Edgewing has held an event or innovators to raise the profile of its Forge Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) project in Italy.
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Press Release, Turin, 13 November 2026: Edgewing has held an event to raise the profile of its Forge project in Italy, building on the first few months of progress by the digital technology engagement and adoption project.
The Forge is designed to identify innovation and act as a bridge to bring it into the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). Launched this July at the Farnborough International Airshow, the project has already attracted interest from pioneers in all three GCAP partner nations. Edgewing is the tri-national joint venture created by BAE Systems (UK), Leonardo (Italy), and Japan Aircraft Industrial Enhancement Co. Ltd. to design and develop the GCAP next generation fighter aircraft, with operations across all three nations and headquarters in the UK. Its Italian site is based in Turin.
A Forge project event this week took place at OGR Tech in Turin and brought together over 160 attendees. This included some 75 startups, alongside investors, industry clusters, research centres and companies from across the Italian innovation ecosystem. The morning programme featured contributions from Edgewing leadership and the GCAP Agency, which delivers the programme on behalf of Italy, Japan and the UK. This was followed by an afternoon of structured one-to-one matchmaking between the Forge team and 20 pre-selected companies across four challenge areas.
Since its launch in July, Edgewing’s Forge website has been live and open to applications, attracting interest from over 90 companies across Italy, Japan and the UK. Applications are being assessed against the published Challenge Statements and the Forge team is now working towards its first collaborative project.
The core purpose of the Forge project is to provide a structured route for innovative companies to engage with the Global Combat Air Programme, helping to bring new tools, capabilities and ways of working into the programme faster. Selected companies will be supported in becoming defence-ready, smoothing the path from discovery to adoption. The first 12 Challenge Statements, published at launch, remain open to applications. These statements sit across four challenge areas: Engineering, Programme Management, Supply Chain, and Multinational Collaboration and have been selected to help accelerate GCAP design and development work. The Turin event will be followed by a similar summit in Japan, with details to be announced soon. The first collaborative projects will begin before the end of 2026.
“Italy has a deep and dynamic technology ecosystem, and hosting this Forge event in Turin is helping connect that talent directly into GCAP. Since we launched the Forge project in July, Italian industry has responded strongly to the challenges we set, and I’m pleased to see that interest and excitement continue today.” Giuseppe Lupoli, General Manager of Edgewing in Italy
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