Global urban infrastructure investment needs are projected to reach approximately $106 trillion by 2040, with transportation ($36 trillion) and energy ($23 trillion) accounting for the largest shares. At this year’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, more than 25,000 leaders in the city and municipal sector, including Itron, came together to shape the future of these critical investments. Here are three of our biggest takeaways. 

Cities’ most pressing challenges are evolving. 

At Itron, we strive to understand our customers’ and partners’ biggest challenges and help solve them. At this year’s event, we introduced the Listening Lab to do just that: a dedicated space for meaningful conversations with visitors to our booth about their top challenges, opportunities and priority use cases for 2026 and beyond. These discussions were grounded in insights from a global study we recently conducted with ThoughtLab, which surveyed city leaders from over 250 municipalities representing 9% of the world’s population, to identify the top 15 concerns shaping urban strategies today. Emerging priorities such as public health, crime reduction and public safety may soon rival climate change as the leading concern, while topics like digital sovereignty and deeper integration across city systems are gaining momentum. These findings sparked valuable conversations and uncovered additional insights into the unique challenges municipalities face. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is powering smarter cities. 

Unsurprisingly, AI dominated the event with a major focus on edge processing, where AI operates at the device level to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption. This approach is making data far more accessible and actionable, opening the door for smart city platforms to integrate a mix of solutions and deliver added value. AI-powered cameras supported this trend by processing video at the edge, capturing metadata such as accidents, vehicles and people, and transmitting only relevant data to central systems. Some exhibitors demonstrated innovative approaches to aggregating traffic and weather data without physical sensors, leveraging Bluetooth beacons and public datasets. Lidar technology also stood out, offering high-resolution mapping for autonomous vehicles and infrastructure while preserving privacy. 

Interoperable standards are accelerating smart city innovation. 

Standards organizations such as TALQ, Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI), ZHAGA and OMA Alliance had a strong presence, underscoring the industry’s commitment to open standards like Lightweight Machine to Machine (LWM2M). These frameworks are critical for enabling devices and platforms to “speak the same language,” ensuring seamless integration across diverse systems from street lighting and sensors to advanced IoT platforms. Interoperability helps cities avoid vendor lock-in and maintain the flexibility to adopt new technologies and use cases over time. Moving forward, interoperable standards will be key to data-driven decision making, cross-domain integration and scalable innovation.  

A big thank you to all the city and municipal leaders who stopped by our booth and shared your perspectives in the Listening Lab. Itron is committed to leveraging these insights to inform solutions that deliver measurable impact for our customers and the communities they serve. We look forward to continuing the conversations in 2026!