--- slug: web-summit title: Web Summit title_alt: - Web Summit Lisbon fiche_model: llm-content-v1 last_verified: '2026-09-06' eventsindex_id: EI-06473 canonical_url: https://eventsindex.org/events/web-summit.html next_edition_year: 2026 date_start: '2026-11-09' date_end: '2026-11-12' city: Lisbon country: Portugal organiser: Web Summit (Manders Terrace Ltd, Dublin) organiser_url: https://websummit.com/ b2b: true meta_description: 'Web Summit, Lisbon, 9 to 12 November 2026 at MEO Arena and FIL: 71,386 attendees in 2025, 17 tracks including SaaS and Growth, tickets from EUR 950.' editorial_take: Web Summit is the one week when the SaaS vendors, investors and enterprise buyers of a sales stack share two buildings in Lisbon, but its 71,386 attendees are an organiser count and its value to a sales leader depends on meetings booked before arrival, not on the stages. language: en schema_version: v6.0 venue: MEO Arena and FIL (Feira Internacional de Lisboa), Parque das Nacoes, Lisbon vector: sector: - sales-stack --- # Web Summit > *A four-day generalist technology conference held every November at the MEO Arena and the FIL exhibition halls in Lisbon, run by the Dublin company of the same name, which drew 71,386 attendees, 2,725 exhibiting startups and 1,857 investors in 2025 by the organiser's count, and which this index tracks as the largest single gathering in EMEA of SaaS vendors, go-to-market leaders, enterprise buyers and sales-technology exhibitors.* | DATES | VENUE | ORGANISER | ATTENDANCE | |---|---|---|---| | **9 to 12 November 2026** | **MEO Arena and FIL (Feira Internacional de Lisboa), Parque das Nacoes, Lisbon** | **Web Summit (Manders Terrace Ltd, Dublin), founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave** | **71,386 attendees at the 2025 edition (organiser figure)** | ## What is Web Summit? Web Summit is an annual technology conference founded in Dublin in 2009 by Paddy Cosgrave and held in Lisbon every November since 2016. It is a generalist event: its 2026 programme is organised into 17 industry tracks (from AI Summit and MoneyConf to Health Summit and Sport Summit) plus a Centre Stage for keynotes, with a startup exhibition floor in the FIL halls and a paid investor programme. The organiser counted 71,386 attendees from 157 countries, 2,725 exhibiting startups from 108 countries, 1,857 investors and 869 speakers at the 2025 edition (organiser figures, published 13 November 2025 on websummit.com). This index files Web Summit in the Sales Stack vertical for a specific reason: it is the largest gathering in EMEA where B2B SaaS vendors, go-to-market leaders, enterprise buyers and sales-technology exhibitors are in the same buildings at the same time. For a head of sales, a chief revenue officer or a CTO evaluating a sales stack, the parts that matter are the SaaS Summit track (the stage formerly branded SaaS Monster), the Growth Summit and Marketing Summit tracks, the Corporate Innovation Summit where enterprise buyers sit, the startup floor where SaaS was the second-largest exhibitor category in 2025 after AI and machine learning (organiser figure), and the investor meetings that decide which of those vendors will still exist in two years. The rest of the event, from sport and health to policy and creative, is not aimed at that reader. ## When and where does Web Summit take place in 2026? Web Summit 2026 runs from 9 to 12 November 2026, Monday to Thursday, with the opening night on Monday 9 November 2026 and three full conference days from Tuesday 10 to Thursday 12 November 2026 (dates confirmed on websummit.com/web-summit-2026 and on the ticket page, checked 6 September 2026). The venue is the MEO Arena together with the adjoining FIL (Feira Internacional de Lisboa) exhibition halls in Parque das Nacoes, Lisbon, Portugal, at Rossio dos Olivais, Lisboa: the arena holds Centre Stage and the FIL pavilions hold the track stages, the startup exhibition and the partner stands. The MEO Arena was branded Altice Arena from 2017 until its return to the MEO name; third-party guides still use both names for the same building. The 2025 edition ran 10 to 13 November 2025 at the same venue. ## Who organises Web Summit? Web Summit is organised by the company of the same name, whose Dublin-based parent is Manders Terrace Ltd, with founder Paddy Cosgrave as chief executive. Cosgrave resigned as CEO in October 2023 after his public comments on the Gaza war led Meta, Google and Amazon to withdraw from that year's edition; Katherine Maher held the post for three months before leaving for NPR, and Cosgrave returned as CEO in April 2024 (Wikipedia, citing contemporaneous press). In March 2025 Cosgrave settled five lawsuits with co-founders David Kelly and Daire Hickey, whose shares were redeemed in April 2025, leaving him in full control of