MENA Blockchain Week 2026, May 24, Day 7 Recap: Where AI Builders, Traders, and Community Makers Closed Out MENA Blockchain Week

UAE, Dubai. One City. One Week. One Nation.

Seven days. Dozens of events. Hundreds of conversations. And on the final day, MENA Blockchain Week 2026 did not slow down for a single hour.

Day 7, Trading & Exchanges Day, brought together AI builders, traders, exchange operators, community architects, and the next generation of women in tech, all under one roof at Hadron Founders Club in Al Quoz, Dubai. From a hands-on AI development workshop in the morning to a landmark community session in the evening, the closing day of the region's first decentralized city-wide Web3 initiative covered the full range of what this industry runs on: technology, markets, trust, and people.

Here is everything that happened.

Morning | GDG Google AI Weekend, Build with AI Edition X MENA Blockchain Week, Day 2

The final morning of MENA Blockchain Week 2026 did not ease into a close. It kept building.

GDG Sharjah and MENA Blockchain Week wrapped up two days of hands-on AI development with Day 2 of the Build with AI workshop, a full working session from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM at Hadron Founders Club.

Developers and technology enthusiasts continued prototyping, building, and deploying real applications using the latest Google AI technologies, including Gemini, in a format that prioritized doing over listening.

The event was co-hosted by GDG Sharjah, MENA Blockchain Week, SkyNet X Solutions, and Hadron Founders Club, and drew 156 attendees across both days, a clear signal of the appetite for applied AI education in the region.

Six confirmed speakers shaped the Day 2 programme:

Bahgat Ahmed, Senior Data Scientist & AI Tech Lead at Mozn, brought deep technical expertise to the room, grounding the sessions in real-world data science practice.

Mohammed Noshin, Research Fellow at MIT Senseable City Lab, connected the work happening on the ground in Dubai to the frontier of global urban AI research.

Seba AlMokdad, Machine Learning Researcher at the American University of Sharjah, represented the regional academic community and the growing pipeline of homegrown AI talent across the UAE.

Onkar Naik, DevOps Engineer at Callsign, addressed the infrastructure layer that makes AI applications production-ready, bringing an engineering perspective that complemented the research-heavy programme.

Maria D'Costa added her expertise to a speaker lineup that spanned industry, academia, and engineering, reinforcing the cross-sector nature of the workshop.

Mahira Pathan, Cloud Solution Engineer II at Oracle, rounded out the programme with cloud-native insights relevant to developers building and deploying at scale.

Two days. One outcome: a room full of builders who left with more than they came with.

Afternoon | Trading & Exchanges Day Meetup

As the morning sessions wrapped up, the afternoon shifted focus to the markets.

The Trading & Exchanges Day Meetup brought the trading and exchanges community together at Hadron Founders Club for the final official meetup of MENA Blockchain Week 2026. The session opened with remarks from MoeX Mohamad Alhusseini, representing MENA Blockchain Week, and Saed Ereiqat from Hadron, who set the tone for a practical, community-driven afternoon.

The formal programming closed with a trading workshop led by Chris Chalfoun, a focused and actionable session designed to cut through noise and give attendees something concrete to take home. The kind of workshop that earns its place on the last day of a packed week.

Networking and F&B followed. The week ended the way it should. With people in a room, talking to each other.

Afternoon | From Digital Noise to Phygital Trust: Rethinking Community in Web3

As the day progressed, one final panel session asked the question that every builder in Web3 eventually has to face.

You can master attention. But can you build trust?

Khaleelulla Baig, Founder & CEO of BitBuddy, and Rajesh Kumar, Head of Distribution at Qatar Insurance Group, joined moderator Nawaz Baig, Crypto Communicator and

Community Builder, to explore the rise of Phygital Communities, the powerful intersection of physical human connection and digital community ecosystems, and why this hybrid approach may define the future of sustainable Web3 growth.

In an industry driven by hype cycles, viral moments, and digital-first engagement, long-term adoption still depends on the fundamentals: trust, credibility, relationships, education, and real-world presence. The session did not offer easy answers. It offered the right questions, and a room willing to sit with them.

Evening | Girls Who AI x Genspark, Spark Session X MENA Blockchain Week Edition

The final evening of MENA Blockchain Week 2026 belonged to them.

Girls Who AI and Genspark brought the Spark Session to Hadron Founders Club from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, closing out the week with a room full of women at every stage of their AI journey. Founders. Marketers. Creatives. Project managers. Consultants. Students. All welcome. All present.

The session opened with the story of how Girls Who AI began, a community built on the belief that women deserve a space in AI that is genuinely theirs. It moved into a live one-hour workshop with Genspark, where attendees got hands-on time with AI tools in real time, guided by the team. And then it turned into something harder to plan for: a room where people actually wanted to stay.

No prior knowledge required. No gatekeeping. Exclusive merch, real mentorship, and a community that showed up for each other on the last night of a historic week.

Led by Nasima Ahmed alongside the Genspark and MENA Blockchain Week teams, the Spark Session was a reminder that the most important infrastructure in this industry is not a protocol. It is people.

MENA Blockchain Week 2026: A Week That Belonged to the Region

Day 7 closed MENA Blockchain Week 2026 the right way.

With builders still in the room, still in conversation, still finding reasons to stay.

From the first press release to the final networking session, this week proved that the Middle East is not waiting for a seat at the global Web3 table. It is building its own.

One city. One week. One nation.

See you SOON!