The GSMA offered more detail on its plans to host the first MWC Doha event in November, with around 200 exhibitors expected and attendees from more than 60 countries.

“We don’t launch new [MWC] additions very often, and when we do, it’s a great cause for celebration, but it’s also a massive responsibility,” GSMA Ltd CEO John Hoffman remarked at a press conference in Doha this morning. “We want to make sure that we deliver what people know and need from an MWC event.”

To that end, the familiar facets of a MWC event will be in place in Doha: a keynote programme and full conference agenda featuring more than 200 speakers; three exhibition halls at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre, startup event 4YFN; as well as a Ministerial Programme and the GSMA Digital Leaders Programme.

The event will also feature Smart City Expo Doha, a spin-off from Smart City Expo World Congress – an annual November event held at the home of MWC Barcelona, Fira de Barcelona.

Running 25-26 November, MWC25 Doha is the first of a five-year agreement between the GSMA and Qatar’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT).

Last year the GSMA held a smaller ‘M360 MENA’ event in Doha in November.

Economic impact
There were no details revealed on targeted number of attendees but GSMA’s Hoffman talked up the economic impact of hosting an MWC event in Doha.

“The GSMA will retain an independent third party agency, as we do in all of our events, to calculate the economic impact,” stated Hoffman. “It ranges from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars for some of our larger events. As a guide post, in Barcelona, more than €500 million per year are the direct impact of MWC in Barcelona. Now we won’t see those kinds of numbers in year one of MWC25 Doha, but we do believe it will be in the tens of millions, possibly approaching $100 million, as we build the event over time.”

As the first MWC event in the Middle East, MWC25 Doha is designed to support Qatar’s Digital Agenda 2030. But the GSMA was also keen to talk up the international flavour of the event; 80 per cent of the 150 exhibitors already committed are international (names such as Cisco, Dell, Google Cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Microsoft, Nokia, Veon, Vodafone and ZTE), with country pavilions on the showfloor from South Korea and Turkiye.