the company; Manders Terrace reported revenue of EUR 79.2 million and an after-tax profit of EUR 3.7 million for 2024, after a EUR 6.7 million loss in 2023 (Irish Times, 27 November 2025). The event is in Lisbon under a ten-year agreement signed in October 2018 with the Portuguese government and the city, worth EUR 110 million (EUR 11 million a year) and running through 2028, with a EUR 3 billion buyout clause and a commitment to expand the venue (Irish Times and RTE, October 2018). No extension beyond 2028 has been announced as of 6 September 2026; Cosgrave has said publicly that he would like the event to stay in Lisbon beyond that date. ## Who attends Web Summit? The organiser reported 71,386 attendees from 157 countries at the 2025 edition, up from 70,236 at the 2023 edition (organiser figures; the 2024 edition was declared sold out without a published closing count on the organiser's press page). Within that total, the organiser's own breakdown for 2025 gives 2,725 exhibiting startups from 108 countries (40 percent women-founded), 1,857 investors from 86 countries (a 74 percent rise on the 1,066 of 2024), 869 speakers, 1,519 media attendees described as "publishers, CEOs, editors and reporters", and 268 government delegations from 82 countries (websummit.com, 13 November 2025). The remaining bulk, roughly 60,000 people, is the general-attendee population: corporate teams from the technology, banking, consulting and telecom groups the homepage lists as attending (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Adobe, KPMG, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Accenture, Huawei), founders and employees of scale-ups, and a large contingent of Portuguese and Brazilian professionals. For a sales leader the useful population is narrower: SaaS vendors on the startup floor, enterprise buyers in the corporate delegations, and the investors, who are the people deciding which vendors get funded. ## Who are the confirmed 2026 speakers at Web Summit? The 2026 speaker roster is published progressively on websummit.com/speakers and is a searchable directory rather than a fixed list; it ran to 869 names in 2025 (organiser figure) and this fiche does not attempt to reproduce it. Names shown as confirmed on the organiser's 2026 speaker and landing pages on 6 September 2026: Richard Socher (Recursive and You.com), Matthew Prince (Cloudflare), Jen Wong (Reddit), Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian), Henna Virkkunen (European Commission), Nick Thompson (The Atlantic), Connie Loizos (TechCrunch), Maria Sharapova and Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid). Status: published roster, organiser's own pages, subject to change until the event. Paddy Cosgrave, the founder and CEO, opens the event each year and holds a press conference during it. ## What's new at Web Summit in 2026? Three changes a returning attendee will notice. First, the 2026 landing page flags an Energy Summit stage ("How do we power the new world order?") as new among the 17 tracks; the track list otherwise carries over the 2025 structure, with SaaS Monster now presented as SaaS Summit. Second, the sister-event calendar has moved: Web Summit Vancouver, which replaced Collision in 2025, ran its second edition on 11 to 14 May 2026 and returns on 25 to 28 May 2027, while Web Summit Qatar runs 31 January to 3 February 2027 and Web Summit Rio 14 to 17 June 2027, so Lisbon in November 2026 is followed by three sister editions within seven months. Third, the corporate context: the organiser's parent company returned to profit for 2024 after the 2023 loss that followed the boycott by Meta, Google and Amazon, and the 2025 edition set records on the organiser's own count for investors (1,857) and startups (2,725), so 2026 is being sold as a growth year rather than a recovery year. No change of dates, venue or ticket structure was found for 2026 compared with 2025. ## What's on the Web Summit 2026 programme? The 2026 programme is organised into 17 tracks, each with its own stage and a one-line theme on websummit.com/tracks, checked 6 September 2026: AI Summit ("AI's next act"), Commerce Summit, Creative Summit, Cybersecurity Summit, MoneyConf (fintech), Marketing Summit ("The future of marketing has stopped clicking"), Future of Work Summit, Corporate Innovation Summit, Developer Summit, Growth Summit ("The new math of scaling"), Energy Summit, New Media Summit, Venture Summit ("The next era of venture capital"), SaaS Summit ("Long live SaaS"), Policy Summit, Health Summit and Sport Summit. Centre Stage in the arena carries the keynotes and the PITCH startup competition final. For a sales-stack reader the relevant tracks are SaaS Summit, Growth Summit, Marketing Summit and Corporate Innovation Summit; the Venture Summit matters for anyone tracking