Brand Assure at MWC Barcelona 2026
MWC Barcelona has a habit of compressing an entire year of telecom conversations into four intense days. For Brand Assure, MWC Barcelona 2026 is not about showing up because everyone else is there, it’s about turning up with a clear point of view on trust, validation, and how operators and messaging platforms can do better at protecting users and brands at scale.
With more than 150,000 industry professionals expected to pass through the halls in Barcelona, the signal-to-noise ratio is always a challenge. This year, our focus is deliberately narrow: meaningful conversations with mobile network operators and messaging platforms who are actively grappling with fraud, impersonation, and the growing pressure to prove authenticity across voice and messaging.
A quick refresher: what MWC Barcelona represents
MWC Barcelona, organised by the GSMA, remains the largest annual gathering of the global mobile ecosystem. Network operators, vendors, regulators, and technology providers all converge to discuss what is changing now, not what might change in five years’ time.
For anyone working in messaging, voice, or identity, MWC is where standards discussions leave white papers and collide with commercial reality. It is also where early signals appear around how regulation, technology, and operator behaviour are likely to evolve over the next 12 to 24 months.
Why Brand Assure is at MWC Barcelona 2026
From the Brand Assure perspective, MWC 2026 comes at a useful moment. Messaging fraud and brand impersonation are no longer niche problems. They are now board-level risks for operators, enterprises, and platforms alike.
We’re heading to Barcelona with three clear objectives:
Engage with international operators who are actively thinking about brand validation and caller or sender trust, not just basic filtering.
Align with industry initiatives around verifiable calling, branded communications, and shared trust frameworks.
Have practical conversations with partners and vendors we’ve deliberately chosen, rather than trying to meet everyone.
This is less about collecting business cards and more about comparing notes with people facing the same operational and regulatory pressures.
The themes we’re watching closely
Every MWC has its headline topics. Underneath those headlines sit quieter but more consequential themes. For Brand Assure in 2026, a few stand out.
Validation as infrastructure, not an add-on
Validation is often treated as a feature. In reality, it’s infrastructure. Whether we’re talking about branded calling, sender verification, or enterprise identity in messaging, trust has to be built into the network layer.
Operators are under pressure from regulators and enterprise customers to demonstrate that messages and calls can be traced back to legitimate senders. That shifts validation from a “nice to have” into a baseline requirement.
Open Verifiable Calling
One of the most interesting developments this year is the growing focus on Open Verifiable Calling models. Rather than closed ecosystems or proprietary trust signals, there is increasing momentum behind shared frameworks that operators can adopt without locking themselves into a single vendor.
Brand Assure will be contributing to discussions in this area, including participation in a dedicated workstream on Open Verifiable Calling hosted on the GSMA stand.
The reality gap between standards and deployment
Standards evolve quickly. Deployments do not.
A recurring theme at MWC is the gap between what is technically possible and what is commercially or operationally realistic for operators to roll out at scale. Conversations in Barcelona are often where that gap becomes visible, and where pragmatic compromises start to form.
For us, those conversations are more valuable than polished product launches.
Learning from last year, raising the bar this year
Anyone who attended MWC last year knows how physically demanding it can be. Tens of thousands of steps, back-to-back meetings, and more information than any single person can process.
That intensity is also what makes MWC useful. Patterns emerge quickly. You start to hear the same concerns voiced by different people in different corners of the industry.
This year, we’re deliberately building on that experience. Fewer meetings and more time spent on the topics that actually move the industry forward.
Barcelona as a meeting point, not just a backdrop
There is a reason MWC has stayed in Barcelona. The city itself encourages conversation. Meetings spill out of the conference halls and into cafés, hotel lobbies, and late dinners where the most honest views are often shared.
For Brand Assure, those informal conversations matter. Trust, by definition, is not built through slide decks alone.
Meet the Brand Assure team at MWC Barcelona 2026
Members of the Brand Assure leadership team, including Robert and Leo, will be on the ground throughout the event. In addition to meetings, we’ll be taking part in GSMA-led sessions and following closely how industry conversations around validation and verification are evolving.
If you are attending MWC and working on brand trust, messaging integrity, or verifiable calling, we’d welcome the chance to compare notes.
Frequently asked questions
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Brand Assure is not running a standalone exhibition stand. We’re engaging through meetings, GSMA workstreams, and invited sessions, which allows for more focused discussions.
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Yes. Brand Assure will be involved in a GSMA workstream focused on Open Verifiable Calling. Details will be shared closer to the event.
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Primarily mobile network operators, messaging platforms, and industry bodies working on authentication, validation, and trust frameworks.
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For complex, cross-industry topics like trust and validation, face-to-face conversations remain hard to replace. MWC is where those conversations happen at scale.
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Feel free to reach out directly via LinkedIn or email ahead of the event to coordinate time and location.
