The topics of the five forums are "New Era, New Idea, New Software", "Digital Economy Leads to Intelligent Future", "Industrial Internet, Intelligent Future", "AI for a Better Future" and "Big Data Enables the Real Economy". Speakers include academicians and experts, heads of big domestic companies, senior executives of multinational corporations and internationally renowned scholars.

The 21 parallel forums are organized around topics such as blockchain, cloud services, open source software, the Belt and Road Initiative and intellectual property protection, and are presented in keynote speeches and roundtable forums. Among them, the International Forum on International Cooperation in the Next-Generation Information Technology Industry and the International Forum on Innovation and Integration of the Internet of Things will be attended by international experts and scholars from the United States, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Portugal.

Additionally, the software expo will also publish a list of top 100 companies with comprehensive competitiveness in China's software and information technology service sector, and the Industrial and Information Blue Book (2017-2018), along with other research results.

The software expo is highly international. In addition to inviting more than 20 guest speakers from other countries, the expo has also organized international forums and matchmaking activities in English and directed invitations to government delegations from countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as officials of the Chinese embassies of 11 countries including Finland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Malaysia.