which sales-technology vendors are being funded. The session-level schedule for 2026 was not yet published on 6 September 2026; in 2025 the programme filled three conference days plus an opening night, with 869 speakers (organiser figure). ## What session formats does Web Summit use? Keynotes and fireside chats on Centre Stage in the arena; panels and talks of 20 to 30 minutes on the track stages in the FIL pavilions; masterclasses (included with a general ticket); curated meetups, 400 of them in 2025 (organiser figure), grouped by interest and booked through the event app; investor-to-startup meetings scheduled through the app for participants in the startup and investor programmes; Mentor Hours for startups; the PITCH competition, which in 2025 took 105 of the 2,725 exhibiting startups through three days of heats to a Centre Stage final; and the exhibition floor, where startups exhibit on a rotating one-day basis and partners hold stands for the full event. The organiser's ticket page also lists "tailored networking recommendations", a searchable attendee list and a schedule builder in the app as part of the general ticket. There is no reserved seating on track stages; Centre Stage fills early for headline names. ## What side events run alongside Web Summit in Lisbon? Night Summit is the organiser's own evening programme, run each conference night on site and around the city under the tagline "Smaller gatherings, bigger opportunities"; access is included with every ticket tier according to the ticket page. The opening night on the Monday is a Centre Stage session followed by Night Summit. Outside the organiser's own programme, Lisbon hosts a large unofficial calendar of investor dinners, national-pavilion receptions, meetups and mini-conferences during the week, listed by third-party aggregators such as Luma and innovationscene.pt; one guide counts more than 200 such events (unverifiable information). Startup Portugal runs Road 2 Web Summit, a national programme that selects Portuguese startups to exhibit. The organiser also runs a PITCH competition (2025 winner: Granter, a Portuguese AI grant assistant, chosen by jury and by 80 percent of the audience vote, organiser figure) and an IBM Sports Tech Startup Prize is announced for 2026. ## How much do Web Summit 2026 tickets cost? A General Attendee ticket was on sale at EUR 950 including Portuguese VAT (EUR 772 excluding sales tax) on 6 September 2026, shown against a struck-through regular price of EUR 1,595. The VIP ticket was EUR 1,950 including VAT (EUR 1,585 excluding sales tax) and adds evening receptions, meeting spaces, catered food and drink, exhibition lounge and VIP Lounge access and priority registration. The Chairperson ticket was EUR 24,950 including VAT (EUR 20,285 excluding sales tax) and adds fast-tracked entrance and Speaker Lounge access on top of the VIP benefits. The EUR 950 general ticket includes the exhibition floor, all track stages, masterclasses, Night Summit, curated meetups, the searchable attendee list and a downloadable contacts file; the ticket page gives no deadline for the discounted price and no early-bird schedule, so the EUR 950 figure should be read as the price on the day checked, not a guaranteed rate. Startup exhibition packages (ALPHA for early-stage companies, BETA for growth-stage, GROWTH for later stage) are sold by application and consultation, and their prices are not shown on the public startup page; third-party guides quote figures from EUR 495 upwards that this fiche could not verify. Investor and media passes go through separate application routes. ## How to become a speaker at Web Summit? Through the speaker application form at websummit.com/speaker-application, linked as "Apply to speak" from the speakers page. The organiser publishes no selection criteria, deadline or acceptance rate; in practice the roster (869 speakers in 2025, organiser figure) mixes invited headline names, executives from partner companies, founders of exhibiting startups selected for PITCH, and applicants accepted through the form. No speaker fee is mentioned, and speaking does not come with a free general ticket for colleagues. A startup with a product to present gets a stage more predictably by entering PITCH through the startup programme than by applying to speak. ## How to become a sponsor or exhibitor at Web Summit? Two routes. Partners (the organiser's word for sponsors) apply through websummit.com/partners, which leads to a sales conversation rather than a published rate card; the partner roster for 2026 is grouped by industry and includes stands, stage sponsorship and lounge naming. Startups exhibit through the startup programme at websummit.com/startups: application, a call with the organiser's startup team, assessment and selection, then placement in