The first day of the show, 12 April, revolves around political talks from German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel, Lower Saxony's prime minister Stephan Weil and Hannover's mayor Belit Onay as well as German economics minister Peter Altmaier and German education and research minister Anja Karliczek, who will present the HERMES AWARD together with the president of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Professor Reimund Neugebauer.

The dialog between the three association presidents – Siegfried Russwurm (BDI–German Industry Association), Karl Haeusgen (VDMA–German Association of Mechanical and Plant Engineers) and Dr. Gunther Kegel (ZVEI–German Electrical Industry Association) – about the general economic outlook for German industry also promises to attract attention.

From Tuesday to Thursday, the focus is on the core topics of HANNOVER MESSE: from industrial transformation, machine learning, networked supply chains, and lightweight construction to cloud solutions, environmental protection, renewable energy, and the silicon economy. The guiding principle: digitalization and artificial intelligence are leading the world into a platform economy. As a result, data-driven technologies such as IoT and blockchain enable new business models that link goods, information and financial transactions worldwide. Speakers include Professor Michael ten Hompel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Materials Handling; Professor Toby Walsh from the University of New South Wales; Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky; Christoph Bornschein, managing director of the digital agency TLGG; Professor Sepp Hochreiter, head of the Institute for Machine Learning; and Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber from nnaisense SA.

Digitalization also makes the energy system more efficient overall and opens up the energy market for new technologies and business models. Green hydrogen, in particular, can be used as a versatile energy carrier and storage medium with the help of Power-to-X processes in all sectors. This makes it a central element for the energy transition. Experts such as Professor Claudia Kemfert from the German Institute for Economic Research and Frank Possel-Dölken from Phoenix Contact will discuss further developments in the energy sector.

On Friday, 16 April, Deutsche Messe AG stages the WomenPower career congress under the motto RESET.RETHINK.RESTART. The program covers socio-political issues such as AI, equal opportunity and sustainability as well as career topics such as "Scoring successfully in meetings – also virtually", "Successful networking in the STEM fields" and "Salary negotiations – strategies for women".