GLOBALS On Tour Lisbon 2025 at Web Summit | Club GLOBALS
Lisbon, Web Summit, and a Bus Full of Founders
For one week in November, Lisbon once again became the busiest crossroads in European tech.
Web Summit 2025 pulled in tens of thousands of founders, operators, investors, and ecosystem leaders to the MEO/Altice Arena and FIL, four intense days of stages, screens, and endless badge-swipes. But the real story for Club GLOBALS didn’t happen only under the bright arena lights. It happened on morning runs with founders and operators, in invite-only salons about bridging startup ecosystems, at late-night parties where pitch decks turned into partnership. And, of course, on our very own Pitch on the Bus, a rolling stage through the streets of Lisbon! Once again, we didn’t just attend Web Summit. We designed a full experience around it for our community of tech leaders and entrepreneurs. Just like last year, we built a side-event playbook so our community could navigate Lisbon with purpose instead of fear of missing out. Our internal list covered a full week, from warm-up weekend to decompression Friday. By Sunday evening, the pattern was clear: We weren’t just sharing a calendar. We were designing a social ramp into Web Summit, so by the time the doors opened on Monday, our people already had familiar faces in the crowd. Huge thanks to Nadia & Oleski for the photos we used in our content and Iriska for capturing the energy on video.
Monday: Bridging Ecosystems & Opening the Night
On Monday 10 November, we joined Connect & Grow: Bridging Startup Ecosystems at TUMO / Factory Lisboa, right at the heart of Lisbon’s innovation engine. The conversations reflected what we care about at Club GLOBALS: How do you connect local talent with global capital? What’s the right playbook for European founders who think beyond one market from day one? How can cities like Lisbon, Berlin, Barcelona, and Munich coordinate instead of competing?
The format mixed panels, short founder stories, and plenty of hallway time, which is where a lot of the real work happens. We met operators building from Portugal for the world, funds scouting the Iberian Peninsula for the next breakout, and ecosystem leaders curious about how to plug into our GLOBALS On Tour and GSTF26 in Barcelona. For Club GLOBALS, this was a natural fit: our mission is to empower tech entrepreneurs via tools, partnerships, and a vibrant network, and Lisbon gave us the perfect backdrop to do exactly that. We walked out with concrete follow-ups, not just LinkedIn connections.
Endeavor Portugal
We closed Tuesday with an Endeavor Portugal gathering, where growth-stage founders, late-seed teams, and investors mixed in an intimate setting focused on scale, international expansion, and real founder stories. It was the perfect final touch to a day dedicated to cross-border growth and “future unicorns” in the making.
The Yorkseed Soirée – Official Kickoff Party
Monday night, we swapped daytime panels for The Yorkseed Soirée, one of the most anticipated kickoff parties of Web Summit Lisbon 2025, hosted by Yorkseed and EdgeCraft Group. It set the tone for the week: a curated crowd, strong founder–VC mix, and a global energy that stretched late into the night. Instead of chasing 10 parties at once, we directed our community to one place where the right conversations were happening and where many in our network found their first “home base” of the week.
Tuesday: From Catalonia to Germany
By Tuesday, Lisbon was fully switched on. Web Summit content tracks were in full sprint and yet our community moved smoothly between arena, city, and side events. We focused the day on three high-leverage moments.
Barcelona – Catalonia Networking Cocktail
In the afternoon, we joined the Barcelona – Catalonia Networking Cocktail, a compact but powerful session that spotlighted the Catalan ecosystem. For us, this was strategic: Barcelona is home to our flagship GLOBALS Tech Festival on 1 March 2026, themed “Celebrating Growth”. This cocktail became an excellent bridge between Lisbon’s international crowd and the Mediterranean growth hubs we’re deeply connected to.
Startup Germany Night
Later, it was time for Startup Germany Night at Convento do Beato, a fan favorite and one of the loudest signals that the DACH ecosystem shows up in force at Web Summit. We saw: German startups scouting partnerships and customers, investors hunting for deal flow beyond their home market, a growing interest in Portuguese and Spanish founders who are ready to scale north.
Wednesday: GLOBALS On Tour – Pitch on the Bus 🚍
At the end of the midday, 18:00, to be exact: we kicked off GLOBALS On Tour, Pitch on the Bus, our own side event hosted right in the streets of Lisbon. Instead of another room with rows of chairs, we chose a moving bus: Founders pitched as Lisbon rolled by outside the windows, investors and ecosystem partners sat just a few seats away, every turn of the route brought a new question, a new intro, a new angle on the story. Mario and Nico were on fire throughout the day, moderating, energizing, connecting dots, and making sure no promising founder slipped under the radar. The atmosphere was part accelerator, part road trip, and 100% human. In a week where everyone is overwhelmed, Pitch on the Bus created shared context where everyone is literally on the same journey, physically and metaphorically, which is always nice. Also, memorability, you don’t forget the startup you discovered while cruising past the Tejo. For Club GLOBALS, formats like this are not gimmicks. They’re how we translate our values, meaningful networking, cross-cultural collaboration, and action, into concrete experiences. After the bus, many participants continued the event and used the relationships formed on the bus as their “home base” for the rest of the night.
What We Learned in Lisbon: A Playbook for Tech Leaders
After a full Web Summit + PTW week, a few clear patterns emerged.
1. Side Events Are No Longer “Side”
Guides like the Web Summit 2025 Survival Playbook openly say it: the best networking happens outside the main venue, in curated events and community-led gatherings. Our Lisbon experience confirmed this again: The content at Web Summit is excellent. But the connections that move your business forward often happen at a run, on a rooftop, or on a bus.
2. You Need an Intentional Route, Not a Maxed-Out Calendar
We saw two types of attendees: Those trying to do everything, those who picked 1–2 anchor events per day and went deep. The second group clearly got more value.
Our approach with the curated list, from Founders Running Club to Yorkseed parties, from Connect & Grow to Future Unicorns, was exactly that: give our community a route, not a random list.
3. Ecosystem Bridges Beat Ecosystem Silos
Events like Connect & Grow, Startup Germany Night, and the Barcelona–Catalonia Cocktail showed how much demand there is for cross-border collaboration. Lisbon is increasingly positioned as Europe’s global gateway: Friendly to international founders, strong English-speaking community, comparatively affordable, highly connected through events like PTW and Web Summit. For Club GLOBALS, this reinforced that our role as matchmakers across hubs (Berlin, Barcelona, Lisbon, Munich, Malta, and beyond) is more important than ever.
What’s Next: From Lisbon to Barcelona & Beyond
Lisbon was one chapter in a bigger story: GLOBALS On Tour leading up to our flagship festival.
- 🧭 Davos Briefing 2026 – A strategic session to align on the 2026 GLOBALS agenda and our presence in Davos. Apply here.
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🎿 Davos 2026 – Alpine networking around global leaders
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🌊 Barcelona – 1 March 2026: GLOBALS Tech Festival (GSTF26) – “Celebrating Growth”
GSTF26 will bring tech leaders, sales & revenue teams, investors, and ecosystem builders together for a full day of growth-focused content, curated matchmaking, and powerful networking in Barcelona.
