Thought leadership at MWC Barcelona

Informative, challenging and always inspirational, our select speaker portfolio brings together leading voices from across technology, business and innovation to show you the way.

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The numbers that count from 2026

  • 1700+

    speakers

  • 40%

    C-level speakers

  • 35%

    female speakers

Explore our thought leadership themes

Through our thought leadership themes we turned a critical eye on the key technological advances influencing our future digital development. The all-pervasive impact of AI, the evolution of enterprise and the power of human ideas to create the technology that connects us and makes our lives better.

Intelligent Infrastructure

Theme Sponsor:

ConnectAI

Theme Sponsor:

AI 4 Enterprise

Theme Sponsor:

AI Nexus

Theme Sponsor:

Tech4All

Theme Sponsor:

Game Changers

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View all thought leadership themes

Insight with impact

Opening the Show

  • Three mountains to climb

    Opening 2026’s conference track, Vivek Badrinath, Director General of the GSMA, outlined three “mountains” the industry must climb together: completing the 5G journey; rising to the AI challenge — including a new Open Telco AI initiative and the launch of an Open Swahili Reasoning Model to tackle the growing AI language gap — and protecting the world from the escalating global scam epidemic.

  • Star power at the opening

    King Felipe VI of Spain, President Pedro Sánchez, and President of the Government of Catalunya Salvador Illa were all in attendance at the opening keynote.

  • Technology is accelerating. Trust is not.

    Orange CEO Christel Heydemann warned that while AI-generated content has already surpassed human-generated content in volume, trust in digital systems is not keeping pace — and that telcos carry a historic responsibility as the backbone of the digital economy.

  • The Wild West of the sky

    Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle called for global coordination in the “Wild West” of space, arguing that the sky urgently needs a new coordinated set of rules. She was joined by astronaut Tim Peake, who spoke about the role connectivity played in keeping him connected to his family during six months on the International Space Station.

  • Watch the full opening keynote
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The web, AI and the attention economy

MWCB26 Highlights Thought Leadership Sir Tim Berners

A fireside chat with Sir Tim Berners-Lee

The wide-ranging conversation went from why apostrophes aren’t used in URLs, to how Sir Tim persuaded private companies that a common browser language would make the internet enormous, finishing with his passion project Solid — designed to put personal data back in the hands of its owners.

MWCB26 Highlights Thought Leadership Kaiwei Tang

Making the case for a more intentional digital life

A candid discussion between Kaiwei Tang and Aaron Paul about society’s increasingly strained relationship with smartphones and the business models designed to keep us hooked.

Watch the full keynote

MWCB26 Highlights Thought Leadership Kate Darling

Rethinking robots at Talent Arena

Kate Darling, author of The New Breed, and former MIT researcher, argued that we should view robotic development through the lens of animal husbandry rather than science fiction. Robots are most powerful when supplementing what humans do, she said, citing the robot vacuum as a perfect example.  

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MWCB26 Highlights Thought Leadership Gwynne Shotwell

Satellite and direct-to-deviceSpaceX keynote: connectivity for the unconnected

Gwynne Shotwell emphasised the transformative potential of connecting those still offline, while Michael Nicolls presented V2 constellation plans, positioning satellite as complementary to — not a replacement for — terrestrial networks. 

Watch the full keynote

Inclusion and workplace culture

  • Do we walk the talk?

    Wednesday opened with an unflinching session on inclusion and workplace culture. Discussing The GSMA Voice Report, panellists called for leaders to build a business case for making culture the top organisational focus.

  • Diversity in LLMs

    A panel explored a sobering reality: of the world’s 7,000 languages, fewer than 20 have high-resource AI models trained on them — meaning billions of people risk being locked out of AI’s benefits entirely.

  • EQUALS in Tech Awards

    The EQUALS in Tech Awards celebrate organisations advancing gender equality in tech. Travelling to MWC from Palestine, Nadiah Sabaneh of FINOMENA took home the Leadership in Tech award — a goal 20 years in the making.

MWCB26 Highlights Thought Leadership Taking Stock

Taking stock — The Thursday wrap Analyst session: what did we learn from MWC26?

In one of MWC’s most anticipated sessions, AI dominated from multiple angles: sovereign AI and the role operators play in building it, physical AI bringing robots and smart devices to life on the showfloor, and the growing importance of cross-industry collaboration.