Football's decision-makers meet in a former industrial hall in Madrid for two days, ten years after the summit started as a single gathering in the same city.
The flagship, founding edition of World Football Summit, an annual, in-person business conference for the football industry rather than a fan event or a trade show for a single product category. It gathers club and league executives, federations, sponsors, media and rights holders, technology and data companies and investors around digital transformation, data, fan engagement, media rights and sponsorship in football. The 2026 edition, running 15 and 16 September at La Nave in Madrid, is the 10th anniversary of the summit and falls in a FIFA World Cup year.
15 to 16 September 2026, from 08:30 to 18:00 on the first day and 09:00 to 18:00 on the second. La Nave, calle Cifuentes 5, Villaverde, 28021 Madrid, Spain, a converted industrial hall used by the city of Madrid as an innovation and events space. The World Football Summit organisation's own registered office, Calle del General Díaz Porlier 95B, Bajo, 28006 Madrid, appears in some official pages and directories and is a different address in a different part of the city: it is the company's headquarters, not the conference venue.
World Football Summit, founded in Madrid in 2016 by Jan Alessie and Marian Otamendi, who remain co-founders and run the company as Managing Director and CEO respectively. The organisation has since built a small international team, including Arantxa Mandiola as Programme Director, Paloma F. Niembro as Project Director and Paco Roche as Communications Director. Madrid is the founding and flagship edition of a summit that has expanded into other markets; see "Are there other World Football Summit editions" below.
The official site advertises 2,500+ attendees from 90+ countries, 200+ clubs, leagues and federations, and 150+ speakers, across 2 stages over the two days (unverifiable information: these are organiser-published estimates, not an audited count, and they run higher than the 2,000+ figure the organiser gave earlier in 2026). The room is built around club and league executives, federations, sponsors and brand marketers, media and rights holders, fan engagement platforms and data companies, technology vendors and investors; speakers confirmed for 2026 include club chief executives, national federation presidents, players' union leaders and Formula 1's chief communications officer, reflecting a deliberately cross-industry guest list rather than a single-constituency audience.
Three changes against the 2025 Madrid edition. The dates move earlier: 2025 ran 15-16 October, 2026 runs 15-16 September. The WFS Awards categories are restructured: the 2026 programme runs 12 categories, including three new ones (Best Content Creator, presented by TikTok; Best Fan-Centric Initiative, presented by Goodform by YouFirst; and A Career Honouring the Essence of the Game, presented by Senn Ferrero) and two renamed or repositioned ones (Best Stadium Experience, presented by StadiumDB; Best Gender Equality Initiative, presented by Women in Football). The programme's six themes are relabelled for 2026: Investment, Commercial Growth & Global Strategy; Media, Fan Engagement & Content; Innovation, Technology & AI; Governance, Legal & Sustainability; Women's Football & Emerging Categories; and Football Culture, Purpose & Society, a reshuffling of the 2025 theme names rather than a change of subject matter. Substack was announced during 2026 as a new industry partner, its first agreement with a football industry event of this kind.
The published 2026 themes are Investment, Commercial Growth & Global Strategy; Media, Fan Engagement & Content; Innovation, Technology & AI (covering data analytics and digital transformation); Governance, Legal & Sustainability; Women's Football & Emerging Categories; and Football Culture, Purpose & Society. Sessions run across 2 stages over the two days, with named side sessions including a Female Leaders Gathering on 15 September and a session branded "The Locker Room" run with Substack España on 16 September, plus workshops on subjects such as sponsorship effectiveness, fan revenue and performance psychology. The WFS StartCup pitch final and the WFS Awards ceremony are both scheduled inside the 15 September programme, though the Awards ceremony itself is held off-site (see "How do you get to La Nave" below).
Conference talks and panel sessions on the main programme, plus named workshops (sponsorship effectiveness, fan revenue, performance psychology were confirmed for 2026), a pitch competition (WFS StartCup) and an awards ceremony (WFS Awards). The site does not publish a breakdown of session lengths or a formal track-by-track schedule beyond the six named themes, and no exhibition-floor format distinct from the two conference stages is described for Madrid.
Several are published for the 15-16 September window. The Female Leaders Gathering runs on 15 September, tied to the Female Leaders ticket categories. The Locker Room, a session run with Substack España, is scheduled for 16 September. The WFS StartCup pitch final runs on 15 September, from 16:00 to 17:30 on the site's published schedule. The WFS Awards ceremony runs the evening of 15 September, starting at 19:30, at Teatro Eslava on Calle Arenal in central Madrid, a concert and events venue unrelated to La Nave: attendees need to plan transport between the two locations. Separately, the organiser names Madrid Marriott Hotel Princesa as its official accommodation partner, with a discount code for attendees; no other paid experiences (tours, excursions) are published for Madrid, unlike some other WFS editions.
