Mayors from Paris to Freetown turn Smart City Expo into the key global urban summit of 2026

BARCELONA, Spain, Oct. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Smart City Expo World Congress  (SCEWC), the leading international event on cities and urban innovation organized by Fira de Barcelona, will bring together over 600 speakers from November 3-5 at the Gran Via venue under the theme "Urban Solutions, Real Impact." Held jointly with Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress, the new HOWS Barcelona – Housing World Summit, and Tomorrow.Blue Economy, this year's edition welcomes mayors and regional leaders from four continents, raising the gathering to the level of a true international summit of cities.

The political dimension of the 2026 edition is embodied by Anne Hidalgo, former Mayor of Paris and Global Ambassador of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, who led the French capital for more than a decade and became one of the leading municipal voices in the global climate debate. She will be joined by mayors and regional leaders from all over the world, among them Andre Dickens, Mayor of Atlanta; Haris Doukas, Mayor of Athens; Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan; Gergely Karácsony, Mayor of Budapest; Daryl Barron, Lord Mayor of Dublin; Yvonne Aki-Sawyer, Mayor of Freetown.

Housing, one of the central concerns of this year's edition, gains further institutional weight through HOWS Barcelona, hosted by Barcelona City Council, which will host the Housing Mayors Meeting and Roundtable as a space for political dialogue and cooperation.

The congress keynote will be delivered by Nikolas Badminton, Chief Futurist at Futurist.com, an artificial intelligence expert who helps companies and institutions build strategic foresight capabilities. Additionally, Ayumi Moore Aoki, founder of Women in Tech Global, will also take part in the congress to address diversity and inclusion as drivers of urban innovation.

Industry and international leadership

The corporate and institutional presence rounds off the lineup of speakers with Kees Hertogh, Vice President of Global Industry Marketing at Microsoft, and Rochelle Haynes, Managing Director of What Works Cities at Bloomberg Philanthropies, the initiative that helps local governments use data and evidence to improve public services. They will be joined by Nam Guan Ng, General Manager and Head of Global Smart Cities at Dell; Bilel Jamoussi, Deputy Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau; and John Li, General Manager of the Global Government Business Department at Dahua Technology.

SCEWC 2026 expects 27,000 attendees and over 1,100 exhibitors, including Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Dell Technologies and Veolia.

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