Seoul opens Smart Life Week 2026 at COEX with AI and robotics exhibits

Seoul opened Smart Life Week (SLW) 2026 at COEX on October 6 under the theme “daily life in a future city drawn with AI,” according to the Seoul city government, and the fair runs until October 8. The documents disagree on the size of the event: the city said 515 companies, institutions and cities are taking part, while Electronic Times reported 529 participants — 313 companies, 102 institutions and 114 cities — and said the scope had expanded greatly from last year's event, which it described as centred on 330 companies. [ 1 , 3 ]

Yonhap reported that about 300 people attended the opening ceremony, including Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert and a group of overseas city mayors. The programme began with a robot performance set to percussion, followed by Raibert's keynote. Electronic Times identified Raibert as head of Hyundai Motor Group's RAI research institute and said he predicted that autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, last-mile delivery, waste collection, infrastructure inspection and dangerous construction and disaster sites could become new arenas for robots. He also said the technologies would not mature or succeed immediately and that some could take years or even decades, listing safety for operation without a supervisor, changes to jobs, regulation that struggles to keep up and citizens' unease about robots as tasks to be solved. [ 1 , 3 ]

Electronic Times described the exhibits in detail: a media-art gate in which Google Gemini rendered Seoul 100 years later, two Atlas humanoid mockups kept in Korea and brought out for the event, and a booth where an AI trained through 96 million reinforcement-learning steps beat a person at a robot box-sorting contest. In a future mobility zone modelled on Seoul Station, it reported, visitors could see a vertiport for urban air mobility, level 4 autonomous vehicles and unmanned delivery robots, while a space modelled on Gwanghwamun showed Google Cloud's generative AI document summaries and retrieval-augmented chatbots for civil complaints and public services. [ 3 ]

Seoul Metro said it is exhibiting 10 items of AI-based subway safety and maintenance technology in the Hall A innovation hall through October 8, according to Newsis, including an AI catenary inspection system that diagnoses track and overhead-line conditions in real time while trains run, an AI track inspection robot that detects abnormal signs in advance, and a smart station that monitors and remotely controls stations. The operator said it also set up mock train driving, a VR fire-response experience and a VR train-facility experience, and is running a stamp tour with a prize draw for visitors who try at least five of the 10 exhibits. “We will continue to actively introduce field-centred AI technology to create a smart subway environment that all citizens can use with confidence,” Seoul Metro president Kim Tae-gyun said, according to Newsis. [ 3 , 4 ]

Yonhap reported that the opening also included the fourth Seoul Smart City Award ceremony, co-hosted by the Seoul city government and the World Smart City Organization. Electronic Times said 21 winners were selected across four categories: the gold award in the human-centred category went to a project it named as “Kelimane's strengthening of climate resilience through cultural intelligence,” the technology innovation gold went to Madrid's project on building a human-centred adaptive city through data, AI and urban intelligence, the leadership award went to the mayors of Elliniko-Argyroupoli and Escobar, and special awards went to Kaohsiung, M-Taka and LA. [ 1 , 3 ]

Yonhap reported that Hall A presents AI technologies applied to daily life against the backdrop of eight Seoul landmarks — Sejong-daero, Yangjae and Suseo, Gwanghwamun, the Han River, Seoul Station, the Seoul Metropolitan Library, Bukchon Hanok Village and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza — while Hall B hosts the Seoul AI Robot Show under the theme “robots in daily life alongside us,” with humanoid and wearable robots on display. Eighteen international conferences are scheduled, including the Mayors Forum and the Physical AI Forum, Yonhap said. Electronic Times reported that at the robot show humanoids danced to music and robots played sports with citizens. [ 1 , 3 ]

“The question we must ask is how AI will make citizens' days safer, more convenient and more valuable,” Oh said, according to Yonhap. He said Seoul is focusing on using “the coldest technology to make the warmest change,” citing autonomous buses for early commuters and care and wearable robots to supplement welfare services, and added that the city will build a Seoul where anyone can learn and use AI. Electronic Times quoted him saying that with the arrival of robots and physical AI, AI has begun to change citizens' lives directly in the city rather than only in the digital world. [ 1 , 3 ]