From coast to coast to coast, Canadian innovation begins in communities. In classrooms, laboratories, small businesses, community organizations, and Indigenous communities, ideas take shape in response to local needs and lived experience. Over time, many of these ideas grow into solutions with national and global impact.
That is the spirit behind the 2026 theme for Canadian Innovation Week: Local Roots, Global Reach. This theme reflects the strength of Canada’s innovation landscape, where local creativity connects to global challenges and collaboration turns ideas into impact.
Across the country, innovators are responding to challenges that matter close to home. They are improving access to health care in rural and remote regions, building clean technologies suited to northern climates, and creating new tools for inclusive education. These locally grounded efforts are shaping how Canada contributes on the world stage.
We chose this year’s theme to highlight three ideas that run through much of Canada’s innovation story.
- Innovation often starts locally. Many of the most powerful ideas emerge from lived experience, community knowledge, and a close understanding of local conditions.
- Collaboration is what allows those ideas to grow. Partnerships between communities, researchers, entrepreneurs, Indigenous leaders, educators, and institutions help turn local solutions into broader ones.
- Canada’s impact is built on diversity. Our geography, cultures, and perspectives are not obstacles to innovation. They are a foundation for it.
What makes this reach possible is the strength of our local foundations. Strong public institutions, diverse communities, world class researchers, and youth driven entrepreneurship all create the conditions for ideas to grow with confidence and scale with purpose. When local ecosystems thrive, global impact follows.
Canadian Innovation Week 2026
During Canadian Innovation Week, from May 11 to 15, 2026, we will celebrate the people, partnerships, and possibilities that make this work possible.
Through daily theme days, national events, and stories from across the country, we will highlight how Canadian innovation is strengthening communities at home and contributing to solutions with global relevance.
We invite organizations, educators, innovators, and communities to take part by using the #CIW hashtag, hosting an event, sharing a story, becoming a partner, and joining a national conversation about how Canadian innovation grows, connects, and reaches beyond our borders.
Because every global solution starts somewhere. And in Canada, it often starts close to home.