ALPHA, BETA or GROWTH according to stage; exhibiting startups get a stand for one day of the event plus tickets, investor meetings through the app and PITCH eligibility. No public price list exists for either route on the organiser's site as of 6 September 2026. ## Who sponsors Web Summit in 2026? The organiser's 2026 partner page (websummit.com/partners/event-partners, checked 6 September 2026) lists partners by industry rather than by tier. AI and machine learning: IBM, Groq, Qualcomm, Alibaba Cloud, Plaud, Globant, Toptal, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. SaaS: Replit, LinkedIn, Datadog, Atlassian, 1Password, Vercel, Pluralsight, ManageEngine, Contentful, SendPulse. Fintech and financial services: Visa, SumUp, Itau Unibanco, Qatar Insurance. Telecommunications and IT: Huawei, Akamai, VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions), Foundever, Ookla. Advertising, content and marketing: Mozilla Ads, Picsart, JCDecaux. Legal and professional services: KPMG, Roland Berger, Grant Thornton Advisors. Government and trade: Startup Portugal, Startup Qatar, ApexBrasil, European Commission DG Competition, German Park, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia. HR and recruitment: Revolut People, Horizons, Remote. Venture capital: PitchBook. Hardware and robotics: Unitree Robotics. Charities and NGOs: Zhongguancun Chico Information Technology and Service Alliance, UN Global Compact Network Portugal, Medecins Sans Frontieres. Entertainment and media: Epidemic Sound. Status: published roster, organiser's own page; the page carries no tier labels, so headline and secondary partners cannot be distinguished from it. The organiser counted 320 partner organisations in 2025. ## What types of companies are majority represented at Web Summit? On the exhibition floor, by the organiser's own 2025 breakdown: AI and machine learning was the largest startup category at nearly one fifth of the 2,725 exhibitors, followed by SaaS, healthtech and wellness, fintech and sustainability. Brazil sent the largest national startup delegation, 340 companies, according to a Brazilian trade report; Serbia sent 25 through its chamber of commerce (delegation press releases). Among partners, the 2026 roster leans to cloud and AI infrastructure (IBM, Qualcomm, Alibaba Cloud, Groq), developer and SaaS tooling (Atlassian, Datadog, Vercel, Replit, LinkedIn), payments (Visa, SumUp) and professional services (KPMG, Roland Berger). Among attendees, the homepage names large technology, banking, consulting and telecom employers, and the organiser counts 268 government delegations. For a buyer of sales technology this means the SaaS exhibitors are mostly seed to Series B vendors on one-day stands, while the established sales-stack vendors (CRM, revenue intelligence, enablement) are present as partners or as attendees rather than on the startup floor. No percentage split by company size or by buyer versus vendor is published. ## How do you get press accreditation for Web Summit? Through the media accreditation form on websummit.com/media, which asks for a business email address, and the media team at media@websummit.com . The organiser's media accreditation policy page (websummit.com/media/media-accreditation-policy) exists but displayed only its title and a "last updated October 2020" stamp when fetched on 6 September 2026, so eligibility criteria, deadlines and whether the pass is free could not be read from it; the organiser's support centre states that media passes are applied for through that form and that media@websummit.com is the contact. The organiser counted 1,519 media attendees in 2025, a figure that mixes publishers and media executives with working reporters. The organiser also runs a media partner programme (websummit.com/media/media-partners); its 2026 roster was not retrieved for this fiche. ## What press coverage has Web Summit received? Heavy and largely predictable. Portuguese business and general press cover each edition daily: Observador reported the 71,386 attendee record on 11 November 2025, Forbes Portugal reported the investor record, ECO previewed the 2,500 expected startups, Tek Noticias covered the closing and the PITCH result. International coverage in 2025 included Euronews Next ("from vibe coding to everything AI and private jets", 10 November 2025), and business coverage of the parent company by the Irish Times (profit, ownership, the 2025 court settlement). The organiser's homepage lists the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian and CNBC as outlets that cover the event. Coverage peaks were the October 2023 boycott by Meta, Google and Amazon after Cosgrave's Gaza comments, and the March 2025 High Court case between the co-founders. TechCrunch's Connie Loizos and The Atlantic's Nick Thompson