Leadership

HotTopics Powerlist: European enterprise tech leaders

Doug Drinkwater

50 European enterprise tech leaders powering digital transformation

HotTopics Powerlist is where we recognise the regional and industry leaders within our community of over 20,000 global technology executives.

Overview:

What makes a European enterprise technology leader in 2026?
What is HotTopics Powerlist?
Redefining enterprise digital transformation in Europe
HotTopics Powerlist: The 50 European enterprise tech leaders to watch
Join the conversations at the HotTopics Studio: Sardinia

HotTopics Powerlist: European enterprise tech leaders signature

What defines a European enterprise technology leader in 2026?

The defining trait of European enterprise technology leaders (CIO, CTO, CDO, CISO) must be more than a ‘vision’; it is delivery, at scale and speed.

Boards across Europe have long moved past slow, multi-year enterprise digital transformation strategies, and lost patience with AI experimentation and pilot programmes that fail to deliver measurable impact. They now expect enterprise-scale results which stand up to regulatory scrutiny, budget pressure, heightened customer and stakeholder expectations and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

For European CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and CISOs, this marks a significant shift. Technology leadership may have once been judged on roadmap execution and standalone, functional performance, but it has now expanded to driving measurable, organisation-wide digital change across complex, multinational environments.

The leaders who stand out are those translating strategy into operational impact at scale. Following a robust criteria and selection process, HotTopics has selected 50 of the most prominent technology leaders in Europe as part of our first-ever powerlist.

Introducing the HotTopics Powerlist: Europe’s top enterprise technology leaders

This HotTopics Powerlist is part of a new editorial series where we recognise the regional and industry leaders within our community of over 20,000 global technology executives.

For this, our inaugural edition, we identified the European technology leaders operating at the intersection of global scale and local execution - based on the following criteria:

Members of the HotTopics community
Organisations with 500 or more employees
Annual revenues from £250m to over £5bn
Footprints spanning multiple European markets
Senior, in-role, mainland European leaders accountable for digital, technology and security transformation
Recognised through global or local awards, including (but not limited to) the HotTopics C-Suite Awards

The list below highlights European enterprise digital transformation leaders who are driving change, not just sponsoring it. Working across an array of industries, from financial services and manufacturing to energy, retail, and life sciences, these leaders can crucially point to public, verifiable proof points of change.

These proof points include large-scale data modernisations, cloud and legacy platform consolidations, improved enterprise security maturity and AI deployments, all designed to drive clear business impact; improved resilience, faster decision-making, reduced operational risk, greater efficiency and sustained business growth.

Redefining enterprise digital transformation in Europe

To understand why these leaders have been selected, we need to first re-examine what we mean by digital transformation in 2026.

Digital transformation is the principle of integrating digital technologies across the enterprise at scale, from a people, process and technology perspective. By doing so, the organisation seeks to improve internal operational efficiencies, optimise customer experiences and ultimately accelerate business innovation and reduce risk.

For our leaders in the HotTopics powerlist, enterprise digital transformation has come to mean wide-scale business change delivered under pressure – and scrutiny. The most effective European enterprise technology leaders understand this shift: they align technology investment to business priorities, build teams and cultures which proactively embrace change, and communicate progress (and obstacles) in language boards and regulators can trust.