LISBON, Portugal — The technology industry is bouncing back strong from the pandemic, as evidenced by Web Summit, the largest technology event in the world, fully selling out earlier than ever before. The 2022 event will feature more startups and partners on the show floor than in the past, a welcomed record-breaking milestone after two hard years due to COVID.
“By early 2021, it looked like Web Summit might not survive the year,” Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO at Web Summit, stated. “As a team, we rallied together and somehow made it through 2021. It’s been an extraordinary recovery over the last 18 months, from near death in early 2021 to our best year ever in 2022.”
From Nov. 1-4, 2022, more than 70,000 attendees, 2,630 exhibiting startups and companies from more than 100 countries, 1,120 investors and 1,040 speakers will travel to Lisbon for the event. To accommodate the more than 2,000 exhibitors, Web Summit will spread over an area at the Altice Arena and FIL pavilions 25% larger than the space used in 2021.
Web Summit’s Impact Initiative has more than 190 confirmed Impact startups in the areas of sustainability and cleantech, philanthropy and social good, and medtech and pharma. The Impact Initiative was launched in 2020 to bring startups that are working to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals together with investors and organizations and funds that create measurable social and environmental impact.
Exhibition space for partnerships sold out seven weeks before the event, and 330 partners will be in attendance, up nearly 40% on pre-pandemic numbers, including Google, Figma, Stripe, PitchBook, Amazon Web Services and Binance.
Web Summit 2022 will see the launch of four new stages focused on industries of growing importance to technology. Verified will host the world’s exciting influencers and content creators, and Book Summit will feature leading thinkers, writers and academics for a look inside the world of fiction, publishing, literary criticism and new non-fiction. The new Security Summit will focus on compliance and regulations, Web3, online data and security, the metaverse and global cyber warfare. The future of cryptocurrency and Web3 as the next evolution of the internet will be the focus for the new Crypto stage.
Toptal will partner with Web Summit to host the Women in Tech Lounge, where roundtables, masterclasses, talks and meetups take place. Since the launch of Web Summit in 2015, participation by women has been on the rise; the November 2021 event was the first time more women than men attended, with 50.5% of attendees being women.
Reach the Paddy Cosgrave and the Web Summit team at info@websummit.com
