U2 frontman Bono on stage at Web Summit 2014 Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE via Getty Images)

Web Summit, Europe's largest technology conference, has announced it will move from Dublin to Lisbon in 2016.

Event founder Paddy Cosgrave said the decision to move the festival to Lisbon would allow Web Summit to tap into the local startup scene and, crucially, a larger number of hotel rooms.


The conference, which was founded in 2010, has grown from 400 attendees to more than 22,000. With the 2015 event expected to attract 30,000 attendees, Web Summit said it was time to make the move, and grow internationally.

Web Summit has become known for attracting some of techs star names, from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to Tesla's Elon Musk. U2 frontman Bono has also attended and in 2011 even hosted a Dublin pub-crawl for a select group of Silicon Valley guests.

The move will be a blow to the Irish economy, with last year's event bringing in an estimated €100m according to Fáilte Ireland, the Irish tourist board.

The announcement is by no means unexpected. Last month it emerged that Web Summit was in negotiations with Amsterdam, Lisbon and London about taking the event away from Dublin.


Web Summit Ci, the company behind the conference, will remain in Dublin and continue to organise the event in Lisbon and other smaller events in the US, Hong Kong and India.

In a blog post Cosgrave explained that Lisbon's infrastructure and event capacity was a major reason behind the move. The 2016 Web Summit will be held at the MEO Arena and FIL Feira Internacional de Lisboa, with a combined capacity of 80,000 people. "We know now what it takes to put on a global technology gathering and we know that if Web Summit is to grow further, we need to find it a new home. Our attendees expect the best," Cosgrave explained.

Updated 23/9/15, 13:30: This article originally contained an incorrect spelling of Paddy Cosgrave's surname. This has been corrected.