This article examines the implementation of Anticipatory Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance within the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (Basque Country) through an action research project designed to inform Territorial Digital Inclusion Strategies led by the General Directorate for Human Rights and Democratic Culture (Presidency). Situating the study within debates on anticipatory governance, it addresses the following research question: how can city-regional governments operationalise anticipatory AI governance to advance territorial digital inclusion while safeguarding democratic accountability and human digital rights? Moving beyond industrial and productivity-centred approaches, the study focuses on the ethical, socio-economic, and territorial implications of AI for citizens. The action research follows an eight-step methodological roadmap (2024–2026) driven by a Science-for-Policy approach. Methodologically, the study integrates a multi-actor action research design structured around (i) Knowledge Exchange, (ii) Stakeholder Engagement, and (iii) Open-Science Dissemination. Findings indicate that embedding anticipatory AI governance within territorial digital inclusion strategies enhances policy foresight, strengthens ethical reflexivity in algorithmic decision-making, and consolidates public trust through participatory governance. The analysis also incorporates an emerging legal dimension, informed by the leading author’s selection to recent European Commission initiatives, including the Frontier AI Expert Forum and the AI Act Advisory Forum, enabling preliminary alignment with evolving EU AI regulatory frameworks. The Gipuzkoa case offers a context-sensitive governance framework, highlighting design principles that may inform other territorial administrations under varying institutional and resource conditions. The central empirical contribution of the article is to demonstrate that anticipatory AI governance capacity is unevenly distributed across civil society organisations (CSOs), provincial directorates, and municipalities. These asymmetries affect how AI-related risks, digital inclusion priorities, and governance responsibilities are interpreted and operationalised across territorial governance scales. Consequently, anticipatory AI governance emerges not as a universally replicable institutional model, but as a context-sensitive governance capability conditioned by administrative capacity, territorial coordination, and stakeholder participation.