Barcelona opts to host the world's main space congress
The Generalitat and the Spanish government present the candidacy for the IAC fair to land in the city
BarcelonaBarcelona will apply to host the International Astronautical Congress, the main global fair focused on the aerospace ecosystem. The Generalitat and the Spanish government have submitted a bid to host the congress in its 2029 edition. Co-led by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the Department of Business and Labor, the Catalan proposal focuses on the potential of the space economy in the fight against climate change. They condense the initiative under the slogan "Water resilience from space".
The candidacy committee will have representatives from the Spanish Space Agency and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, representing the ministry and the department. It has also been presented with the support of the Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona Convention Bureau. Among the main values they advocate for Barcelona, they highlight the growing technological ecosystem, as well as local names in the space economy, which already had a privileged space at the last edition of the MWC.
According to the department, hosting the space congress will serve to attract to Barcelona "representatives of space agencies from all over the world, large companies, startups, and innovative industry", among other relevant actors in the space economy. If the goal is achieved, Barcelona would manage to "position itself as a relevant player in the global space ecosystem".
More than 19,000 visitors
In the last edition, held in Sydney in October, the International Astronautical Congress attracted more than 19,000 visitors, of which around 7,500 were delegates from companies and institutions from nearly a hundred countries. Among them were Catalan companies, such as Sateliot, which participated in one of the round tables on small-scale satellite operations.
The mandate to organize the 2029 edition for which Barcelona is bidding will be made public in October, within the framework of this year's edition, which will be held in Turkey. Among Barcelona's competitors are the proposals already submitted by Houston, in the United States; Geneva, in Switzerland, and Muscat, in Oman, now amidst the tensions caused by the war in Iran.