LISBON, Portugal — The tech industry is bouncing back strongly from the pandemic, as evidenced by Web Summitthe world’s largest tech event, is selling out earlier than ever. The 2022 event will welcome more startups and partners to the show floor than ever before, a welcome record after two challenging years due to COVID.
“At the start of 2021, it looked like Web Summit wouldn’t survive the year,” said Paddy Cosgrave, Web Summit Founder and CEO. “As a team, we pulled together and somehow managed to get through 2021. We’ve had an extraordinary recovery over the last 18 months, from our near-death at the start of 2021 to our best year ever in 2022.”
From November 1 to 4, 2022, more than 70,000 attendees, 2,630 exhibiting startups and companies from over 100 countries, 1,120 investors and 1,040 speakers will travel to Lisbon for the event. To accommodate more than 2,000 exhibitors, the Web Summit will expand to an area of the Altice Arena and FIL pavilions 25% larger than the space used in 2021.
Web Summit’s Impact Initiative features over 190 verified Impact startups across sustainability and cleantech, philanthropy and social good, and medtech and pharma. The Impact Initiative was launched in 2020 to bring together startups working to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with investors and the organizations and funds that createyou measurable social and environmental impact.
The partnership exhibit space sold out seven weeks before the event, and 330 partners will be in attendance, an increase of nearly 40% over pre-pandemic numbers, including Google, Figma, Band, Presentation book, Amazon Web Services And Binance.
Web Summit 2022 will see the launch of four new stages focused on industries that are increasingly important to technology. Verified will host the world’s most exciting influencers and content creators, and Book Summit will bring together leading thinkers, writers, and academics for insights into the world of fiction, publishing, literary criticism, and new nonfiction. The new Security Summit will focus on compliance and regulations, Web3, data and online security, the metaverse, and global cyberwarfare. The future of cryptocurrency and Web3 as the next evolution of the internet will be at the center of the new Crypto Stage.
Toptal will partner with Web Summit to host the Women in Tech Lounge, featuring panel discussions, masterclasses, talks, and meetups. Since Web Summit launched in 2015, female participation has been on the rise; the November 2021 event marked the first time that more women than men attended, with 50.5% of attendees being women.
Contact Paddy Cosgrave and the Web Summit team at [email protected]