The 7th Agrivoltaics World Conference Ran in New Delhi from 21 to 23 October 2026, Launched an AgriPV Policy Handbook and Handed Hosting to France for 2027

The 7th Agrivoltaics World Conference ran at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi from 21 to 23 October 2026, hosted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) with support from Germany’s federal environment ministry. Agrivoltaics means growing crops and generating solar power on the same land. Its theme was “Powering the Global South”, and several reports describe it as the first edition held in the Global South. The opening session on 21 October launched three resources, and the closing session on 23 October passed the hosting to France for 2027.

The Odisha government used the same conference on 22 October to announce a state agrivoltaics policy, which has its own article. This piece covers the conference itself.

Where Delhi sits in the series

The organisers, Conexio-PSE, list the earlier editions on their site. The first, in October 2020, was an online event hosted by France’s INRAE research institute, and the second, in 2021, was online too, hosted by Fraunhofer ISE. After that the conference moved between venues: Piacenza in Italy (2022), Daegu in South Korea (2023), Denver in the United States (2024) and Freiburg in Germany (2025). The Freiburg edition, the sixth, drew over 500 people from more than 40 countries, according to the organisers.

ANI’s report from the conference says it was the first time the event had been hosted in a developing country. The conference was hybrid, with in-person and online attendance. A pre-event notice from Germany’s International Climate Initiative (IKI), on whose behalf the Indo-German Cooperation on Agrivoltaics project supported the event, described two scientific and technical tracks, an India Focus Track with a pitch hub, state sessions and farmer interactions, a technical tour of agrivoltaic sites around Delhi, and a four-day Winter School from 26 to 29 October.

Two headcounts

Four reports (GKToday, IBEF, The Policy Edge and Adda247) give more than 1,200 delegates, including over 150 international participants. News On AIR, the public broadcaster’s news site, said more than 1,500 people from over 40 countries took part, including around 400 farmers; its text reads “more than one thousand 500”, which this article takes as 1,500. None of the reports explains the gap, so both figures are given here with their sources.

At the inauguration, Union Minister Pralhad Joshi said it was the largest and most historic edition so far and that the record turnout had needed extra halls, according to the PIB release.

Three resources released on the first day

Three resources were launched at the opening ceremony, according to the reports above. They are an AgriPV Policy Handbook from MNRE, a decision-making tool from the India Agrivoltaics Alliance, and a Book of Abstracts from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). ICAR’s account adds that the handbook, titled in Hindi as a policy handbook on agrivoltaics in India, was prepared jointly by MNRE and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The PIB release says the materials are meant to help farmers and other stakeholders make informed, precise decisions in the field.

What the two ministers put on the table

Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the keynote speaker, said India’s average landholding is 0.96 hectares and that more than 85 per cent of farmers are small or marginal. His point was that such farmers cannot stop cultivating to host a power plant, so the design has to leave them free to change crops from year to year. He asked for farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to be involved and for rural youth and women to be trained to run and repair the equipment. He also said farmers should carry no burden if a company abandons a project or panels have to be removed when a contract ends. ICAR’s account adds that he promised ICAR’s cooperation with MNRE on research and called for an evidence-based crop matrix for India’s 15 agro-climatic zones.

Joshi gave cost figures. PTI reported him as saying that power from raised agrivoltaic panels can be generated at about Rs 3.20 a unit against Rs 2.60 for ground-mounted solar, and that the gap has to close for the model to be viable. He also said the global agrivoltaic market had passed 18.4 GW of installed capacity. Ahead of the conference, on 9 September, he told a curtain-raiser event that researchers at BAIF’s Rural Innovation Centre in Pune were testing 17 solar configurations across 30 crops. At the opening he cited studies suggesting the sector could create about 3.32 lakh full-time local jobs; the PIB release does not name them.

The science and the farmer sessions

ICAR’s Director General, Mangi Lal Jat, pointed to ICAR’s agrivoltaic research at Jodhpur and in New Delhi. He called for the technology to use India’s roughly 14 lakh farm ponds and the wide field bunds (raised borders), especially in the south, and said it could be combined with agroforestry and livestock. ICAR’s Deputy Director General for crop science, D. K. Yadav, chaired a scientific session on crop matrices that account for local weather and each crop’s tolerance of shade.

By the close, a session co-convened by ICAR and IWMI had covered agro-climatic zoning, shade-tolerant crops, water-use efficiency indices and the microclimate effects of solar arrays, according to IANS and SolarQuarter. A session led by the German development agency GIZ brought farmers, FPO federations and rural entrepreneurs to share experience of operating and maintaining installations. PTI reported that the German Ambassador, Jasper Wieck, assured support for joint research on pilot sites.

Awards, the handover and Montpellier

On 23 October, the Director General of the International Solar Alliance, Ashish Khanna, summarised the proceedings, and MNRE Additional Secretary Mayank Tewari spoke at the closing. Excellence Awards were presented, along with a National Agrivoltaics Pitch-Hub Award for start-ups and Best Paper Awards in six scientific themes. The reports opened for this article do not name the winners. The Pitch Hub had been announced at the 9 September curtain-raiser, on the theme “Fueling Farm to Fork Innovations”, with the National Solar Energy Federation of India as knowledge partner.

The hosting then passed to France. The organisers’ site gives the 2027 venue as Institut Agro Montpellier and says the institute has the world’s longest-operating agrivoltaics test facility, a claim that is the organisers’ own.

What was said about the next step

Sarangi told ANI that the policy framework, regulatory systems and standards India needs had been discussed at the conference. His aim, in his words: “The idea is to take some of the successful pilots to scale and see that these are successful.” The Policy Edge and Manorama Yearbook both put India’s tally at 36 operational agrivoltaic projects totalling 37.54 MW as of August 2025, with 10 pilots under development; neither names the original government release. Joshi said the government would soon launch a large agrivoltaics programme under the next phase of PM-KUSUM, the farm solar scheme; the Odisha article sets out the targets he and the secretary gave. Wider context on the solar build-out is in India’s solar capacity in numbers.

As of 29 October 2026, none of the reports opened for this article says that programme has been launched. The 8th conference is set for Institut Agro Montpellier in 2027.