are on the 2026 speaker roster. ## How reliable is the reported press coverage of Web Summit? Four levels. Placed: the organiser runs a media partner programme whose 2026 roster this fiche did not retrieve; any outlet on it should be read as a partner when it covers the event. Independent but promotional: the Portuguese business press reports the organiser's daily figures (attendees, investors, startups) as records without independent counting, and the figures quoted in this fiche come from the organiser's own 13 November 2025 blog post, reproduced by Observador, Forbes Portugal and ECO. Predictable but not confirmed: journalists booked as speakers for 2026 (Nick Thompson of The Atlantic, Connie Loizos of TechCrunch) will be present but that does not guarantee coverage by their outlets. Claimed by the organiser without proof: the homepage's list of BBC, New York Times, CNN, Guardian and CNBC coverage, and the "1,519 publishers, CEOs, editors and reporters" count, which does not separate working journalists from media executives attending as delegates. The most independent coverage of Web Summit is not of the event at all but of the company: the Irish Times reporting on Manders Terrace's accounts and litigation. ## Who should skip Web Summit? A sales leader looking for a room of peers: Web Summit's 71,386 attendees (organiser figure) are mostly founders, corporate teams and investors, and the sales-stack conversation is spread across four tracks in a 17-track programme; SaaStock Dublin, SaaStr Europa or the Chief Revenue Officer Summit in London put more revenue leaders in one room for a smaller ticket. A vendor without a booked meeting list: the exhibition floor rotates startups daily and the useful contacts are made through the app before arrival, so a team that has not pre-booked will spend four days walking pavilions. A speaker expecting an audience for a product talk: track stages run continuous 20 to 30 minute slots to a passing crowd. Anyone on a tight budget: the general ticket is EUR 950 on the day checked, hotel prices in Lisbon during the week are the highest of the year, and Night Summit adds evenings. A first-time attendee who wants a single-topic conference should choose one of the specialised events in this vertical instead. ## Where does Web Summit sit in the sales stack calendar? Web Summit, 9 to 12 November 2026, is the largest event by attendance in the Sales Stack vertical of this index and the least specialised. It closes the autumn run of buyer-side and vendor-side conferences tracked here: Forrester's B2B Forum EMEA in London (28 to 29 September 2026), Canalys Forums EMEA in Barcelona (6 to 8 October 2026), SaaStock Dublin at the RDS (13 to 14 October 2026), TechSolutions in Paris (14 to 15 October 2026), Agentforce World Tour London at ExCeL (15 October 2026), Sales Enablement Summit Berlin (21 October 2026), Sales Summit in Dusseldorf (4 to 5 November 2026) and Agentforce World Tour Paris (5 November 2026). After Lisbon the calendar moves to London: HubSpot GROW Europe (17 November 2026), SaaSiest London Executive Edition (19 November 2026), the Chief Revenue Officer Summit (1 December 2026), SaaStr Europa (1 to 2 December 2026) and the Revenue Operations Summit (2 to 3 December 2026). The 2027 run opens with All4Customer Paris (23 to 25 March 2027), SaaSiest in Malmo (11 to 12 May 2027) and GTM Festival London (16 June 2027). The practical reading: a revenue leader who attends one vendor-heavy event in the autumn picks between SaaStock Dublin in October (SaaS founders and their go-to-market teams, one topic) and Web Summit in November (the same vendors plus their investors and their enterprise buyers, scattered across 17 tracks); the two are one month apart and both in EMEA capitals. ## Are there other Web Summit editions outside Lisbon? Yes, three, all run by the same company under the Web Summit name, each with its own website and ticket. Web Summit Qatar, Doha: 31 January to 3 February 2027; the 2026 edition reported 30,000+ attendees, 800+ investors and 1,500+ startups (organiser figures). Web Summit Vancouver, Vancouver Convention Centre: 25 to 28 May 2027; it replaced Collision (Toronto) from 2025, ran on 11 to 14 May 2026, and the organiser cites 20,000+ attendees, 700+ investors and 1,500+ startups for it (organiser figures, third-party listings for 2026). Web Summit Rio, Riocentro, Rio de Janeiro: 14 to 17 June 2027; the 2026 edition reported 40,000+ attendees, 700+ investors and 1,500+ startups (organiser figures). Earlier editions no longer running under their own name include RISE (Hong Kong, later Kuala Lumpur), SURGE (Bangalore) and MoneyConf as a standalone Dublin event, now a track in Lisbon. Lisbon remains the flagship by a wide margin: its 71,386 attendees in 2025 (organiser figure) are more than