematic counteraction measures: the law on critical infrastructure has been adopted, technical requirements for trusted software are being formed, and measures to counter cyber attacks are being improved. Also in 2025, the first package of Anti-fraud measures was adopted, and now the second set of measures has been adopted in the first reading. This will increase the stability of the Russian information infrastructure," he said.

The head of the Runiti group, Andrey Kuzmichev, announced the requirements for the identification of domain administrators starting from September 1. He noted that Rutsentr was the first Russian registrar to introduce such identification for legal entities and called on market participants to strengthen user awareness in order to reduce the risk of them losing control over digital assets.

Alexey Rogdev, General Director of the Internet Technical Center, stressed that the Internet in Russia is becoming a mature institution with clear rules and predictable logic. "The industry is entering a mature phase: regulations are being formed, legislative regulation is emerging, and the infrastructure base is developing. This is a natural stage, and we expect that it will strengthen the entire system – make it more stable, safer and more understandable for all participants," he added.

Participants of the WSIS+20 plenary session: A Quarter of a Century in Building the Information Society. From word to deed?" discussed the principles of international cooperation in the field of digital development, digital cooperation practices, tools to combat disinformation and destructive content, the need to regulate deepfake technology, key points of disagreement and prospects for maintaining a meaningful dialogue in the context of a changing international agenda.

Artur Lyukmanov (Russian Foreign Ministry) spoke about how the preparation of the Global Digital Treaty took place and what changes the Global Digital Treaty underwent during the preparation process. He stressed that today the main requirement for all global corporations is to treat other states and companies with respect and take into account their interests.

Alexey Goreslavsky (ANO "IRI") stressed that the Internet is not a sterile environment and it will not be possible to make it so, with all the desire. He noted that de facto, each country promotes its own set of basic attitudes through content production. The head of Iran noted that over the past 30 years, Russia has faced the dominance of Hollywood cinema, but over the past five years, thanks to government support through Iran, the Film Foundation and the Ministry of Culture, the situation has begun to change: in 2024-2025, 85% of the audience watched Russian TV series, and 40% of foreign ones.

Dmitry Gulyaev (RAEC) presented the practical steps of the Russian RAEC as a business-uniting organization to build a new architecture for international digital cooperation.

The topic of preserving the cultural code and linguistic diversity in the global digital environment is becoming more acute every year, and one of the sections of RIGF 2026 was devoted to it.

"If the language is not represented on the Internet, it gradually disappears from everyday life. If there are no keyboard layouts, dictionaries, and machine translation systems, then using a language in a digital environment becomes extremely difficult. This is no longer a hypothetical threat, but a reality faced by dozens of small languages around the world," said Andrey Vorobyov, the section's moderator.

Farid Nahli (ITU) noted that the initiative proposed by ICANN to develop new indicators to assess the implementation of the principles of universal acceptance of multilingual domains and e-mail addresses could be an incentive for countries to actively implement these approaches in public and government services. At the same time, he stressed that the initiative and a specific list of metrics should come from the technical community and be discussed at ITU venues.

Timur Tsybikov (FADN) spoke about the results of a large-scale monitoring of the state and development of the languages of the peoples of Russia in the field of information technology. 41 subjects of the Russian Federation participated in the monitoring, and information was collected on 70 languages of the peoples of Russia. Since 2024, the number of languages for which electronic dictionaries have been created has increased: from 59 in 2024 to 68 in 2025. Language corpora have already been created for 42 languages, and the numeric keypad has been developed for 59 languages.

At the section "Digital transformation of healthcare in Russia: new roles, data, and the future of medicine" experts discussed the impact of digital technologies and AI on clinical practice and user experience.

During the session, it was noted that the key effect is achieved through the integration of solutions rather than individual tools. Experts paid special attention to the quality and accessibility of data, the risks of AI errors, issues of regulation and security of medical data turnover, as well as the changing role of the doctor with the increasing use of digital services by patients. Access to data and the need to build trust in technology were identified as key challenges.

"Artificial intelligence in medicine is no longer a question of the future, but of how exactly we implement it. It does not replace the doctor, but becomes his full-fledged instrument. And the quality of the entire healthcare system depends on how well we build this bundle," concluded Vadim Glushchenko, Director of the Center for Global IT Cooperation.

The Virtuti Interneti award ceremony was also held as part of the forum. Its winner was Karen Ghazaryan, Director of Analytics at ANO Digital Economy and Director General of the Internet Research Institute.

At the closing ceremony of RIGF 2026, the results of the forum were summed up, as well as the results of the sixth youth special course and youth theses on Internet governance were presented. The Center for Global IT Cooperation also presented a new collection of articles "The Internet today and Tomorrow".

Andrey Vorobyov, Director of the Coordination Center, stressed that only the forum is coming to an end, not the dialogue: "We are leaving this platform with new questions, with new contacts, and most importantly, with the understanding that digital development requires constant, honest and professional conversation."