Swavlamban 2026: Navy's 5th Innovation Seminar in New Delhi

The Indian Navy’s flagship Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Seminar, Swavlamban 2026, reaches its fifth edition at the Manekshaw Centre, New Delhi, on 26 and 27 October 2026. Its theme is ‘Strength & Power through Innovation and Indigenisation’. The two days put the armed forces in a room with industry, start-ups, MSMEs, universities and investors, so that ideas born in Indian laboratories end up on Indian warships.

Why the Navy runs Swavlamban

Swavlamban began in 2022 and has since turned into a national meeting ground where the Navy states what it needs at sea and Indian industry and academia say what they can build. The aim is to shorten the distance between a home-grown idea and equipment a sailor can actually use, strengthening both maritime readiness and Aatmanirbharta in defence.

Who is organising it

The seminar is run by the Indian Navy with the Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO) and the Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM).

The plenary session

Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh will be the chief guest at the plenary session on 26 October 2026. He will felicitate industry partners for their work in defence innovation and indigenisation. Two documents will be released at the session:

• The Swavlamban 5.0 document
• The Compendium on Technology Imperatives

Both are meant to tell Indian firms plainly what the Navy’s technological priorities and operational needs are, and where a private developer can step in.

What the exhibition will show

A thematic exhibition will carry indigenous innovations grouped under five heads, together with success stories tracing products from a first idea to a finished system.

The technologies under discussion

Sessions will take up future and emerging technologies and their likely place in naval warfare: quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and hypersonic technologies. Separate sittings will look at how to deepen self-reliance and the iDEX ecosystem, how to build domestic supply chains that do not snap in a crisis, how to encourage entrepreneurship inside academic institutions, and how a start-up with a promising naval technology can grow big enough to deliver at scale. Investors and venture capitalists will join talks on funding, scaling and commercialising defence enterprises, the stage at which many Indian defence start-ups have stumbled in the past.