Aena brings the next global airport innovation summit to Spain for the first time
The next global airport innovation summit will have a Spanish accent. The Airports Council International (ACI) has chosen Barcelona as the setting to host its global airport innovation summit ‘Airports Innovate’ next year after reaching an agreement with Aena to assume the role of host of its next edition. The event, whose location has not yet been revealed, will be held from November 23 to 25, 2026.
It will be the first edition to be held in Spain after the ACI, the voice of half a thousand European airports, renewed in 2023 the format of this meeting that is held every year in a region. The first of them was held in Muscat (Oman), before moving to Rome (Italy) to return to Busan (South Korea)where the main leaders of the global airport sector have met this week to discuss the latest trends in innovation, sustainability and digitalization.
This event brings great networking opportunities under its belt with the presence of hundreds of airport managers and innovators, startups, researchers and experts from the ‘tech’ ecosystem who come to explore the solutions that are redefining the future of air transport. The program of the current edition, organized by Korea Airports Corporation (KAC), has been an example of the magnitude of the event that Barcelona will host with an agenda armed with authorities on the international scene such as Heathrow, or Aena itself, as speakers.
From the airport association they see Aena as “one of the most avant-garde airport operators in the world”. “With more than 590 million passengers handled at its Spanish airports over the last three years, Aena brings unmatched experience and ambition to the event, offering attendees a direct vision of the future of airport operations,” they highlight before valuing Barcelona’s location as “the best to connect the future of aviation with a city that embodies innovation every day.”
In this way, the company that controls the State at 51% through Enaire, reinforces its alliance with the association after last 2021, its now executive vice president, Javier Marín, became the first Spanish executive to assume the presidency of ACI Europewhere he now holds a position on the board chaired since June by the CEO of Fráport, Stefan Schulte.
At the operational level, Aena reaffirms its commitment to innovation that it already staged five years ago when gave life to its startup accelerator Aena Venturesan open innovation program that encourages collaboration with entrepreneurs in order to identify and validate new solutions with high technological value for their business. In 2024, the second edition of the program concluded with more than 500 proposals from almost 400 different startups, from 42 countries around the world.
In this context, innovation will have its place in the ambitious plan that projects investments of 12,888 million euros, of which 9,991 million correspond to regulated investments, which are framed in the period 2027-2031 to adapt its infrastructure to the expected growth in demand. In this plan, the company led by Maurici Lucena plans to allocate 1.5 billion euros to technological and decarbonization projects.
