The Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry’s largest annual meeting, will be held in Barcelona until 2030, expanding its present agreement by six years, coordinators said on Monday.

The event, which draws more than 100,000 people to Barcelona, has been held in Spain’s second-biggest city since 2006. The extant contract between the GSMA union that manage the congress and local advisors ran until 2024.

Barcelona to host Mobile World Congress (MWC) until at least 2030

Mobile World Congress(MWC), which draws more than 100,000 people to Barcelona, has been held in Spain’s second-largest city since 2006.

“We are happy to announce that MWC will be in Barcelona through to 2030, said GSMA director general Mats Granryd said in a statement. Barcelona is so interlaced in the MWC experience, it’s hard for me to think about one and not the other,” he added.

The meeting was one of the first events to be canceled in 2020 as COVID-19 started to span all over the world. Since its move to Barcelona in 2006, MWC has dogged to grow, and it now includes a range of functions and activities throughout the year. A scaled-back edition was held in 2021 in June instead of February as is actually the case, with many events held online. The 2022 edition, which returned to its normal format, drew 61,000 participants, far less than the over 100,000 who attended in 2019 before the pandemic hit.

John Hoffman, the CEO of GSMA said: ‘Barcelona is so much more than the city where MWC occurs. We have not just grown the function since our move to Barcelona but developed it to include a whole ecosystem. The companionship and people of the city and the true partnership we experience at every level means Barcelona is a baroque part of what the GSMA wants to create through Mobile World Congress (MWC).’