CPO Outlook 2026
From Strategy to Practice: Making Procurement Transformation Real
Every procurement team is expected to lead on AI, ESG, supplier risk and transformation — with the same team and budget as last year. That gap doesn’t close from listening alone.
Two days of real exchange with Nordic peers and experts — roundtables, panels and keynotes built around what you’re working on now.
What the two days actually look like
Peers around a table, working a question that matters to all of them.
Keynotes from the stage, roundtables and peer labs at the tables, and the conversations that carry on through dinner — two days built around what the people in the room are actually working on.
CPO Outlook 2026 in brief — the room, the tables and the format.
From previous CPO Outlook summits — on stage, at the tables and over dinner.
14–15 October 2026 · Hotel Birger Jarl, Stockholm. Pick the tables you want to sit at ahead of the summit.
See the 2026 programmeNot a line-up. A list of things you’ll work out — and who you’ll work them out with.
Think of what you’re working on right now, and who else is working on the same thing — in your industry or somewhere entirely different. Two days of sitting down with them, comparing how they’ve solved it and putting your own questions to people who’ve thought about them too. That’s CPO Outlook. Informal, yet to the point.
Confirmed so far — more as the programme locks. Every line below is a real session, led by a practitioner or an expert close to the work.
Discuss who actually owns the regulatory work when the rules — and the deadlines — keep moving.
Alisha Bloodworth · Vice President, Global Procurement · Perstorp
Challenge whether procurement is set up to shape AI, not just gate it, and what it can honestly tell the CEO it’s getting back.
Jatin Singhal · Global Head of Category, Technology · Adecco
Compare how supplier risk runs at scale across 45,000 entities: seven processes consolidated into one, now with AI.
Isabel Carlebom & Nils Holm Andersson · Sourcing & Digital Procurement · Orkla
Pressure-test how procurement proves value forward, not just defends cost.
Dnyanesh Sarang · Head of Global Supply Chain · Optinova
Write the job ad for the person you hire in 2027 — four or five capabilities, each testable on a CV — then read where the rest of the room landed.
Tobias Lindberg · Head of Regional Sourcing EMEA · Sandvik
Settle the sequencing question nobody answers out loud: how much data foundation before you move on AI, and how to find value along the way.
Kristina Prilepchanska · Head of Procurement Solutions · Electrolux Group
Map where AI actually moves a process stage you own — starting from a contracting assistant already in production at Yara, not a tool demo.
Marjo Jokinen · VP Technical Procurement · Yara International
Understand where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding next — and where most strategy decks no longer match the data.
Lena Sellgren · Chief Economist & Head of Research · Business Sweden
Follow how Volvo Group tracks risk across more than 18,000 suppliers and over a million sub-suppliers — and what changes when disruption surfaces early instead of arriving as news.
Vikram Kulkarni & Alexandre Pougnaud · Risk Management & Taskforce Management · Volvo Group Trucks Purchasing
Learn how indirect procurement rolled out Coupa and AI-enabled buying during Denmark’s largest-ever merger — instead of putting procurement on hold.
Louise Noer · Global Head of Indirect Procurement · Novonesis
See how UPM is rebuilding sourcing around business value — splitting today’s category work into the third to stop or automate, the third to keep, and the third to add by 2030.
Vesa Kuismanen · Director, Sourcing & Business Transformation · UPM
Hear what procurement is now asked to do with AI at once: govern it for the rest of the business, and rebuild its own function with it.
Nina Rapp · Copilot Regional GTM Lead, Nordics · ALSO
Keynotes, peer labs and roundtables, the Nordic CPO of the Year award, and an evening reception and dinner with the people you spent the day working alongside.
The rooms come back together. What the labs surfaced, drawn out on stage. Keynotes, a panel, and a working session that turns two days of discussion into something to act on. Finishes around 15:00.
Two days, because the second is where the first one’s conversations get pulled together — and because by then you know who is in the room.
Roundtables and labs run in parallel, and you pick the rooms that match what you’re working on. Each host opens and sets the direction, and the table takes it from there. Everyone in the room is there for the same subject, and the experience you already have is all you need to bring — what’s said at the table stays there.
A sample of what’s confirmed so far. See the full 2026 programme →
Ready to join CPO Outlook 2026?
Limited seats for senior procurement professionals. Connect with Nordic peers and experts, compare what’s working, and leave with conversations that keep paying off.
Who you’ll learn from
Lena Sellgren
Where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding — what the data is actually saying
Despite geopolitical turmoil, Nordic companies keep performing internationally — but the playbook is being rewritten in real time. Lena opens the day with the view from outside in: where Nordic companies are sourcing, investing and expanding over the next three years — and where the assumptions in many strategy decks no longer match the data.
