CCIB Launches Year of Major International Medical Congresses in Barcelona

Magazine:
17th Mar, 2026
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After an intense start to the year, the Barcelona International Convention Centre (CCIB), managed by Fira de Barcelona, has launched a busy calendar of major international medical events.

The Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes 2026 (ATTD) congress, focused on technologies and new treatments for diabetes, marked the starting point of a programme that will feature around fifteen healthcare and scientific events, bringing together some 160,000 professionals.

Throughout March, CCIB is hosting three major international congresses. ATTD, held last week, welcomed more than 6,000 participants over four days. The programme continues this Wednesday with EAHP 2026, Europe’s leading event in hospital pharmacy, and concludes at the end of the month with the European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC), the leading multidisciplinary European congress dedicated to breast cancer.

Looking ahead, the venue will continue to welcome professionals and researchers from across the world for a series of major healthcare gatherings. These include the International Physiotherapy Congress (FTP) in July; the SECEC Annual Congress, focused on shoulder and elbow orthopaedics, in September; EACTS, the European congress on cardiothoracic surgery, in October; and, in November, events such as ENA, dedicated to advances in cancer research and new treatments, LABCLIN for clinical laboratories, and the APS Annual Convention, centred on applied psychology.

The importance of the medical sector is reflected in CCIB’s activity figures. Nearly 20% of the events hosted at the venue fall within this field, in a year when CCIB expects to stage around 80 events bringing together approximately 400,000 professionals. Of these, about fifteen will be healthcare-related, attracting around 160,000 delegates.

This strong presence underlines CCIB’s strategy of hosting larger, high-quality events with significant international reach, while reinforcing Barcelona’s standing as a leading global scientific hub. Medical congresses, together with those hosted at Fira de Barcelona’s other venues, contribute to positioning the city as the world leader in the number of medical congresses and the top city globally in terms of delegates, according to the latest ranking by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).
 

Other major international events

Beyond the medical sector, CCIB will also host major international events from a range of industries, particularly technology. These include the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, one of the world’s leading gatherings for the sector; the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, a global benchmark in human–computer interaction; the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), specialising in signal processing technologies; and the European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, focused on data, analytics and artificial intelligence.

The venue will also welcome the World Congress of the International Union of Architects (UIA), coinciding with Barcelona’s designation as World Capital of Architecture 2026. In addition, CCIB will once again host CineEurope, the leading convention for the cinema industry, bringing together major Hollywood and European studios alongside professionals from across the sector.

Finally, the Auditori Fòrum CCIB will present a varied programme of shows and concerts. Among other highlights, it will serve as one of the venues for the Primavera Sound Festival. Artists scheduled to perform include Icelandic singer Laufey; composer and musician Danny Elfman; rock legend Van Morrison; and actor and musician Jeff Goldblum with his band The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. The programme will also feature symphonic shows inspired by audiovisual universes such as Saint Seiya, Elden Ring and Demon Slayer.
 


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