The Mobile World Congress, the largest annual meeting of the telecommunications industry, will be held in Barcelona until at least 2030. Its current contract has been extended for six years, the organizers reported today.
The event, which attracts more than 100.000 people to Barcelona, has been held in the second largest city in Spain since 2006. Year after year, the city has been adapting both herself and her calendar to meet the needs of transportation and hotel accommodation for the dates on which they are celebrated due to that immense number of people who come year after year.
Barcelona will have Movile World Congress in the remainder of the decade
The existing agreement between the GSMA association, which hosts the congress, and the local authorities was until 2024. With this extension of the agreement, Barcelona is going to have its annual mobile fair, with hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world during what remains of the decade, at which time they will have to review whether they maintain the agreement or if they decide to change cities.
We are delighted to announce that the MWC will remain in Barcelona until 2030. Barcelona is so embedded in the MWC experience that it is difficult for me to think of one and not the other.
Mats Granryd, CEO of the GSMA, the organization that manages the Mobile World Congress
Mobile World Congress was one of the first events to be canceled in 2020 as COVID-19 began to sweep the globe. As international travel and large gatherings of people were dangerous to global health, in 2020 there was no such edition, despite attempts to delay it or make a smaller side event.
In 2021, a reduced edition was held, in June, instead of February, as usual, and many events were held online. By then, vaccines began to be distributed among the population, which allowed the event to be held, although it was small.
For this year's 2022 edition, which returned to its normal format, 61.000 participants came. It is far less than the more than 100.000 who attended in 2019 before the pandemic, but you have to understand that there are still outbreaks and not all countries in the world have had general access to vaccines. It is to be hoped that as the years go by, the influx will return to normality and at a certain point, the record will be surpassed.
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