MWC25 Barcelona returns under the theme Converge. Connect. Create.

The GSMA shared highlights and its vision for MWC25 Barcelona, during a press conference. With its unique combination of exhibition, thought leaders, startups and policymakers, MWC25 Barcelona will bring together everybody from industry CEOs and visionary founders to presidents, for the world’s largest and most influential connectivity event between 3-6 March 2025.

The GSMA’s Director General, Mats Granryd, said:

“There’s real excitement in the air for MWC25 Barcelona; that same disruptive energy we saw with the growth of mobile is here again in the AI era. From AI to 5G Advance to the rich potential for digital services unleashed by GSMA Open Gateway, only at MWC will we first see the products and ideas that embody this spirit of innovation set to reshape our digital future.”

Discussions about technology’s role in our societies are in the spotlight like never before. MWC will host some of the world’s most influential minds who will share their insights on topics including how AI will reshape our lives, the challenges of balancing innovation and regulation, and the evolution of mobile networks.

This year’s keynote and conference agenda will centre around the key trends shaping connectivity, from 5G inside to AI+. As well as an inspiring line up of around 1,200 speakers across MWC25 Barcelona’s 19 stages, recently confirmed keynote speakers include:

• AI Visionary, Ray Kurzweil
• Databricks’ Chief AI Officer, Naveen Rao
• European Commission’s Executive Vice President, Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera
• US Federal Communication Commission’s Chairman, Brendan Carr
• e&’s Group CEO, Hatem Dowidar
• Maven’s Founder & CEO, Kate Ryder Maven
• Mistral AI‘s CEO and Co-founder, Arthur Mensch
• Multiverse‘s CEO and Founder, Euan Blair
• Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas
• Pivot podcast’s co-host and NYU Professor of Marketing, Scott Galloway
• Shutterstock‘s Senior Director of AI and Data Science, Dr. Alessandra Sala

The GSMA’s Chief Marketing Officer, Lara Dewar, said: “MWC25 Barcelona is shaping up to be one of the most thought-provoking and insightful editions yet, staying true to our long history of showcasing the most influential leaders of our time. Discussions at MWC resonate far beyond its walls; the keynote stage will welcome the industry’s most iconic thinkers to spark debate, share insights and inspire us about technology’s role in redefining our societies and world.”

New speakers are being announced continuously on the MWC25 Barcelona website.

First-time exhibitors attending the show include Alibaba Cloud, China Unicom, Databricks, Indra, KDDI Spherience, KYOCERA, Liberty Global, Siemens, SquareTrade, Tencent Cloud, TransUnion and Ubiquiti. These companies join returning exhibitors and sponsors such as Accenture, AWS, China Mobile, Dell, e&, Ericsson, Google, HPE, Huawei, Lenovo, Meta, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, SK Telecom, Vodafone, Xiaomi and ZTE, among others.

4YFN, the home of big ideas, will bring together startups, investors and corporates to power the next generation of unicorns in Halls 8.0 and 8.1. The Banco Sabadell stage at 4YFN will host some of the biggest names from the global startup and investor community as well as the father of modern AI, computer scientist Juergen Schmidhuber. Day 3 will reveal one of the 4YFN Awards finalists – Bankuish, Horus ML, Qflow, Ramon.Space, Rockfish Data – as the winner.

On the GSMA Pavilion in Hall 4, the European Space Agency (ESA) will demonstrate the results of its partnership with the GSMA which aims to foster new terrestrial and satellite communications services for society. Also on the Pavilion, the GSMA will show a new Kazakh large language model (LLM) for AI to support under-resourced languages around the world. The LLM was created through our partnership with VEON, Beeline Kazakhstan and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, one of Europe’s seven AI factories. 

And in the GSMA Open Gateway showcase next to the Pavilion, we will spotlight how network APIs are helping developers in vertical sectors deploy new services. There will be six demo pods hosting 17 organisations, including Nokia and Elmo Cars who will show how to remotely drive a car in Finland using APIs.

The GSMA Ministerial Programme will convene industry leaders, government ministers and regulatory authorities for the world’s largest gathering of policymakers who enable the digital economy. Topics on its agenda will include AI governance, energy efficiency of networks, future spectrum for mobile and network investment.

MWC25 Barcelona co-locates with FC Barcelona’s Sports Tomorrow Congress run by the Barca Innovation Hub in Hall 6 and, in a first for this year, it will take exhibition space at 4YFN. And, after a successful pilot last year, Mobile World Capital’s Talent Arena will co-locate at Fira Montjuïc. Over 200 speakers will attend Talent Arena this year, including Apple’s Co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The GSMA Open Gateway DevCon will take place at Talent Arena, along with the Open Gateway hackathon. Developers will test their projects under realistic conditions on live networks, with access to the latest network APIs. Mobile World Capital is also bringing 180 developers from Paris on a charter flight with Vueling, and 70 developers on a dedicated high-speed train from Madrid with Iryo.

Also Read: A Preview of the GSMA’s Digital Nations Summit with Julian Gorman