Web Summit returns to Lisbon from November 9 to 12, 2026, bringing one of the world’s largest technology gatherings back to the MEO Arena and the FIL exhibition centre in the Parque das Nações district of the Portuguese capital.
The conference, described by its organizers as the world’s largest technology conference, is expected to draw more than 70,000 attendees from over 160 countries, including founders, investors, technology executives, policymakers and journalists. For four days, the riverside exhibition complex at Rossio dos Olivais becomes a temporary city of its own, with stages, exhibition floors and meeting spaces spread across the arena and the adjoining FIL halls.
Web Summit began in Dublin in 2009 and has been held in Lisbon since 2016, a move that turned a European startup conference into a fixture of the global technology calendar. Its scale is part of its identity. Rather than focusing on a single industry, the program is organized into 17 content tracks covering artificial intelligence, software, robotics, fintech, marketing, venture capital and the wider business of technology, alongside masterclasses, roundtables and startup exhibitions.
Artificial intelligence is expected to dominate this year’s edition. The announced program gives a prominent place to AI and robotics, including companies working on humanoid robots and AI development platforms, reflecting a shift in the industry from software alone toward systems that operate in the physical world. That emphasis arrives as European policymakers are also taking a larger role in the conversation about how AI should be governed, funded and built.
The speaker lineup reflects that mix of industry and policy. Confirmed speakers include Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive of Cloudflare, Jen Wong, chief operating officer of Reddit, and Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Their presence on the same program is typical of Web Summit, where company builders, investors and regulators address the same audience in the same week.
For startups, the draw is concentration. Thousands of early-stage companies use the conference to meet investors, partners and customers in a compressed window, through pitch sessions, exhibitions and scheduled meetings that would take months to arrange elsewhere. For Lisbon, the effect extends well beyond the venue. Hotels, restaurants and venues across the city fill for the week, and a fringe calendar of side events, including Portugal Tech Week, running from November 6 to 15, spreads programming across the capital before and after the main conference days.
The opening night takes place on Monday, November 9, with the main exhibition running from November 10 to 12. Attendees are advised to build a selective agenda. With hundreds of sessions across 17 tracks, the conference rewards those who arrive with a specific question, whether it is a customer to find, a technology to test or a market to understand, rather than an attempt to see everything.
That breadth is also the point. Web Summit has built its reputation on placing people who rarely share a room, startup founders and heads of government, robotics engineers and media executives, inside one venue for four days, and letting the collisions between them set the agenda for the year ahead in technology.
Web Summit 2026 runs November 9 to 12, 2026, at the MEO Arena and FIL, Rossio dos Olivais, 1990-231 Lisbon, Portugal. Tickets, the full speaker list and the complete schedule are available through the conference’s official site.
