GSMA to celebrate 20 years of MWC in Barcelona with an AI bonanza

If you are starting to feel the effects of AI fatigue, then the 20th edition of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona might be something to avoid.

MWC reflects the times and acts as an echo chamber for the buzziest tech subjects of the day. Looking at the conference themes from the last 20-years, you can almost condense them down to a sort of keyword timeline: ‘mobile’, ‘4G’, ‘cloud’, ‘5G’, ‘foldable phones’, ‘5G 2.0’, ‘Metaverse’, and now, very much, ‘AI’.

Just look at the themes for 2026, which are mostly AI-related; you have ‘AI for Enterprise’, ‘AI Nexus’, ‘ConnectAI’, and also ‘Intelligent Infrastructure’, which we can easily label as another theme in that vein. The remaining two themes are ‘Game Changers’ and ‘Tech For All’, which also heavily lend themselves to AI.

This is a drastic change from what we expected in 2025, when the themes were more diverse (digital transformation, cloud, and 5G). ‘AI+’ was also one of the themes, but 2026 is seemingly a complete AI takeover and, as such, the main focus will be about turning AI from a concept or danger into a real-world, monetizable asset for the rest of us. And there is no guarantee that the conversation will ever end.

“‘IQ Era’ for me really reflects this age of smarter connectivity,” GSMA CMO, Lara Dewar, CMO at GSMA told Mobile World Live. “It’s all about bringing AI, connectivity, and compute all together in a way that we hope serves business and society, in a new and fresh way, into a new and much smarter age. Smarter because of the tools we’re using but maybe also because of the problems we’re solving.”

MWC’s mobile history

Ben Wood, chief analyst and CMO of CCS Insight, has been going to MWC a lot longer than 20 years – back when it was held in Cannes, in fact.

“What’s incredible is how the show has transformed from being a kind of mobile and phone show to now touching all aspects of our daily lives,” Wood told Mobile World Live. “Right across all tiers of society.”

MWC was initially a sort of battleground for the smartphone wars which, as Wood explains, started with the launch of Apple’s iPhone. The rise of the operating systems (iOS and Android) came at the expense of established feature phone giants, BlackBerry and Nokia.

“We saw 4G arrive, we saw a transition in the show, more towards a bit of an arms race on the phones,” Wood explains. “We saw bigger touchscreens, we saw megapixel wars on cameras. But then we moved into the arrival of 4G, and thinking about what that would look like. What are we gonna do with the extra bandwidth? That is the whole accendency of AI.”

While it does have a rich history of mobile hardware, the last few years have seen fewer handsets being launched at the event itself. Speaking to other journalists in the run-up to the conference, I often hear them bemoan the lack of real hardware showcases. This also lends itself to computing hardware, too. Ironically, the launch of foldable smartphones was the last time mobile devices took any real billing at MWC, and that was in 2019.

Although this narrative does seem to exclude the many innovative handsets and tablets that Chinese companies bring to the event (though they’re often specifically launched independently). Companies like Honor, which will launch laptops, tablets, phones, and its highly anticipated ‘RoboPhone’. Or Huawei, which will take up space in Hall 3 to showcase its vast offerings, including mobile devices. See also Oppo, Xiaomi, and OnePlus; ever-present vendors with booths filled with phones and devices.

I expect some more office-focused devices from Lenovo: Yoga and ThinkPad laptops, tablets, and monitors. As it’s Lenovo, we can safely assume there will be some flashy proofs-of-concept. We may also have more chances to see Samsung’s latest offerings, which include its S26 range, the Trifold smartphone, and the three models of GalaxyBook launched at CES 2026.

There are eight expansive halls to fill in the Fira Grand Via, so expect a little of everything. I will be on the ground for ITPro to see what 2026 has in store for us – hopefully Barcelona’s 20th MWC will be its best yet.