Four months before the start of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) edition which will be held in Barcelona – from 2 to 5 March – the organization is already warming up. The managers of the mobile telephone association GSMA, which manages the congress, explained on Thursday the first news of the 2026 show, which will reach its 20th edition in Barcelona and for which they plan to soon hang the “complete” sign in terms of exhibitors. “The demand is extraordinary and we are very excited because everything leads to the worn out“But it is not a question of the number of people but of the quality of those who come, the important thing is that the people who make decisions in companies and in politics come,” explained John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA. The organization expects to surpass last year’s 109,000 participants and acknowledges that it already has space problems: “We’re a little tight.” In this edition, the MWC will dedicate new spaces to space technology, satellites and aviation, and will also organize a day preceding the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya, in Montmeló, on electric mobility.
Last year’s edition allowed the MWC to match its pre-pandemic attendance record, and the organization had already warned that it would soon run out of space. The solution is in the Pavilion 0 project. Fira de Barcelona is building this new pavilion in the Gran Via facilities of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, which will add 60,000 square meters, but will only be available for conferences and events in the second half of 2027 and, to be able to be used by the MWC, until its 2028 edition. “We have space limitations and cannot welcome many new exhibitors. Yes, if we had the Hall 0 we would fill it,” Hoffman said.
For the 2026 edition, the congress had to use its imagination to find new spaces: one example is The Airport of the Future space, an area which, together with Airbus as one of the main partners, will be located outside the Fira site, at its southern entrance, and will explore technological innovations in airports and aviation. Inside Fira the main novelty will be the area dedicated to “new frontiers”: mainly to communication technologies in space, such as satellites, quantum innovations and 5G applications from space. “This is the first time we’re going into this topic because satellite connectivity is very important to fill connectivity gaps,” Hoffman said.
Beyond these developments, Gran Via will continue to host major companies in the mobile technology sector – except Apple, which has never attended this congress – as well as major global technology companies, such as Airtel, Orange, Rakuten and others. Among these there will be Starlink and SpaceX, two of Elon Musk’s companies, who however has not yet confirmed whether it will arrive: the CEOs of these companies will do so. Hall 8 will once again host the 4YFN entrepreneurship show, which will surpass the 1,000 emerging companies featured last year.
In addition to the Gran Via venue, the congress will be present in the Montjuïc venue with the Talent Arena, the new features of which were presented a few days ago. And as a novelty, the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya, in Montmeló, will also be used, which since last January has also been managed by Fira de Barcelona. There, on the Sunday before the start of the MWC, the CircuitX event will be held, to show innovations in the field of electric mobility and plug-in cars to around a hundred of the company’s technology directors.
The GSMA leaders took advantage of a meeting in Barcelona to have a first contact with the media on the news of the congress, which traditionally took place a month before the congress. It was also the first opportunity for GSMA’s new CEO, Vivek Badrinath, together with Hoffman and Lara Dewar, marketing director, to share their impressions. “This congress has become what it is today, the opportunity for companies and legislators to meet,” he explained. The MWC, which will reach its 20th edition in Barcelona but whose history begins in 1987 with the first GSMA meeting, will focus on six major themes with artificial intelligence as a common vector: Intelligent Infrastructure, ConnectAI, AI 4 Enterprise, AI Nexus, Tech4All and Game Changers.
3,500 companies and exhibitors will participate in the congress, and one of the unknowns is whether Israeli companies will participate in the context of the Gaza war and international sanctions, after there was no Israeli pavilion at the Smart City Expo. Badrinath said that Israel is “a very important technology hub” and that the MWC’s goal is to bring the best technologies and welcome everyone, but he also stressed that they will respect the rules established by the Fira de Barcelona and the city council, in case the participation of Israeli companies is prevented.
