Barcelona becomes the world’s tech capital for its 19th year as the Mobile World Congress (MWC) kicks off on Monday.
The globe’s top professional fair on all things wireless – mobile phones and telecoms in general – takes place through Thursday at Fira de Gran Via, in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, with over 100,000 people expected to attend, just below the most successful edition, 2019, with 110,000 attendees.
A record 2,700 exhibitors will meet at the event, including the top global tech companies, such as Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi, Microsoft, Meta and Google.
With the motto ‘Converge, connect, create,’ the new edition of the Mobile World Congress will feature all sorts of new trends in areas including AI and 5G connectivity.
The newest state-of-the-art gadgets related to mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smart glasses, and virtual reality, will be on show this week, as well as innovation in flexible devices and transparent screens.
Every edition of this fair witnesses the launch of new products by the main brands. This week, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series may be presented, as well as Xiaomi 15 Ultra, Oppo’s Find N5 foldable phone or Realme’s 14 Pro, which changes color depending on the temperature.
The trends in smartphones include foldable devices and cameras containing advanced sensors and zoom lenses.
Beyond phones, the launch of new car models is expected, including Xiaomi’s SU7 Ultra electric vehicle, and one car that can be driven remotely. The model, developed by Nokia and Elmo Cars, will be tested at the fair – the vehicle will run in Finland but will be driven from Barcelona.
Devices related to 5G connectivity will also be exhibited, with Telefónica and South Korea’s SK Telecom among the companies presenting solutions in the medical or big data fields, respectively.
Artificial intelligence was undoubtedly the big buzzword on the lips of the attendees Catalan News spoke to.
“Artificial intelligence is everywhere,” said Mia Anderson, general manager of sales at New Zealand telecommunications provider 2degrees.
“It’s about trying to decipher what artificial intelligence will work for you and your network and your customers. The more you can see, the more you can understand how it might help us back in New Zealand,” Anderson said.
Andrew Nuttall, chief technology officer and co-founder of Skylo Technologies said he was at MWC “to see how some of these companies are making the AI dream real, and how tangible it can be or not, or how much of a flash in the pan it is.”
“I’m also excited to see the continued push of satellite as a connectivity medium for both 5G- and 6G-related use cases,” said Nuttall, who traveled from California for MWC.
Sandra D’Agostino, from the Buenos Aires provincial government said her team was in Barcelona “to look for the latest solutions, everything related with artificial intelligence, connectivity, and technology that can be useful for us in Buenos Aires province.”
“In fact, we work with the Catalan government. We have an agreement on AI strategies and projects,” she added.
Over 100,000 people are expected at MWC 2025, with a significant presence from Asia. Some of the companies have been part of the trade show for years, such as Huawei, Xiaomi, or SK Telecom, while others will feature for the first time, such as China Unicom, or cloud computing brands such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud.
Chinese companies will have presence alongside top US tech firms, and newcomers to the fair such as Databricks and Ubiquiti.
Like every year, Catalonia will also have several companies in the Catalonia Pavilion, sponsored by the Catalan government, where 46 firms will gather, as well as 52 more in the Four Years from Now startup section of MWC.
Over a thousand meetings will take place in the Open Innovation Challenge, where renowned companies such as Cupra, Fluidra, LG, Tous, Roca, Hyundai, and Banco Mediolanum will present challenges to small Catalan initiatives, who will have to find innovative solutions.
The Mobile World Congress is always the seat of conferences from top speakers and tech industry figures, and this year 40% of them will be women –a third of the speakers will be related to the mobile phone world, an area that carries less weight every year.
Talent Arena at Fira de Barcelona’s Montjuic site will feature 200 speakers, including chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, and AI expert and former top Google official Cassie Kozyrkov.
5G connectivity and AI will also be recurrent topics at the MWC talks, with Jurgen Schmidhuber, the ‘father’ of modern AI presenting a speech, as well as US comms official Brendan Carr.
The trade show will have an impact of over €500 million for Barcelona, with an occupation rate of 95% of the city’s tourist apartments. The organizers have reserved 21,000 rooms in hotels for attendees for Monday night into Tuesday.
Restaurants and nightclubs expect to earn €125 million during the week.
President Salvador Illa expressed confidence that Barcelona can retain the Mobile World Congress beyond 2030, when the current agreement expires.
Speaking to Catalunya Ràdio on Monday morning, Illa said that the future of the congress in the Catalan capital can only be achieved “if things are done well.”
According to the Catalan president, there are other cities that would like to host the event “at any price,” but the organizers are “very satisfied” with Barcelona.
Attendees arriving at the congress were greeted by two protests – one involving a few dozen pro-Palestine activists and another with around a hundred healthcare technicians.
Monday marks the first day of a week of strike action by healthcare technicians called by the SAE and SIETeSS unions. They say an agreement signed almost a year ago that included better economic conditions is not being fulfilled.
