European Day of Languages 2026: Europe’s Languages Cannot Afford to Miss the AI Revolution

Statement by the Chair’s Committee of the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD)

On the occasion of the European Day of Languages 2026, the Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD) calls for Europe’s regional and minority languages to be fully included in one of the most profound technological transformations of our time: Artificial Intelligence.

Throughout history, major technological and societal transformations have reshaped Europe’s linguistic landscape. The printing press transformed access to knowledge and culture. Mass education, public administration, radio and television created new domains for language use. More recently, the Internet and the digital revolution changed the way we communicate, work and learn.

At each of these turning points, languages that successfully entered new domains strengthened their position and relevance in society. Those excluded from them faced the progressive loss of visibility, functions and speakers. Artificial Intelligence represents the next such turning point.

The question is no longer simply whether a language can be spoken, written, taught or used online. Increasingly, it is also whether that language can be understood, processed and generated by Artificial Intelligence.

AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday life, from translation and education to public services, media and communication. A language that cannot be used naturally with these technologies risks progressively losing domains of use and relevance, particularly among younger generations. For Europe’s regional and minority languages, missing the AI revolution is not an option.

But AI also represents an extraordinary opportunity. Translation, speech technologies, educational tools and easier content creation could provide regional and minority languages with possibilities that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago. The challenge is to ensure that these opportunities are available across Europe’s entire linguistic landscape.

Europe’s linguistic diversity does not stop at 24 languages

The European Union has rightly made Artificial Intelligence and technological sovereignty strategic priorities. We welcome the growing investment in multilingual AI, language data and technological infrastructure.

However, some flagship European initiatives continue to focus primarily on the EU’s 24 official languages. The EUROPA project selected under the Frontier AI Grand Challenge, for example, aims to develop an open European frontier AI model covering all 24 official EU languages. This is an important ambition. But Europe’s linguistic diversity does not stop at 24 languages.

Millions of Europeans use regional and minority languages every day in their homes, schools, public institutions, media, cultural life and communities. If Europe is building its own sovereign AI ecosystem, these languages must also have a place within it.

A truly sovereign European AI must be an AI that works for Europe’s linguistic diversity.

Nothing in the EU Treaties requires European AI initiatives to be limited to the Union’s 24 official languages. On the contrary, respect for Europe’s rich cultural and linguistic diversity is embedded in the EU’s legal framework. And European initiatives such as ALT-EDIC already demonstrate that regional languages can be explicitly included in the development of European language technologies.

The challenge is therefore to make such inclusion systematic rather than exceptional, ensuring that regional and minority languages are considered from the outset when European AI policies, programmes and infrastructures are designed.

The EU has also developed an ambitious AI Act addressing risks associated with Artificial Intelligence. Yet the risk that unequal access to AI technologies could deepen existing inequalities between Europe’s languages deserves far greater attention.

Responsible, inclusive and sovereign European AI should therefore mean not only AI that is safe and trustworthy, but also AI that genuinely works for the full linguistic diversity of Europe and the people and communities it serves.

No European language left behind

Ensuring a place for regional and minority languages in AI will require cooperation between public authorities, linguistic communities, universities, European institutions and technology developers. These languages must be considered in European AI strategies, language datasets, large language models, speech and translation technologies, funding programmes and future digital infrastructures.

NPLD and its members are committed to contributing to this effort. Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation and language technologies are already among NPLD’s major policy priorities for 2026.

Europe has faced similar choices before. There was a time when languages needed to enter the world of print. Later, they needed to become languages of education, public administration and mass media. More recently, they needed to establish themselves on the Internet.

Today, our languages must become languages of Artificial Intelligence. The technological choices we make now will help determine which languages Europeans will be able to use naturally in the digital society of tomorrow.

On this European Day of Languages, our message is therefore clear: Europe’s regional and minority languages cannot afford to miss the AI revolution. They must be part of shaping it.