India, June 10 -- Global electricity demand from data centres is expected to grow by 26% in 2026, driven largely by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, according to new forecasts from Gartner.

The technology research and advisory firm estimates worldwide data centre electricity consumption will reach 565 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2026, up from 447TWh in 2025.

According to Gartner, the growing demand for compute-intensive AI applications is accelerating electricity use across data centres worldwide, while power availability is increasingly becoming a limiting factor for AI expansion.

Linglan Wang, Director Analyst at Gartner, said demand for AI computing capacity is placing pressure on existing infrastructure an...