News & Events

The SUNRISE-6G project successfully concluded another impactful participation at the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026, held in Málaga, Spain, marking its third consecutive year at Europe’s premier conference on telecommunications, future networks, and 6G innovation.

Under this year’s theme, “6G, Connecting Intelligence,” the event brought together leading researchers, industry stakeholders, policymakers, and innovators from across Europe and beyond to explore the convergence of communications, artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, sensing, microelectronics, and Non-Terrestrial Networks towards the realisation of intelligent and resilient digital infrastructures.

Throughout the four-day event (2-5 June 2026), SUNRISE-6G welcomed a large number of visitors to its dedicated exhibition booth, where project partners showcased the project’s vision for a federated European 6G experimentation ecosystem and demonstrated key technological advancements enabling future network innovation.

Showcasing the SUNRISE-6G Ecosystem Through Three Interactive Demonstrations

At the heart of SUNRISE-6G’s exhibition presence was the booth titled “SUNRISE-6G Experimentation Portal and Multi-Technology Demonstrations,” presenting three innovative demonstrations highlighting the project’s unique capabilities and contributions to Europe’s 6G landscape.

1. SUNRISE-6G Experimentation Portal

Visitors explored the SUNRISE-6G Experimentation Portal, a unified entry point that provides seamless access to the project’s federated infrastructure, bringing together more than 14 testbeds across eight European countries. The demonstration showcased the complete experimentation workflow, from resource discovery and experiment configuration to execution monitoring and KPI tracking through a single user interface.

Attendees also had the opportunity to interact with the SUNRISE-6G chatbot, demonstrating how experimenters can schedule and manage experiments through intuitive conversational interactions.

2. AI-Driven Network API Exposure with ETSI OpenOP

The second demonstration presented an innovative ETSI OpenOP use case entitled “AI-Driven Network API Exposure: Managing QoD Sessions via MCP and 3GPP NEF Integration.”

Through natural language interactions with an AI agent, users could request Quality-on-Demand (QoD) services, with the system automatically translating requests into network operations executed via CAMARA APIs and the Open Exposure Network Exposure Function (NEF). The demonstration highlighted the potential of AI-native network management and intelligent service exposure for future 6G networks.

3. Federated Multi-Operator Service Deployment

The third demonstration showcased a multi-operator federation scenario powered by the ETSI OpenOP framework. Using the Open Exposure Gateway and Federation Manager, the demo illustrated secure East-Westbound communication between operators, enabling the discovery of remote availability zones, application onboarding, and complete lifecycle management across multiple administrative domains.

The demonstration highlighted the interoperability, scalability, and orchestration capabilities required to support the future “Network of Networks” vision for 6G.

Contributing to the EuCNC & 6G Summit Technical Programme

Beyond the exhibition floor, SUNRISE-6G actively contributed to the conference programme by participating in two collaborative workshops on the first day of the conference, which brought together leading European SNS research initiatives to address key challenges for future 6G networks.

• The project contributed to Workshop 6: “Data Platforms for Advanced AI-native Networks: 6G Data Space, DataOps, MLOps, Dataset Generation & Curation,” alongside fellow SNS projects 6G-DALI, 6G-INTENSE, NATWORK, and SAFE-6G. The workshop addressed the growing importance of data platforms, data governance, MLOps methodologies, and dataset management in enabling trustworthy and scalable AI-native 6G networks.
• SUNRISE-6G also contributed to Workshop 12: “Advancing Network Digital Twins (NDTs) for AI-driven 6G Systems: Insights, Applications, and Cross-Project Synergies”. The workshop brought together experts from projects including 6G-TWIN, 6G-SANDBOX, MARE, FLECON-6G, UNITY-6G, 6G-DALI, 6G-Cloud, ENVELOPE, INTACT, SECASSURED, cPAID, Future Network Services, and SUNRISE-6G to explore how Network Digital Twins can accelerate the development, validation, and operation of AI-driven 6G systems.

Siemens contributed to EuCNC 2026 Workshop on 6G Resilience
Siemens, a SUNRISE-6G partner, contributed to Workshop 13, “Resilience in 6G and Beyond: Perspectives, Challenges, and Design Approaches”, at EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026. Dr. Florian Zeiger presented “Resilience for E2E Services in Critical Industrial Infrastructures”, addressing resilience in distributed industrial systems, cross-layer failure propagation, programmable networks and seamless vPLC handover across terrestrial and non-terrestrial 5G/6G links. The presentation highlighted the importance of end-to-end resilience in future 6G industrial infrastructures and identified open research challenges for resilient 6G systems.

Through these collaborative activities, SUNRISE-6G reinforced its commitment to fostering cross-project synergies and supporting the development of a strong, interconnected European 6G research ecosystem.

Disseminating Scientific Excellence

In addition to its demonstrations and workshop contributions, SUNRISE-6G actively contributed to the scientific programme of EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026 through several technical paper presentations. The presented research highlighted key project innovations and addressed important challenges related to future 6G experimentation platforms, advanced wireless communications, and sustainable network operation.

Among the papers presented were:

• “Performance Improvements of 5G mmW Network with RIS in Underground Mine Environment”, exploring the potential of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) to enhance connectivity in challenging industrial environments.
• “An Evolved Open SDK for Federated 6G Testbeds Through the Open Operator Platform”, presenting advancements towards open, interoperable, and federated experimentation infrastructures for future 6G networks.
• “Evaluation of the Energy Consumption Related to Encrypted HTTP Video Streaming in 5G Networks”, investigating the energy implications of modern video streaming services and their impact on network sustainability.

These contributions further demonstrate SUNRISE-6G’s commitment to advancing cutting-edge research while supporting the development of open, intelligent, and sustainable future network ecosystems. They can be found under our Publications – SUNRISE-6G

Strengthening Europe’s 6G Innovation Ecosystem

SUNRISE-6G continues to advance its mission of delivering a sustainable and evolvable European 6G experimentation facility by federating diverse testbeds and enablers under a common infrastructure for testing, validation, and vertical application deployment.

Inspired by the “Network of Networks” vision, the project is developing innovative mechanisms for network programmability, exposure, and federation through AI-driven interfaces, standardised APIs, and multi-operator collaboration frameworks.

Participation at EuCNC & 6G Summit 2026 provided an excellent opportunity to engage with the broader European research and innovation community, exchange knowledge, gather valuable feedback, and strengthen collaborations that will help shape the future of 6G.

The SUNRISE-6G consortium extends its sincere thanks to everyone who visited the booth, attended the workshops, engaged with the demonstrations, and contributed to the insightful discussions throughout the event.

As Europe continues its journey towards 6G, SUNRISE-6G remains committed to enabling open, collaborative, and large-scale experimentation that will accelerate the development and validation of future network technologies and services.