SBC Summit draws 40,000 to Lisbon, extends host city deal to 2030
Operator and C-level attendance outpaced overall growth at SBC Summit 2026, as organiser SBC locked in Lisbon as the event's base for a further four years.
SBC Summit's 2026 edition in Lisbon pulled in 40,000 attendees, a 34.5% rise on the previous year, according to figures released by organiser SBC.
The headline number masked a sharper shift beneath it. Operator attendance climbed 37% year-on-year, while the count of C-level executives present jumped from 5,969 to 8,398, a 40.7% increase that ran ahead of the event's overall expansion. Affiliate registrations grew by 71%.
Regional attendance also broadened. Africa delivered the steepest rise, up 129.6%, followed by North America at 58.5%, Asia at 44.3%, Europe at 32.3% and Latin America at 10.7%, SBC said.
SBC founder and CEO Rasmus Sojmark said the data reflected a deliberate reshaping of the summit's audience. "The figures point to a broader shift in the composition of SBC Summit as it scales: not simply towards a larger international audience, but towards greater representation from senior executives, operators, and commercially significant industry segments," he said.
Alongside the attendance figures, SBC confirmed Lisbon will remain the summit's home through 2030, extending a tie-up that has already anchored the event at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa and the MEO Arena. Delegates travelled from 178 countries for this year's gathering, which was fronted by basketball figure Michael Jordan among other names drawn from sport, entertainment and gaming.
The event's structure changed alongside its size. Rather than folding more content into the main programme, SBC carved out standalone gatherings for specific parts of the industry. Chief among them was the new Affiliate Leaders Summit, which ran as its own event and pulled in 10,000 people on its own, split roughly between 6,000 affiliates and 3,000 operator attendees, with a further 150 companies exhibiting or sponsoring.
Regulatory engagement had a higher profile this year too. The inaugural African Gaming Forum brought operators, suppliers and regulators together to discuss licensing and market development across the continent, timed to coincide with Africa's outsized attendance growth. A separate Global Prediction Markets Forum examined the regulatory questions arising where betting, financial markets and forecasting now overlap, gathering legal specialists and policymakers alongside industry executives.
SBC also ran Regulatory Gaming Meet-ups in partnership with the International Association of Gaming Regulators and the International Masters of Gaming Law, giving regulators and lawyers from different jurisdictions a direct channel to compare notes on emerging rules.
Networking was formalised through an expanded SBC Connect programme designed to help attendees locate relevant counterparts more efficiently. Sojmark framed the change as a response to growth rather than a departure from the summit's core function. "SBC Summit is, first and foremost, a major trade show, and the expo floor remains at the heart of the event because that is where a huge amount of business gets done," he said, adding that the priority this year had been "the quality of the audience around that show floor and making sure the right people can find each other."
He said the rising numbers of operators, affiliates and senior executives showed the event strengthening in the areas that matter most commercially.
The exhibition floor itself hosted 800 sponsors and exhibitors, with a conference programme featuring 600 speakers and an expanded set of CPD-certified sessions. "We set out to create more than a gaming industry trade show," Sojmark said. "We wanted to build a global meeting place at the intersection of gaming, AI and tech, fintech, sports, music and entertainment."