Barcelona will continue to host the Mobile World Congress until 2023 after the organisation agreed to extend its contract with Fira de Barcelona, which was originally supposed to run until 2018. The decision was reached last week by the board of directors at a meeting in Shanghai.
This year's event drew unprecedented crowds, with over 93,000 professionals flocking to the city to see the latest in mobile technology, and injected over €463 million into the city's economy. It is thought that these statistics are what helped Barcelona secure its position as the Congress' host for the additional five years, outdoing competitors such as Paris and Amsterdam, who in recent months had stepped up their campaigns to host the event in the future.
The Mobile World Congress was first held in Barcelona in 2007, when it was transferred from Cannes in France.