Vikram Kulkarni & Alexandre Pougnaud
Mitigating supply chain disruptions — advancing supplier risk management through enhanced visibility and intelligence
Supply chain experts from Prewave and Volvo Group on advancing supplier risk management through enhanced visibility and intelligence. The session covers how AI-driven insights create transparency across more than 18,000 suppliers and over one million sub-suppliers, enable risk identification at scale, and support a shift to a proactive approach — with 60% faster disruption mitigation.
Louise Noer
The Supermarket: Accelerating growth and procurement synergies through technology
Mergers usually put procurement on hold — everything waits until the new structure is decided. When Novozymes and Chr. Hansen combined into Novonesis in Denmark’s largest-ever merger, Louise’s team did the opposite, treating the disruption as the moment to rebuild. She shows how indirect procurement became a strategic lever — rolling out Coupa and AI-enabled buying while the organisation was still in flux — and how an AI “front door” now guides employees to the right supplier, at the right time, for the right price.
Vesa Kuismanen
What to keep, what to stop, what to add — designing UPM’s procurement operating model around business value
For forty years procurement has agreed on the work it wants to do; the constraint was never knowing what good looks like, it was time — and the operating model that kept the strategic work losing to the operational. AI may finally do the work better, but point even the best tool at the wrong model and you only do the wrong work faster. Vesa takes UPM’s own sourcing function as the worked example: a deliberate split of today’s category work into the third to stop or automate, the third to keep, and the third to add by 2030. Real choices, real trade-offs, and the criteria behind them — close to the ground, not statements about the future.
Nina Rapp
Beyond AI pilots — translating AI workforce transformation into real business value
Procurement is being asked to do two things with AI at once: govern it for the rest of the business — the licences, contracts, agents and renewals nobody modelled properly — and rebuild its own function around the same technology. Two chairs, same week, same team. Drawing on years of hands-on enterprise AI rollouts across the Nordics, Nina brings a translation key any function leader can use: how AI moves from experimentation to measurable impact, and why some initiatives scale while others stall. The pattern that stands out right now — how the workforce itself is being reshaped, from AI assistants to agentic AI — is where the economics of AI begin to change.
Mauricio Bozzo
Lean in — the company you get when you stop piloting
EBG’s own surveys say where the Nordics actually stand: 74% still struggle with poor data, around 5% have integrated AI into their decisions, and not one organisation called itself digitally leading. High ambition, thin foundation — and the reasonable conclusion is to wait until the ground is firmer. Mauricio is doing the opposite. At Arrive — the mobility platform behind EasyPark, Flowbird, RingGo, ParkMobile and Parkopedia, present in more than 20,000 cities across 90 countries — he is building for a company where every employee works alongside several autonomous agents, not one assistant. He closes CPO Outlook 2026 with what such a company looks like from the inside, what has to be built underneath to keep it safe and governed, and which work is left for people to do.
Who you’ll meet
Confirmed so far — keynote speakers, lab hosts and session moderators, with more added as the programme locks. The session each one leads is on the speakers page.
Theme Discussions are led by our knowledge and solution partners. These are the people running those rooms.
Finalists are assessed by an independent Nordic CPO jury — in the room from the afternoon award ceremony through the evening reception.
Missed 2025?
See what happened at CPO Outlook 2025
The conversations, the connections, the insights — all in one place.
View CPO Outlook 2025 WrappedWhat an incredibly well-organized event. I have been to several similar ones, both in Sweden and internationally, and this truly held a level I have not seen before.
This Isn’t Another Conference
The agenda comes from the room — survey input from Nordic procurement leaders and sixteen years of running this format. Not from a programme committee guessing what matters.
What you take home isn’t slides. It’s how others have solved — or failed to solve — what you’re working on now.
Partnering with Industry Leaders
Leading organisations that support the Nordic procurement community and contribute to meaningful discussions at CPO Outlook.
Partner with CPO Outlook 2026
Nordic Procurement Intelligence
Surveys, webinars and analysis from the Nordic procurement community — the same input that shapes the agenda.
Annual Survey
Findings from 144 Nordic procurement leaders on what’s working and what isn’t.
Read the findingsExpert Webinars
On-demand sessions on AI, supplier management and what’s moving the function forward.
Watch webinarsFeatured Articles
Practical analyses on organizational change and procurement identity — through a behavioral science lens.
Explore articlesEBG | Xperience
Spring focus days for 30 procurement leaders. Peer and expert exchange. Rated 5.5/6 in 2025.
Learn moreReady to join CPO Outlook 2026?
Limited seats for senior procurement professionals. Connect with Nordic peers and experts, compare what’s working, and leave with conversations that keep paying off.