Prices below are the rates published on the official ticket page on 11 September 2026, all plus 10% VAT, with no early-bird or late tiers shown for Madrid (unlike the Riyadh 2027 edition, which does carry a discounted early tier). Delegate Pass: 450 EUR. Corporate Pass: 820 EUR, adding a Corporate Lounge and workshop access. Female Leaders Delegate Pass: 315 EUR, Delegate benefits plus the Female Leaders Gathering. Female Leaders Corporate Pass: 574 EUR. Second Day Delegate Pass: 250 EUR, single-day access to 16 September only. Student Pass: 350 EUR, includes a Job Match session. Virtual Pass: 120 EUR, remote conference access plus 1-to-1 video calls. Property Pass: complimentary for clubs, leagues and federations using an official organisational email, capped at two passes per rights holder. Media Pass: by accreditation request, not sold. The organiser states a reduced rate applies when several passes are bought in the same order, without publishing the discount level.
Not publicly disclosed as an open call. No call-for-speakers or speaker-nomination form was found on the official site: the published roster of 150+ names reads as an invited, curated list built from clubs, federations, brands and the organiser's own network, the same pattern as the WFS Awards jury and the StartCup mentor pool. Enquiries would need to go through the general contact channel below.
Through the organiser's partnerships team; the site states "Contact our partnerships team and we will get back to you to discuss the opportunities that best match your objectives," with no packages, tiers or prices published for Madrid specifically. The organiser describes a general offer of headline sponsorship, category partnerships, branded sessions, exhibition stands and year-round content and media partnerships. The clearest published entry point for a rights holder rather than a commercial sponsor is the Property Pass programme (see cost above); for everyone else, WFS names a Vendors channel and a Brands channel on its site, both routing to the same enquiry process. Contact on record for commercial enquiries: Marta Lop, marta.lop@worldfootballsummit.com.
Not publicly disclosed as a consolidated sponsor list. Unlike some other WFS editions, no single page names a general 2026 Madrid sponsor wall in the sourced material. What is published: Substack, announced in 2026 as an industry partner and running the Locker Room side session; and the WFS Awards category partners, who sponsor a specific award rather than the event as a whole: Excel Search & Advisory, N3xt Sports, Deloitte, Women in Football, SportsTechX, Common Goal, Integrated Dreams, Senn Ferrero, Goodform by YouFirst, TikTok and StadiumDB. Whether any of these also holds a general commercial sponsorship of the conference is not stated.
Not broken down by the organiser: the 200+ clubs, leagues and federations and 90+ countries figures are not split by sector, size or company type. The confirmed 2026 speaker list shows the visible pattern: club and league executives (Atlético de Madrid, Chelsea FC Women, Real Valladolid, Juventus, Olympique de Marseille, Wrexham AFC, Grasshopper Club Zürich, Eintracht Frankfurt, Como 1907, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Real Betis, among others), governing bodies and player unions (FIFA, UEFA, the Spanish federation RFEF, the Norwegian FA, CONCACAF, the players' associations AFE and PFA), global brands (New Balance, adidas Foundation, Formula 1), and finance and professional services (J.P. Morgan, appearing with several speakers, Bruin Capital, S4 Capital, Deloitte). Startups appear separately through the WFS StartCup rather than the main speaker roster.
Through a Media Pass, described on the ticket page as "by accreditation request" rather than for sale; no dedicated press-accreditation page, named press officer or separate press email was found, and enquiries appear to route through the general address info@worldfootballsummit.com. No accreditation deadline is published. The organiser confirms only that press conferences and other media events are available to Media Pass holders.
Independent coverage of the 2026 edition was not found in the sourced material as of 11 September 2026, four days before the event. Coverage of the 2025 Madrid edition exists: Bonito, a football-for-good publication, ran a "where football meets purpose" piece on Common Goal's role as WFS's purpose partner and a separate full speakers-and-sessions writeup. Beyond that, most 2026 material found online is event-directory listing content (aggregators reproducing the organiser's own programme text) rather than original reporting.
Weak as independent evidence on the scale figures in this fiche. The attendance, speaker and country counts (2,500+, 150+, 90+) all trace back to the organiser's own site; no third party audits or independently confirms them. The Bonito coverage found for 2025 reads as independent trade journalism rather than a placed media partnership, but it covers the prior edition, not 2026. Substack's 2026 industry partnership sits between advertising and coverage: it is a named partnership with a media platform, not commissioned journalism, and the database does not carry it as an official media partner at this time.
