Web Summit in Full Swing. Here are the Stats

Let’s start with the basics.

This year 70,236 attendees from 153 countries attended Web Summit. Out of them 43% are women. And 38% of all speakers are women too.

321 partners are taking to the exhibition floor, with Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, almost fully booked: over 85% hotel occupancy is expected across the city. 

Furthermore, Web Summit has served its one millionth cup of Delta coffee since 2016 when it first partnered with the Delta Coffee company. Meanwhile, the Summit’s food trucks will serve over 100,000 meals during the event.

There’s also a record in terms of the number of startups exhibiting: A total of 2,608 of them are represented. Almost one in three was founded by women.

The list of speakers is also impressive.Some of the top speakers include Signal president Meredith Whitaker, former professional boxer and Kyiv Digital ambassador Volodymyr Klitschko, Nym Technologies security consultant Chelsea Manning, Alibaba.com president Kuo Zhang, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

CEO of Web Summit Katherine Maher, who is also the Former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said at the event’s opening night: “Over the last decade, as Web Summit has grown, we’ve brought together tens of thousands of people who have used this week in Lisbon as a springboard to do remarkable things – to launch companies, find investors, unveil projects, advance a vision of the world worth debating.”

She also pledged that the Web Summit will continue to be the most important place to bring together and connect people and advance critical conversations about technology, society and innovation.

Web Summit is taking place despite the previous controversy relating to Web Summit's CEO Paddy Cosgrave who took to X (Twitter) to label Israel’s retaliation to the attacks as "war crimes" and compared the conflict to the Troubles in Ireland. As a result, many participants refused to attend the summit, prompting him to resign.