NATO and Emerging Technologies: Direction 2026
How the Alliance Is Rewiring Defence Innovation—and Why the Civilian World Should Pay Attention
The relationship between military need and technological progress is as old as warfare itself, but NATO is now attempting something qualitatively different. Rather than waiting for mature technologies to trickle into defence procurement, the Alliance is building an institutional architecture designed to identify, fund, test, and field dual-use innovations within months instead of decades. At the centre of this effort sit two complementary mechanisms—the NATO Innovation Fund and the DIANA accelerator network—backed by an updated policy framework that, if the 2025 Summit commitments hold, could reshape how deep-tech startups, private investors, and national industrial strategies interact with the transatlantic security ecosystem through 2026 and beyond.