CPO Outlook 2026 · The programme so far
What’s on the table — and who put it there
Since 2010, EBG | Network has built its summits on one question. If you could sit down with a table of peers and talk about what matters most to you right now, what would it be? Sixteen years later, that question has produced the CPO Outlook 2026 programme. This year EBG curates it more tightly, so the two days hold a single thread rather than a catalogue of topics.
The theme is From Strategy to Practice: Making Procurement Transformation Real. It comes from the load procurement is actually carrying. Run the function as it is today, and rebuild it for an AI-shaped future. Same team, same week, same budget as last year. Below is what is confirmed so far, and why each piece earned its place.
The keynotes: the view from outside in, then four worked examples
Every keynote on the 2026 programme is a case someone has lived through, or a dataset someone has built. None of them is a market overview delivered from a distance.
Where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding
The Chief Economist opens with the view from outside in. She brings supplier network analyses, business climate surveys across forty-plus markets, foreign direct investment trends, and a new set of trade flow simulations. Where does the rebalancing away from China and the US actually show up in supplier flows and production footprints? And why have free trade agreements moved from policy footnote to sourcing variable?
Mitigating supply chain disruptions
Supplier risk management at a scale most functions will never touch. AI-driven transparency now reaches more than 18,000 suppliers and over one million sub-suppliers. The result: risk identification at scale, a shift from reactive to proactive, and 60% faster disruption mitigation.
The Supermarket: accelerating growth and procurement synergies through technology
Mergers usually put procurement on hold. When Novozymes and Chr. Hansen combined in Denmark’s largest-ever merger, indirect procurement did the opposite. It rolled out Coupa and AI-enabled buying while the organisation was still in flux. An AI “front door” now guides employees to the right supplier, at the right time, for the right price.
The operating model, and the team inside it
What to keep, what to stop, what to add
For forty years the constraint on strategic procurement was never knowing what good looks like. It was time. And it was an operating model in which the strategic work kept losing to the operational. UPM’s answer is a deliberate split of today’s category work into the third to stop or automate, the third to keep, and the third to add by 2030. Real criteria, real trade-offs.
Beyond AI pilots — translating AI workforce transformation into business value
Procurement now has to govern AI for the rest of the business: the licences, contracts, agents and renewals nobody modelled properly. And it has to rebuild its own function around the same technology. Drawn from years of hands-on enterprise rollouts across the Nordics: how AI moves from experimentation to measurable impact, and why some initiatives scale while others stall.
The Peer Labs: eight rooms, each led by someone who has done the work
The labs are the part of CPO Outlook that is hardest to copy. A practitioner from an operating company leads each one, on work they have actually delivered inside their own function. Each lab ends with something a participant can write down and take into Monday’s leadership meeting. Every lab runs twice, so participants pick two and compare notes with two different groups of peers.
No programme committee picked these topics. EBG drew them from the questions that surfaced across three procurement surveys 2025–2026 and the Xperience mapping work.
The eight labs confirmed so far
From gate to shaper — designing AI that delivers
Jatin Singhal · Global Head of Category, Technology · The Adecco GroupFrom digitalization to decision-making
Nils Holm Andersson & Isabel Carlebom · Orkla — seven siloed risk processes consolidated into one system across 45,000 legal entities, now being upgraded with AIPredictive procurement — building the structure, finding the value
Dnyanesh Sarang · Head of Global Supply Chain · Optinova — a case-led session on contract intelligence, shown with its actual artefactsCompliance: define it, implement it, prove it
Alisha Bloodworth · VP Global Procurement · Perstorp — who owns regulatory work when the rules, and the deadlines, keep movingWho do you hire in 2027?
Tobias Lindberg · Head of Regional Sourcing EMEA · Sandvik — participants leave with capabilities they would genuinely put in the next real job adFoundation, speed, value — procurement tech at enterprise scale
Kristina Prilepchanska · Head of Procurement Solutions · Electrolux Group — how much foundation before you move, and how to find value along the wayStart from the process, not the tool
Marjo Jokinen · VP Technical Procurement · Yara International — opening with a working AI assistant for contracting, now scaling across contract typesBuilding the next procurement professional
A table for the next generation, group led — operational and analytical work have always been the two entry points into the profession, and they are the first work AI absorbs
Why the next-generation table earned a place
That last one is worth pausing on. In EBG’s 2026 survey, 61% of organisations still develop their people the way they always have, while 5% have started building something new. The generation entering procurement now carries the freshest training and feels the shift earliest. Until now, no Nordic room let them compare notes across companies and categories. In 2026 there is one.
Since 2010 EBG has asked good people what matters most to them right now. In 2026 that question also goes to procurement’s next generation.
The Theme Discussions: where the expert organisations bring their side of it
Ten Theme Discussions run across Day 1, each twice, so every participant joins two with fresh peers each time. These are the tables where the organisations building the tools sit down with the people using them — hosted conversations, not presentations. Group size varies by topic and by run.
