This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Next Generation AI Systems, NGEN-AI 2026, held in Trento, Italy, during September 1-4, 2026.

The 52 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this book were carefully selected and reviewed from 116 submissions. These papers have been organized in the following topical sections: 

Learning Methods and Model Efficiency

Edge AI and Hardware Acceleration

Language Models, Retrieval, and Language Technologies

Agentic AI and Multi-Agent Systems

Trustworthy AI, Security, Fairness, and Privacy

AI Engineering, Operations, and Governance

AI for Health and Care

AI for Education and Accessibility

Human-Centered AI, Culture, and Society

AI Applications in Organizations and Smart Environments