the three other editions combined. ## What language is Web Summit conducted in? English. All stages run in English, the website, app and ticketing are in English, and the speaker roster is international; no simultaneous interpretation into Portuguese or any other language is mentioned on the organiser's site. Portuguese is the language of the host city and of many national-pavilion side events, and Web Summit Rio runs a Portuguese-language site, but the Lisbon event itself is English-only in practice. ## Can you attend Web Summit remotely, or watch sessions afterward? No virtual ticket is offered: the 2026 ticket page lists General Attendee, VIP and Chairperson only, all on site. Afterward, the organiser publishes selected sessions on its YouTube channel (youtube.com/websummit), with a Lisbon playlist, and posts press releases, photos and videos in the media section of websummit.com. Coverage is selective rather than complete: Centre Stage keynotes are the most consistently published, track-stage sessions much less so. The event app, which holds the attendee list and the meeting tools, is only available to ticket holders. ## What is Web Summit's refund and cancellation policy? A full refund is available if the cancellation is requested within 14 days of booking; after those 14 days the organiser applies a strict no-refund policy (organiser support centre, support.websummit.com, article "Our refund policy"). Tickets bought in a flash sale follow a separate rule allowing a full refund up to 60 days before the event (unverifiable information: the rule appears in the support centre listing but the article itself could not be opened on 6 September 2026). A ticket holder who can no longer attend can reassign the ticket to a colleague through the ticketing platform instead of cancelling. The ticketing contact is tickets@websummit.com. A visa refusal has its own support article ("Visa and refunds") whose terms were not retrieved. ## Is Web Summit accessible for attendees with disabilities? The venue is: the MEO Arena's own accessibility page states that step-free access is through the accessibility entrance in the north-side garage, with ramps, wide corridors and lifts on the full route (arena.meo.pt). The organiser's blog publishes a guide to accessible Lisbon (transport, restaurants, venues) for attendees with reduced mobility, which notes that much of the city's transport is not fully accessible and that Lisbon Metro staff provide train ramps on request. No event-specific accessibility statement (quiet rooms, sign-language interpretation, captioning on stages, companion tickets) was found on websummit.com or in the ticket terms on 6 September 2026; requests should go to the ticketing team at tickets@websummit.com. ## How do you get to the MEO Arena and FIL for Web Summit? The venue is in Parque das Nacoes, on the Tagus waterfront at the eastern edge of Lisbon, next to Oriente station. From Lisbon Airport (Humberto Delgado), about 4 km away, the Metro Red line reaches Oriente in about 15 minutes with no change; Oriente is also served by suburban and long-distance trains and by bus routes 210, 705, 708, 725, 728, 744, 759 and 782. From the city centre the Red line from Sao Sebastiao or Alameda takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Walking from Oriente to the arena entrance takes around ten minutes across the Vasco da Gama shopping centre forecourt; the FIL halls adjoin the arena. Taxis and ride-hailing queues at Oriente are long at closing time each evening, and the organiser's own advice is to use the metro. ## Why should a head of sales or CRO attend Web Summit? *Because nothing else in EMEA puts a sales stack's three constituencies in the same buildings for the same four days. The vendors are on the startup floor, where SaaS was the second-largest category among 2,725 exhibitors in 2025 and where the SaaS Summit, Growth Summit and Marketing Summit tracks run their own stages; the money is in the investor programme, 1,857 investors in 2025, a 74 percent rise on 2024, which is where the next round for any of those vendors gets decided; and the buyers are in the corporate delegations from the technology, banking, consulting and telecom groups that the organiser names on its homepage, plus 268 government delegations. A revenue leader evaluating a category can meet the vendor, its lead investor and a reference customer in one afternoon, which SaaStock Dublin (founders and their teams) or a Salesforce or HubSpot tour stop (one vendor's customers) cannot offer. The price of that concentration is the noise: four relevant tracks out of 17, a rotating floor and a general ticket at EUR 950 before the most expensive hotel week in Lisbon.