Prewave hosts multi-tier supplier visibility, and how to turn it into action that actually gets taken. Coupa takes autonomous procurement in practice, and what to keep human. Ivalua works supplier data as the foundation of every downstream capability. EcoVadis opens the execution gap between knowing your risk and reducing it. Silf asks what the profession should certify next, moderated by Christian Werngren, CEO of Sourca. Further tables cover agentic AI across source-to-pay, predictive supplier performance, spend insight connected to category strategy, and contract intelligence.
Day 2: the room works
Day 2 opens with a Lab Recap. Four moderators report back what their rooms converged on, where peers openly disagreed, and what they are each taking back into their own function. Most participants sit in two labs. Nobody sits in all of them. This session closes that gap.
Then the participatory half of the AI conversation. Not another keynote, and not a panel. Every table works the same short sequence in three rounds. What has AI actually changed in your function this year? Which single capability does your existing team have to build for 2027? And where does the time for that development come from? A table captain captures one headline per round. Between rounds the facilitator reads the findings back from the front, so the distribution across the whole room becomes visible to everyone in it. Participants leave with one line they would put into their team’s 2027 development plan, and the one thing they will stop doing to make room for it.
Alongside it: the CPO-only workshop, and the number everyone is arguing about
Robert Liljeblad and Hubert Verweij of Procure It Right host a CPO-only workshop alongside it. Two hours on leading and navigating procurement in turbulent times, and a significant share of that time goes to peer exchange between senior participants.
The afternoon takes on the number that has provoked the most discussion in EBG’s community all year. In the Xperience 2026 survey, around 15% of Nordic procurement professionals say they save four or more hours a week from AI today. In two years, 67% expect to. That is the largest single expectation curve the function has ever published about itself. Many CPOs are quietly building it into their operating models as a planning assumption. A panel with Jatin Singhal (The Adecco Group) and Kristina Prilepchanska (Electrolux Group) sets it up. The room then works out where each organisation actually sits on that curve.
And the first Nordic CPO of the Year
Day 1 closes with the inaugural Nordic CPO of the Year Award — the first independent recognition programme built for Chief Procurement Officers across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The award rests on three criteria: People, Integrity, Results. Not on title size, and not on headline savings.
Procure It Right reviews every nomination independently. A Nordic CPO jury then assesses the finalists: Anna Falk (Boliden), Johan Lindqvist (NCC), Björn Stenecker (Vattenfall), with Robert Liljeblad (Procure It Right) as jury lead. The jury is in the room from the ceremony through the evening reception. A joint initiative by EBG | Network and Procure It Right.
The expert organisations
EBG’s partners are on the programme, not around it. Each one hosts a table, a keynote or a workshop. Each is there for the same reason the practitioners are: they work on this every day and have something specific to contribute. Here is who is confirmed, and where to find them.
| PrewavePlatinum partner | Supply chain risk intelligence. Keynote with Volvo Group Trucks Purchasing on Day 1, plus a Theme Discussion on turning multi-tier supplier visibility into action. |
| CoupaPlatinum partner | Keynote with Novonesis on using a live merger as the moment to rebuild indirect procurement, plus a Theme Discussion on what to automate and what to keep human. |
| IvaluaGold partner | Day 2 keynote on why orchestration has to come before intelligence, plus a Theme Discussion on supplier data as the foundation of every downstream capability. |
| EcoVadisSilver partner | Theme Discussion: The Execution Gap — why knowing your risk isn’t reducing it, on moving from point-in-time assessment to continuous visibility. |
| ZycusSilver partner | Hosting a Theme Discussion on Day 1. Topic announced shortly. |
| Proxima, part of Bain & CompanySilver partner | Hosting a Theme Discussion on Day 1. Topic announced shortly. |
| CandexExhibitor | Tail spend management — in the expo across both days and in the tech run-throughs. |
| AchillesExhibitor | Supplier prequalification and supply chain data — in the expo across both days. |
| SilfKnowledge partner | Theme Discussion: What Will We Certify Next? — moderated by Christian Werngren, CEO of Sourca. |
| Procure It RightAward & workshop partner | Day 2 CPO-only workshop, and jury lead for the Nordic CPO of the Year Award. |
Few partner places remain open for 2026. Lars Bjärkerud handles partnerships.
What is still open in the CPO Outlook 2026 programme
EBG announces more labs as moderators lock. Ivalua is confirming its keynote speaker, one more Nordic leader joins the Day 2 panel, and two Theme Discussion topics are still taking shape with their hosts. That is deliberate. EBG builds the CPO Outlook 2026 programme with the people in it, and conversations happening right now still shape the last pieces.
What will not change is the format. The agenda comes from the room: survey input from Nordic procurement leaders, and sixteen years of running this format. Not from a committee guessing what matters. What participants take home is not slides. It is how others have solved, or failed to solve, what they are working on now.
CPO Outlook 2026 · 14–15 October · Hotel Birger Jarl, Stockholm
EBG keeps seats to senior procurement professionals from across the Nordics.
Register See the full programmeQuestions about attending? Anna Bjärkerud · Speaking or partnership? Lars Bjärkerud