The cities and countries shaping the global events map
Tsveta van Son
October 23, 2026
Read time:
min
Ask the industry to name the world's great event cities, and you're likely to get the same short list. By contrast, the Eventex Index draws a bigger map, counting three editions of Eventex Awards, covering as many as 3,851 entries from 79 countries.
The leaders in this comprehensive ranking include Gulf powerhouses, European cities off the usual circuit, and small destinations punching well above their size. Let’s see which they are and what that means for the events and experience marketing industry.
The Gulf owns the top of the table
Abu Dhabi leads the Eventex Top 50 Cities 2026, and three of the top four cities are in the Gulf. Reinforcing the Middle East’s standing even further, seven Gulf cities make the ranking, spread across the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
What sets the leaders apart is that they win on two fronts. Abu Dhabi shows the pattern:
Events:
a steady run of award-winning events
Venues:
more wins in the venue categories than any other city
The takeaway: The lesson for destinations elsewhere isn’t scale. It’s density: a tight cluster of venues and events that earn recognition again and again, across every edition.
The US lead comes from breadth. It hosted more award-winning events than any other country, spread across Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, Miami, and beyond, rather than concentrated in one flagship city.
The takeaway: For destination marketers, that changes who you’re competing with — not just a city but a whole country, where many cities together build a lead no single city could reach alone.
Poland and Spain: two routes to depth
Poland and Spain each place four cities in the Top 50 and sit side by side at #3 and #4 among countries. Look closer, and they've built that standing in opposite ways.
Poland wins on its events.
Warsaw hosted more award-winning events than any other city in the ranking, and Poznań, Gdańsk, and Wrocław follow the same pattern.
Poland’s place is earned entirely through the events staged in its cities.
Spain wins on balance.
Madrid and Barcelona bring the event volume, while Bilbao and Vila-seca owe much of their standing to their venues.
Bilbao’s Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall tops the entire Top 100 Venues, and Vila-seca reaches the Top 50 Cities without hosting a single award-winning event.
The takeaway: For national tourism bodies, there is more than one way to build a strong national showing. One is to fill your cities with award-winning events, as Poland does. The other is to back standout venues that put smaller cities on the map, as Bilbao and Vila-seca show for Spain.
The United Kingdom: a venue nation
The United Kingdom ranks #5 among countries, and its venues tell the story. Its wins in the venue categories outnumber any other country's, which helps explain how the UK outranks countries that hosted more award-winning events, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Germany.
That strength isn't confined to the capital. London pairs award-winning events with a run of venue wins, and its Queen Elizabeth II Centre ranks #3 in the Eventex Top 100 Venues 2026. Belfast and Newport go further still, earning their places in the Eventex Top 50 Cities 2026 largely or entirely through their venues.
The takeaway: For venue operators and convention bureaus, this is the clearest case in the Eventex Index: recognized infrastructure can lift a city, and a country, as surely as a packed events calendar.
Small destinations, concentrated impact
Some of the sharpest stories on the map belong to places that win big through a single city or a single venue. Concentration cuts both ways: it builds a clear, ownable reputation, and it puts a lot of weight on one asset.
Riga: one city, one national story
Riga accounts for 915 of Latvia's 1,015 points, so the city and the country are, in effect, the same story. That's a strength worth leaning into:
A clear identity: when one city carries a nation, the city brand and the national brand reinforce each other
A single front door: for agencies scouting host cities, there's no question where Latvia's award-winning work happens
Riga also proves a smaller market doesn't need many cities to stand among the best. It needs one that delivers.
Aruba: recognition as a destination brand
Aruba ranks #35 among countries without a single award-winning event or venue win counted. Every one of its points comes from one destination win.
That's a distinct pattern, and worth naming: recognition earned purely as a destination brand, not through the events a place hosts. It's enough to put Aruba ahead of Ireland, which hosted seven award-winning events.
For tourism boards, the message is direct:
The destination is an entry in its own right, not just a backdrop for other people's events
One standout win can outweigh volume, as Aruba's place above event-hosting countries shows
Cape Town ranks #13 among cities and scores on every front the ranking measures. Only one other city in the Top 50, Hong Kong, does the same:
Events: award-winning work staged in the city
Venues: Century City Conference Centre (#6) and Cape Town International Convention Centre (#14) both rank in the top 15 of the Top 100 Venues
Destination: recognition in the destination categories, too
What the map means for destinations
The Eventex Index shows there is more than one road to recognition. Destinations reach the top through three distinct routes, often combined:
Event volume
a steady flow of award-winning events, as Warsaw and the United States show
Venue excellence
recognized infrastructure that lifts its city and country, as in the UK, Heredia, and Vila-seca
Destination brand
recognition for the place itself, as Aruba proves on its own
The takeaway: The places worth watching go well beyond the usual big-name cities. And a destination doesn’t need to be a world capital to rank among the best.
Want to meet some of the people behind these destinations? The conversation continues at the Eventex Summit.
How cities & countries earn a spot in the index
Only award-winning work counts. Honorable Mentions and Grand Prix finalist listings carry no points, and an event credits its host city and country once per edition, however many categories it won. Of the 319 cities that earned points, just 50 made the Eventex Top 50 Cities 2026. Full methodology on the cities and countries index pages
The Eventex Index identifies and ranks the most awarded agencies, brands, venues, cities, countries, and events by analyzing winner data from the Eventex Awards. Five of the six rankings are built from three editions, 2024 to 2026. The Top 20 Most Awarded Events looks at a single edition, because it measures how much one project won within one year rather than sustained performance.
Which city ranks #1 in the Eventex Index 2026?
Abu Dhabi leads the Top 50 Cities with 2,015 points, followed by Warsaw, Doha, Dubai, and London.
Which country ranks #1 in the Eventex Index 2026?
The United States leads the Top 50 Countries with 4,145 points and 100 award-winning events. The United Arab Emirates, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom complete the top five.
How are cities and countries ranked?
Three inputs, added together: award-winning events hosted there, venue-category wins, and destination awards. Each is weighted. For cities, a venue win counts three times and a destination win five times. For countries, a venue win counts double and a destination award triple, rising to five times when the country itself wins it. Awards from 2026 are worth double those from 2024 and 2025, and Grand Prix points exist only from 2026.
Which is the better destination credential, a high city rank or a high country rank?
They prove different things. A city rank is a claim an individual destination can make in a bid; a country rank is a national pipeline argument for a tourism board or trade body. The two aren’t comparable as numbers, because venue and destination wins are weighted differently in each index. Riga shows how close they can sit: it accounts for 915 of Latvia’s 1,015 points, so the city and the country are effectively the same credential.
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Written by:
Tsveta van Son
Copywriting specialist
An experienced copywriter, editor, and translator, Tsveta writes for Eventex where she covers everything from experience marketing trends to the stories behind the event industry's top award-winning campaigns. With a background in journalism and a soft spot for Icelandic grammar, she believes the best content is precise, useful, and never boring.
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