Talent Arena multiplies by four its participation in hackathons and strengthens its commitment to applied innovation

Alexander Alexandrov

The second day of Talent Arena 2026, organised by Mobile World Capital Barcelona and co-located with MWC Barcelona and 4YFN, saw a record surge in hackathon participation, quadrupling its numbers compared to last year. More than 4.000 people registered from over 96 countries, with a final 400 selected to take part in the challenges during Talent Arena 2026. This growth reflects not only the rising interest among developers, engineers, data scientists and cybersecurity professionals to address real-world technological problems, but also Talent Arena’s international scale.

Throughout the day, Talent Arena transformed into a large-scale laboratory where developers, industry leaders and technology partners worked side by side. From generative AI applied to elite sports performance, to agentic AI powered by 5G networks, public and responsible language models, and cybersecurity challenges in Capture The Flag format; all these hackathons showcase the event’s ambition to turn knowledge into hands-on impact. Several of the headline hackathons concluded today with the announcement of their winners.

More Than a Hack 2026: Generative AI applied to elite sports performance

More Than a Hack 2026 is an innovation challenge led by MWCapital and the Barça Innovation Hub, with the support of Metrica Sports, focusing on generative artificial intelligence applied to sports data. A total of 12 teams worked with datasets of more than 1.800 minutes of official matches provided by FC Barcelona, including match video, automated tracking and tactical tagging, aiming to transform complex, high-volume data into meaningful knowledge.

To do so, the teams have trained and optimized a large language model (LLM) to achieve the highest-performing model in terms of accuracy, relevance and analytical depth, applying natural language processing to transform complex performance data into actionable knowledge for elite football decision-making. The winner of the first edition of More Than a Hack 2026 was: grup IpurdIArs.

Open Gateway Hackathon: Agentic AI and 5G in real conditions

The GSMA Open Gateway Hackathon: Agentic AI and 5G in Real Conditions took place at Talent Arena, hosted in collaboration with Nokia. This intense 48-hour challenge brought together 20 innovative teams, with only four advancing to the final round to pitch their groundbreaking solutions on the main stage.

Teams used real SIM cards from Spain’s leading operators, including Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone, to test their ideas under live network conditions. A key highlights this year was the requirement to integrate generative AI and build AI agents by leveraging 5G network APIs via Nokia’s Network as Code platform, in partnership with Google Cloud. Participants explored impactful applications in areas such as authentication, location services, connectivity management, device data, and more.

This approach stood out from typical hackathons by enabling real-world validation on live networks, offering a tangible glimpse into the future of telecommunications innovation.

Programmable connectivity plays a pivotal role in fueling the AI supercycle and enabling the rise of AI-native telcos. By exposing network capabilities as programmable APIs, it allows developers and AI agents to dynamically orchestrate connectivity, quality of service, security, and data in real time. This unlocks new levels of intelligence, automation, and personalized experiences, transforming static networks into adaptive, AI-driven infrastructures that power the next wave of applications.

The winner of this year’s Open Gateway Hackathon was Stage Flow. This project offers multiple solutions for events where large crowds gather, such as festivals and concerts. The key focus is on ensuring high-quality network connectivity in critical situations, and it also includes a premium service for attendees to guarantee they enjoy reliable connectivity.

Other highlights: Public AI and Cybersecurity hackathons

A third Hackathon “Humans in the Loop: Desafío ALIA” kicked off today and will culminate tomorrow with its winners at 18h. The challenge focuses on the alignment process of ALIA, the public language model launched by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Administration, through the State Secretariat for Digitization and AI, and developed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. In doing so, participants will contribute to the co-creation of a more transparent and responsible public AI ecosystem.

Participants also engaged in challenges such as the NextArena Challenge, promoted by EAE Business School, which invited participants to rethink the Talent Arena of the future; and the World2Meet hackathon, focused on developing digital solutions for smarter, more efficient and sustainable tourism.

Also, on Wednesday, Talent Arena will host the final phase of its first-ever Capture The Flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition, marking the debut of this type of challenge during the event. Aimed at professionals and ethical hacking enthusiasts, the competition will test participants’ technical and analytical skills through real-world scenarios such as vulnerability detection, decoding hidden messages, and bypassing security mechanisms.

Following an online qualification phase, the top-ranked participants will compete live on-site, in a high-intensity environment designed to mirror the challenges faced by cybersecurity experts in professional settings. This inaugural CTF at Talent Arena reinforces the event’s commitment to fostering practical, hands-on experience in cutting-edge technology fields.

Strengthening Emerging Digital Talent

With Barcelona’s digital talent pool continuing to expand, reaching nearly 130,000 professionals as of the most recent Digital Talent Overview report, the city remains one of Europe’s fastest‑growing tech hubs. Demand for specialists in emerging fields such as cloud, AI and sustainable technologies continues to outpace supply.

Despite this expansion, the supply of qualified specialists can struggle to keep pace in critical areas such as cybersecurity, where, on average, only about three qualified professionals are available for every vacancy, making it one of the fields with the greatest skills shortage.

By offering practical, high‑level hackathons in generative AI, open AI development and its first-ever CTF cybersecurity competition, Talent Arena reinforces its role in strengthening the skills pipeline and positioning emerging digital talent for the most sought‑after profiles in the market, remarking Talent Arena’s status as Europe’s leading platform for discovering, developing and celebrating the next generation of digital talent.