Smart City Expo 2026 closes after showing the real impact of urban solutions

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the leading international event on cities and smart urban solutions organized by Fira de Barcelona, closed its fifteenth edition this afternoon with 29.721 attendees from 140 countries gathered at the Gran Via venue. Under the theme "Urban Solutions, Real Impact", the congress showed that the technologies cities have been committed to already make an impact on today's most pressing urban challenges. This year's main topics included the affordable housing, climate change abatement solutions and mobility.

The program, structured around seven tracks, brought together 668 international experts and representatives of over 1,000 cities. Among the speakers were Anne Hidalgo, Andre Dickens, Anacláudia Rossbach, Nikolas Badminton and Ayumi Moore Aoki.

SCEWC was held together with Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress – organized with EIT Urban Mobility, HOWS Barcelona, Tomorrow.Blue Economy, the Barcelona Deep Tech Summit and the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress, gathering 1,276 exhibitors such as Dell Technologies, Deutsche Telekom IoT, Esri, FCC Enviro, Google, Hanwha Vision, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Ubiwhere, Urbio and Veolia.

"Three days ago, we set out to show that smart city initiatives are already making an impact. Having welcomed over 27,000 attendees and 1,276 exhibitors, and having brought together mayors, companies and experts who are delivering results all over the world, we can affirm that the message from cities has been clear: they are ready and willing to scale what works and we are ready to help them speed the process," said Ugo Valenti, Director of Smart City Expo World Congress.

Cities Programme

SCEWC hosted an agenda of activities under the name Cities Programme, jointly organized with the Barcelona City Council, focused on the exchange of strategies and knowledge among municipal leaders. The programme featured the Housing Mayors Meeting and the City Peers meetings, among other activities.

World Smart City Awards

The Japanese capital was awarded as "Smart City of 2026" at the World Smart City Awards, which acknowledge every year the most outstanding initiatives and projects in the urban transformation industry. The Jury granted the City Award to Tokyo, through its Bureau of Digital Services, for "C³ Powering Tokyo", a model that puts residents at the center of its digital and AI transformation.

Smart City Expo World Congress will return to Fira de Barcelona's Gran Via venue for its sixteenth edition on November 2 - 4, 2027.