A little spark runs through this announcement because it hints at the kind of atmosphere 4YFN tends to create: packed halls humming with early-stage bravado, founders pacing backstage with half-finished pitch decks, investors drifting between demo pods like they’re shopping for the future. Barcelona’s Gran Via already knows this rhythm from MWC, but when 4YFN moves in, the energy tilts younger, hungrier, a bit restless in the best way. Next year’s edition leans hard into that mood with its “Infinite AI” theme, and you can already imagine the stands glowing with those slightly-too-bright screens showcasing prototypes that haven’t fully settled into what they’ll become.
The heart of the story, as always, is the Top 20—those twenty teams who managed to rise out of hundreds of submissions and now find themselves stepping into that uncomfortable but thrilling spotlight of the semifinals. They span five categories, and each cluster tells you something about where the startup world thinks the next cracks of opportunity are forming. Climate Tech shows a practical streak this year, from Greenlyte converting pulled-from-air CO₂ into green hydrogen to URAPHEX quietly reinventing how industrial water gets cleaned without burning through chemicals. Digital Horizons is very 2026: four different attempts to secure, stabilize, or scale the exploding universe of AI systems that enterprises are still trying to wrangle. Fintech is less flashy but more revealing—Dost and Spendbase speak to SaaS fatigue and the desire for automated discipline, while DRUO’s bank-to-bank model leans into a cardless future that feels inevitable once the right UX lands.
Health Tech continues its shift toward pragmatic AI, with a focus on diseases and workflows that actually need the help—TB detection, clinical trial automation, pancreatic lesion tracking. The Mobile Frontiers group feels like the wildcard lineup every year, and this one stretches from sign-language interpretation for deaf communities to satellite lifetime extension to eSIM orchestration. You can picture their demo booths already: half polished, half chaotic, all buzzing with founders hoping someone important wanders by at just the right moment.
Day one brings the semifinal pitch gauntlet—always a bit brutal, always surprisingly candid—with a panel of investors evaluating not just novelty but whether these teams can really scale what they’re promising. Five make it through to the Banco Sabadell stage on 4 March, where one will walk away with the €20,000 GSMA Foundry prize. It’s not the money that really matters; it’s the momentum, the visibility, the sudden shift from “unknown startup” to “the one everyone at the conference keeps talking about.”
The halls of 8.0 and 8.1 will do their usual thing: a dense grid of demos, conversations that start standing up and end two hours later leaning over someone’s laptop, podcasts recording in corners, founders scribbling on any available surface. Something about 4YFN reliably turns chance encounters into deals, and people chase that serendipity as much as the panels.
If that mix of noise, ideas, and unpolished innovation sounds like your kind of place, registration for 4YFN26 is open. It tends to be one of those events where you walk in with a plan and walk out with something completely different—usually for the better.