* ## Why should a reader treat Web Summit's headline figures with care? *Every number in this fiche about attendance is the organiser's own: the 71,386 attendees, the 1,857 investors, the 2,725 startups, the 869 speakers and the 1,519 media come from one blog post published on 13 November 2025 by a company that sells tickets and partner packages against those figures, and the Portuguese press reproduced them the same day without independent counting. "Attendee" includes exhibiting startup staff, partner staff, media, government delegations and Night Summit-only passes, so it is a badge count, not a count of buyers. "Investor" is a self-declared category on a ticket application. The 1,519 media figure explicitly bundles publishers and CEOs with reporters. None of these numbers is audited by an outside body that this research could find, and the organiser has a documented interest in growth: its parent company's revenue rose 32 percent to EUR 79.2 million in 2024 on the back of ticket and partner sales, and it has a Lisbon contract worth EUR 11 million a year to justify. Read the figures as a scale indicator, accurate to the nearest ten thousand, not as a measure of who will be in any given room.* ## Where can I find official information about Web Summit? Official site: websummit.com, with the 2026 edition page at websummit.com/web-summit-2026, tickets at websummit.com/tickets, the track list at websummit.com/tracks, the speaker directory at websummit.com/speakers, the startup programme at websummit.com/startups, partners at websummit.com/partners and the media section at websummit.com/media. Support centre: support.websummit.com. Ticketing: tickets@websummit.com. Media: media@websummit.com. Sister editions: qatar.websummit.com, vancouver.websummit.com, rio.websummit.com. Video: youtube.com/websummit. The older domain websummit.net redirects to websummit.com. Alternative name used in listings: Web Summit Lisbon. --- **Last verified:** 2026-09-06 **Next review:** 2026-10-15 **Notes:** Creation, not a refonte: the database held identity fields (name, alternative name Web Summit Lisbon, city, country, website, organiser record, one 2026 edition row with 9 to 12 November 2026, an attendee estimate of 70,000, a EUR 950 ticket cost, a French-language audience and editorial text, a legacy English description and one contact). Sources checked 6 September 2026: websummit.com (homepage, web-summit-2026, tickets, tracks, speakers, startups, night-summit, partners/event-partners, media, media-accreditation-policy, press-releases), the organiser's blog post of 13 November 2025 "Record investors at Web Summit 2025", support.websummit.com (venue and refund articles, read through search listings because the articles returned 403 or 404 on direct fetch), qatar.websummit.com, vancouver.websummit.com, rio.websummit.com, Wikipedia (Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave), Irish Times (27 November 2025 accounts piece; 7 March 2025 court case; October 2018 Lisbon deal), RTE (October 2018 Lisbon deal), Observador (11 November 2025), Forbes Portugal, ECO, Tek Noticias, Euronews Next, Portugal Global and Portugal Startup News (PITCH result), arena.meo.pt accessibility page. Corrections to the seed: attendance updated from the 70,000 estimate to the organiser's 71,386 for 2025; organiser named as Web Summit with its Dublin parent Manders Terrace Ltd (the seed organiser field was empty; "Connected Intelligence" given as a pre-research hint is a former group name not found on current filings, so it is not used); venue completed as MEO Arena and FIL; the seed's French audience and editorial texts replaced with English. Database elements consciously left out: the contact katie@websummit.net (a personal address on the old domain, not verifiable as a current general contact; the published contacts are tickets@websummit.com and media@websummit.com); the vertical tags Investor Relations and Generalist, kept as tags and not as prose; the placeholder speaker rows without names. Not verified and left as documented gaps: the text of the media accreditation policy and whether media passes are free; startup programme prices (not on the public page; third-party figures not used as fact); the flash-sale refund rule (marked unverifiable); the full 2026 partner tiers (the organiser's page groups by industry, not by tier); the 2024 closing attendance (only "sold out" on the organiser's press page; a third-party figure of 71,528 was seen but not used); the "more than 200 side events" count (third-party, marked unverifiable); any event-specific accessibility services; the 2026 session schedule, not yet published. The 2026 speaker roster is a searchable directory of several hundred names; only the headline names shown on the organiser's own pages on 6 September 2026 are listed here, by design. The database's completeness pipeline (n2/n3) has not been run on this record.