Kingston is the only Canadian city on 2026 intelligent communities list

Kingston, Ontario has made the Intelligent Community Forum’s Top7 list for the third time, the only Canadian city on the 2026 list, joining communities in Brazil, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United States, Spain, and Taiwan.

The ICF designation recognizes communities that use digital infrastructure as a foundation for economic and social impact, in turn creating jobs, fostering inclusive growth, and building a stronger quality of life. Performance across broadband deployment and use, workforce development, innovation, digital inclusion, advocacy, and engagement are all part of evaluation criteria.

The Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced at the ICF Global Summit in Columbus, Ohio this October.

Kingston’s history with the ICF goes back to 2009, when the city first appeared on their Smart21 list, a selection of communities with potential to be Top7. Its first Top7 designation came in 2014. 

What the recognition reflects is the depth of the city’s infrastructure. Utilities Kingston, the city-owned utility, operates a 1,000-kilometre dark fibre network supplemented by fixed wireless in harder-to-reach areas. That municipal ownership kept deployment costs low enough to attract multiple service providers, and business customers now include DuPont, INVISTA, IDEXX, IPG Photonics, and Umicore.

The talent picture is similarly specific. Queen’s University serves 28,000 mostly undergraduate students. They have Canada’s highest graduation rate at 89%, and 95% of graduates find employment within six months. The city also holds Canada’s highest per-capita percentage of PhDs. The challenge, which the ICF profile acknowledges directly, is keeping enough of those graduates in Kingston rather than watching them leave for Toronto, Ottawa, or across the border.

Kingston’s 2026 submission pointed to the Helix Life Sciences Initiative, which provides wet lab space and commercialization funding; RXN HUB, a clean technology scale-up and manufacturing facility; and AI collaborations between Kingston’s health-care and post-secondary sectors. 

“This recognition confirms that Kingston’s Intelligent Community story is about more than one project or one organization — it is about an entire ecosystem working together with shared purpose,” says Donna Gillespie, CEO of Kingston Economic Development Corporation.

That ecosystem wasn’t built quickly. Kingston spent decades diversifying away from heavy dependence on federal spending, investing in connectivity, talent retention, and research infrastructure to get here.

For technology leaders watching Canadian talent drain south, Kingston’s combination of research depth and deliberate retention infrastructure (the NEST program for relocating professionals, subsidized apprenticeships, a 95% graduate employment rate) makes the city an interesting talent pipeline.

Final Shots

• Kingston has appeared on the ICF Smart21 list four times (2009, 2014, 2025, 2026) and the Top7 three times (2014, 2025, 2026), making it one of the most consistently recognized Canadian communities in the program’s history.
• The city-owned Utilities Kingston dark fibre network is the backbone of Kingston’s connectivity story, with 1,000 kilometres of infrastructure that attracted global companies without requiring them to build it themselves.
• Kingston has a big talent pool, thanks to Queen’s University, and Canada’s highest per-capita percentage of PhDs.