This year’s SBC Summit attracted more than 30,000 attendees who booked a combined 72,000 room nights in Lisbon – making it the show’s biggest edition ever according to event organizers.
The preliminary figures were unveiled at a press conference late last week which also highlighted a 68.8% year-on-year increase in attendance from Asia, second only to the 78.2% increase in those from Africa. Overall attendance was up 20% over SBC Summit 2024.
“We have increased the size, the total spread of the event, from 100,000 square metres to 135,000 square metres,” said SBC’s Senior Marketing Director, Dennis Algreen. “We have also been lucky enough to we have seen over 200 new sponsors and exhibitors that were not here last year.”
Previously held in Barcelona, SBC Summit made the move to Lisbon in 2024 in response to ICE relocating from London to Barcelona, with Algreen quick to praise the “positive impact” SBC has made to the Portuguese city this year.
“I know that hotels could have been a bit of an issue for those booking late, but it also means that it had a significant impact,” he continued.
“We have had an estimated around 72,000 room nights booked by guests and we are still calculating the financial impact for a city like Lisbon, but that is also why we have been able to work much closer with the local authorities. This event has a significance effect for the local community.”
SBC Summit 2025 included, for the first time, a Legends Charity Game played in Lisbon last Monday night featuring the likes of Luis Figo, Kaká, Roberto Carlos, Alessandro Del Piero, Carles Puyol, Pauleta, Pepe and Michael Owen and broadcast to 19 different jurisdictions.
It also welcomed a raft of headline speakers such as entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, Formula 1 legend Rubens Barrichello and boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk.
“We have taken great care to make sure that we start infusing these events with more and more outside knowledge, not necessarily from the industry, because we need to be learning from other industries and some of these absolute tech pioneers,” Algreen said. “That is why we brought in people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Randi Zuckerberg to specifically help people understand a little bit better around AI, around the kind of elements that are connected to our industry, from those not necessarily seen as traditional content for the industry.”
SBC Summit Lisbon will return next year at the later dates of 29 September to 1 October 2026.
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