Year
Class of 2026
Browse commencement speeches from 2026, including addresses by Sundar Pichai, Lisa T. Su, and Min Jin Lee. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.
3 addresses 10 themes 3 highlights
Highlights from 2026
Records with stronger source signals, summaries, transcripts, videos, or visual archive material.
Sundar Pichai Stanford University Sundar Pichai addresses Stanford's Class of 2026, reflecting on his own journey from Chennai, India to Stanford and Google. He argues that most life moments are less make-or-break than they seem and offers three filters for making decisions: choosing optimism, working on hard things, and doing what excites you. He illustrates each with personal stories, including an impromptu trip to Vegas as a student and the development of the Chrome browser.
Photo: Lukasz Kobus / European Commission / CC BY 4.0 / source InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source .jpg){kind=link}
Lisa T. Su Massachusetts Institute of Technology AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su, an MIT alumna, reflects on her undergraduate and graduate years at MIT, including her UROP research experiences and the development of what she calls an 'engineer's instinct' to break down hard problems. She discusses her career path through IBM and AMD, the promise of AI to accelerate discovery in fields like medicine, and argues that people, not technology, determine the future. She urges graduates to choose ambitious problems, run toward the hardest ones, and make their own luck. InfographicSummaryOfficial source 
Min Jin Lee Yale University At Yale's Class Day, author Min Jin Lee '90 advised the Class of 2026 to adopt a nuanced understanding of time, drawing on the Greek concepts of chronos (measurable clock time) and kairos (opportune time or strategic openings). Reflecting on her own uneven years as a student, she argued that moments once seen as painful or insignificant were actually openings for risk and growth. She encouraged graduates to keep learning, do their share of work, and keep showing up, telling them that time is their teacher and nothing was wasted. InfographicSummaryOfficial source Represented themes
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