Touching the record number of 21,000 attendees, Barcelona Wine Week (BWW) has closed its fourth edition, consolidated as the reference fair for quality Spanish wine and “positioned among the three most important European fairs in the sector”, according to Alimentaria Exhibitions.
The organization has already started working on next year’s edition, which will be held from February 3 to 5, with the determination to expand the exhibition area and leave behind the great discomfort caused by the closure of access for security reasons in an overbooked edition. Last Monday alone, around 1,100 people were left unable to enter the fairgrounds.
The president of the BWW, Javier Pagés, states that the success of this edition “obliges us to resize ourselves, to grow to welcome more wineries and more buyers, but without losing the essence of exclusivity and quality of the event.” As La Vanguardia already announced, next year the exhibition could leave the current pavilion 8 (with capacity for 7,000 people) to move to 1 and 2 of Montjuïc, while a new gastronomic area will be created (currently very limited and with problems due to the strong smells given off by the preparations) which is being considered for placement in the Place de l’Univers.
The works on the Montjuïc fairgrounds, which are scheduled to begin in phases in 2026, determine the final solution. In this edition there have already been 15% more wineries (a total of 952), 12,000 business meetings, 1,000 national buyers and 650 international importers.
The economic impact induced in the city of Barcelona by this fourth edition, according to Toni Valls, the general director of Alimentaria Exhibitions, is between 12 and 13 million euros, between 15 and 20% more than last year.
