URBIS The Smart Cities Meetup Brought New Ideas and Inspiration for Cities and Municipalities

Brno Wraps Up the Second Edition of URBIS The Smart Cities Meetup

200 exhibitors, including international participants, and 5,000 visitors. Three days packed with discussions, workshops, and demonstrations of technologies for cities and municipalities — Brno has successfully completed the second edition of URBIS The Smart Cities Meetup.

This trade fair and conference platform brought together experts, city representatives, startups, and the general public at the Brno Exhibition Centre last week. Together, they explored ways to make cities and municipalities more sustainable, smarter, and more welcoming.

How can we improve the functioning and efficiency of urban services? How can we enhance public spaces to better reflect the needs of local communities? Possible answers were offered through topics such as energy efficiency and self-sufficiency, mobility, smart waste management, digitalization of public administration, use of artificial intelligence, and intergenerational cooperation.

Thanks to the URBIS Challenge HackaTEEN led by JINAG, pupils and students also got involved in developing smart solutions for public spaces. Up to 20 teams of children from primary and secondary schools competed with ideas on how to improve life in cities.

On behalf of the City of Brno, we had the opportunity to present projects at URBIS that we clearly consider smart solutions — whether developed directly by us or in collaboration with our partners, colleagues, and five municipal companies. We would like to sincerely thank everyone who visited the Brno booth and presented their institution’s solutions and technologies to visitors.

Together with the Krása pomoci Foundation, we also successfully prepared the program Stárnutí jako výzva i příležitost (Aging as a Challenge and Opportunity), which took place in the Archimedes outdoor multimedia classroom by Eduvision.

We were also delighted by the visit of Ugo Valenti, Director of Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona, the largest smart city fair in Europe.

This autumn, Brno will head to Barcelona once again to take part in this major European smart city platform, representing the Czech Republic for the second time.

URBIS would like to become the Central European Barcelona. To achieve this, it is necessary to increase the efforts of all partners at the city, regional, and national levels, and to improve communication with mayors and senior officials, especially from Czech towns and municipalities. The goal is to persuade them to participate in URBIS, which could, for example, focus more on practical demonstrations of urban technologies.

The foundation has already been laid — URBIS is perceived as a place for meeting, forming partnerships, inspiration, and sharing experiences among all those who care about the quality of life in cities and municipalities.

Fans of smart solutions for cities and municipalities will meet again next year. The next edition of URBIS will take place from June 2 to June 4, 2026.