The Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was hosted in a hybrid format by the Government of the Kingdom of Norway in Lillestrøm from 23 to 27 June 2025, under the overarching theme: Building Digital Governance Together. The IGF 2025 Outputs are available.
The 20th annual IGF meeting received 8,833 registrations. At the IGF venue in Lillestrøm, 3,435 participants collected their badges and participated onsite in the meeting. Over 6,000 stakeholders participated online, making the total participation at the 20th annual IGF meeting over 9,435. The majority of onsite participants came from Norway, United States of America, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, China, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands (Kingdom of the), Belgium, Nigeria, and France. Most of online participants connected from Norway, the United States, Nigeria, India, Germany, Kenya, China, and the United Kingdom.
36% participants indicated they were participating for the first time.
Gender representation was 54% male, 46% female and less than 1% self-identified as other.
About 4% of registered participants indicated they were members of parliaments from 39 different countries.
More than 1% of registered participants were press and media representatives. The biggest number of participants came from the Government (35%) and civil society (34%), followed by private sector (14%), the technical community (10%), intergovernmental organizations (6%) and press (1%).
In terms of regional diversity, the majority of participants came from WEOG (63%), Asia Pacific (11%), Africa (10%), followed by GRULAC (6%), IGOs (6%) and Eastern Europe (4%).
Below are the visual breakdowns of all participants per stakeholder group, region and gender.
Compared to IGF 2024, this year’s IGF saw a significant increase in the number of participants from the civil society, (+21%) and technical community (+8%), and decrease in participation from the governments (-21%), as well as private sector (-6%). There was an increase in representation of stakeholders from Africa (+3%) and GRULAC (+7%) and decrease from Asia Pacific (-34%).
Regarding participation by the level of development of the country, based on the latest available HDI Index, over 70% of all participants came from developed countries, while the rest came from developing countries. The graph below illustrates the stakeholder group breakdown by HDI.
The meeting’s livestream service attracted over 22,000 unique views. Close to 70% of viewers were between 18 and 44 years of age. Livestreams were mostly viewed in Norway, followed by India, the United States, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Week-of media monitoring showed that the IGF was covered in several television outlets.
The meeting featured 262 sessions. Breakdowns per session type were: 1 Opening Session; 1 Opening Ceremony; 1 Newcomers Sessions; 1 IGF retrospective Session; 9 Main Sessions, including IGF intersessional work main sessions; 5 High-Level Leaders Sessions; 3 NRI Collaborative Sessions; 4 Collaborative DC Sessions; 1 Global Youth Summit; 1 Judiciary engagement session; 3 Business engagement sessions; 6 Parliamentary Track sessions; 1 Open Microphone & taking-stock; 1 Closing Ceremony; 52 Workshops; 54 Open Forums; 9 Launches and Awards; 35 Lightning Talks; 10 Networking Sessions; 34 Pre-Events (Day 0 Sessions).
Organizations from five different continents joined the IGF Village with 80 booths to share their work missions with the Forum’s participants. The Village included representatives from all key stakeholder groups: governments and intergovernmental organizations, private sector, civil society and technical community.
There were also 33 remote hubs organized around the world from 21 different countries: 67% in Africa; 18% from Asia Pacific; 3% in Latin America and the Caribbean; and 3% in WEOG.