Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave

What!?

We have literally no idea.

On this day last year, 1,317 attendees from 19 countries had booked their Web Summit tickets. A year later, and with 7 months to go until Lisbon, we’ve passed 27,000 attendees from 149 countries, all of whom as of today you can meet on our new attendee page.

Web Summit has hit one of those inflection points human gatherings sometimes hit.

When we started out Web Summit with 400 attendees five and half years ago, we never for one moment believed we would be where we are today.

For some, “Web Summit has become the most important and largest meeting place on our planet for those changing our planet most”, a sort of “Glastonbury for geeks” or “Davos for geeks”.

…What started as a trickle of curious minds from outside of technology in 2014 has turned into a flood. That flood includes thousands upon thousands of leaders of innovative cities and established companies, policy makers and policy shapers, cultural creators and thought leaders.

Meet our first 27,000 Web Summit attendees coming to Lisbon. So what? (Paddy Cosgrave, Web Summit)