Anyone expecting a cash refund if plans change: the policy is a credit toward a future WFS event or a downgrade to the Virtual Pass, not money back (see refund policy below). Speakers hoping to pitch themselves in through an open call should also look elsewhere: no call-for-speakers process is published, and the roster reads as invitation-only. Buyers who need an audited attendance or sponsor breakdown by company type, size or country will not find one here, only organiser-published totals. Anyone wanting hands-on technical or developer content should also reconsider: despite an "Innovation, Technology & AI" track, this is a business and strategy summit for executives, not a hands-on engineering conference.
In the mid-September slot, at the start of the European autumn business-events season, and as the founding, flagship edition of a summit that also runs in Mexico City and, from 2027, Riyadh. The 2026 edition falls in a FIFA World Cup year, which the organiser cites as part of the reason for elevated attention around the 10th anniversary. No sourced, independently audited comparison of Madrid's attendance or influence against other football-business events is available; the figures on this page are all organiser-published.
Yes. World Football Summit runs an active calendar of WFS Mexico (Mexico City, 3-4 June 2026, already held by the time of this verification) and WFS Riyadh (26-27 January 2027, Misk City, Saudi Arabia, with tickets already on sale). The brand has also carried other, less consistently recurring extensions: WFS Africa, held once in Durban, South Africa, in November 2022, with no confirmed successor edition found; and the separately branded Women's Football Summit in Bilbao, held at San Mamés in March 2026 and reported to have drawn 449 industry leaders, which functions as a women's-football-specific satellite rather than a numbered WFS city edition. Older WFS-branded events in Rabat, New York and Hong Kong appear in the organiser's own archive pages as past events; none of them appears on the organiser's current 2026-2027 calendar, so they should be treated as discontinued or dormant rather than active.
English is the working language of the conference programme. The organiser has used on-site English-Spanish simultaneous interpretation at past Madrid editions, per a case study published by interpretation vendor Olyusei describing a WFS Madrid engagement (unverifiable information: the vendor case study does not specify which edition year, and WFS's own site does not publish an interpretation policy for 2026). The public-facing website itself offers machine translation into 40-plus languages, which is a browser feature, not a statement about the spoken conference language.
Partly. The Virtual Pass, 120 EUR plus VAT, gives remote access to the conference programme plus 1-to-1 video call networking, and is the only remote option; there is no separate policy published on session recordings or on-demand replay after the event.
Credit, not cash. The published policy states: "If you are unable to attend the event, you may request to change your ticket for any WFS event taking place in the year following your purchase, or exchange it for a Networking & Streaming pass within 30 days prior to the event." An upgrade to a higher ticket tier requires paying the price difference. No separate policy is published for what happens if the organiser itself postpones or cancels the event.
Not publicly disclosed for the physical venue. No accessibility statement for La Nave (step-free access, accessible toilets, hearing loops, sign language interpretation) was found on the official site. The organiser's website carries a OneTap accessibility toolbar (vision-impaired mode, seizure-safe profile, ADHD-friendly mode, font and contrast controls), which is a digital accessibility feature for browsing the site, not a statement about the venue itself.
Because nobody outside the organiser counts, and the count is taken during an active sales cycle rather than after the fact. The 2026 site advertises 2,500+ attendees, 150+ speakers and 90+ countries as of 11 September 2026, four days before the event; earlier in 2026 the organiser's own figure for the same edition was 2,000+. That is not necessarily a correction, growth in ticket sales as an event approaches is normal, but it means every attendance figure on this page is a snapshot from an unaudited, self-reported, moving series, not a settled count, and a reader comparing this page against an older source should expect the numbers to differ.
Because it is not a refund at all. The published terms exchange an unused ticket for credit toward a future WFS event within a year, or a downgrade to a streaming pass, not a cash return, which matters for a ticket priced as high as 820 EUR for the Corporate Pass. A buyer weighing the summit against a competing football-business event should treat the ticket as a one-year credit commitment to the WFS calendar, not a fully reversible purchase.
Official site: worldfootballsummit.com/madrid/, with tickets at worldfootballsummit.com/tickets/, the speaker roster at worldfootballsummit.com/madrid/speakers-madrid/, the WFS Awards at worldfootballsummit.com/madrid/awards-madrid/, the WFS StartCup at worldfootballsummit.com/start-cup/, the organiser's own profile at worldfootballsummit.com/about-us/ and the Rightholder/Property Pass programme at worldfootballsummit.com/rightholders/. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/world-football-summit. General contact: info@worldfootballsummit.com. Contacts on record: Jaime Dominguez (press, press@worldfootballsummit.com); Marta Lop (commercial contact, see "How to become a sponsor" above); Marian Otamendi and Jan Alessie (co-founders, direction).