On a Tuesday in the middle of Mobile World Congress 2026, three industry experts gathered for a panel to chat about smart glasses and extended reality tech. But a fourth member of the panel, who was based in Dubai, never made it to the conference. Two days before, the US and Israel launched airborne attacks on Iran, and flights had been grounded throughout the Middle East.

Even thousands of miles away in Barcelona, on the western edge of the Mediterranean Sea, MWC was affected by the conflict. While events and meetings at the world’s largest mobile tech conference proceeded as planned, albeit under the anxious awareness of larger geopolitical events, there were notable absences. 

Some booths stood empty, and some meetings scheduled between absent attendees weren’t held. Exhibitors walked the halls and saw a diminished presence from Middle Eastern companies.

While the conflict was just beginning as MWC took place, it had already affected attendees and changed the experience. While distant from the fighting in the Middle East, the war’s impact was just as seriously felt in the middle of a conference about bringing humans together.

The financial, emotional and mental cost of war on a tech conference

The fourth panelist on Tuesday’s panel was supposed to be Roman Axelrod, cofounder of Xpanceo, who would have likely discussed the smart contact lenses the company intended to show off in prototype form at MWC. But neither Axelrod nor the samples ever left Dubai, where the company is based. Conference attendees who walked by Xpanceo’s booth were greeted by employees who had flown in from elsewhere and apologized that they had only hastily made video demonstrations of the technology samples that were supposed to be on display.

I had already planned to chat with Valentyn S. Volkov, co-founder and CTO of Xpanceo, who likewise didn’t make it to MWC. While the company was intentionally headquartered in Dubai as a reliable and predictable jurisdiction for business (as well as centrally located, with many business destinations within a 7-hour flight), the country falls within the airspace of the current conflict. As a result, businesses are losing money, especially funds spent on opportunities at MWC.

“We already kind of lost, I would say, a significant amount of resources — physical, mental, scientific resources — simply because we could not get everyone to Barcelona. We could not get our prototypes to Barcelona as planned,” Volkov told me.

Fortunately, Volkov was in good spirits when I chatted with him over Zoom via a laptop in Xpanceo’s booth. He was safe, noting that local authorities in Dubai were providing “logistic safeness.” 

Our chat quickly turned to the smart contact lenses that the company is working on, with plans to roll out functioning prototypes by the end of the year. As Volkov described their potential capabilities, they sounded like the next evolution of smart glasses, like the Google Specs that I saw at Google I/O last year, offering heads-up display information relayed from a nearby phone, and even potentially health data like glucose level readings taken from the lens’ contact with the eye’s tears.

“Those beauties were supposed to be shown for the very first time [at MWC], and we put lots of effort and resources into that. It’s completely bad luck,” Volkov said.

Thanks to modern network technology, Volkov and I were still able to have this virtual conversation — and fortunately, the war had not affected him or the infrastructure where he was. But anyone can tell you the value of having an in-person exchange over one on small screens. What was lost through the wires because Volkov wasn’t there to demonstrate features and concepts of Xpanceo’s products through body language and demonstration?

It’s not hard to imagine scaling that up to all the business conversations and networking opportunities lost to those whose flights were canceled and lives locked down due to the conflict in the Middle East. Some of those meetings could likely be shifted to digital chats like mine, but MWC is a show about making new connections in person, seeing new devices and getting updated on the latest tech trends across the mobile and telecom industries. 

But I met some attendees who were suffering the opposite fate, having flown out early from countries now in restricted airspace. They made it to MWC, but it’s too early to tell when they can fly home.

Stranded at MWC, return unknown

I sat down with Said Saidi, an exhibitor at the show, and chatted in between his calls home. I couldn’t imagine the strain he was under with family back in Dubai and no clear idea of when he’d be able to rejoin them. 

A resident of the United Arab Emirates for 19 years, Saidi was comforted to be able to chat with his family on the phone every few hours, who he said were safe. Aside from noise made by the defense system and drones coming from Iran, his reports from home said everyone is living peacefully and has no shortage of supplies, and they have so far had no major stress.

Saidi explained that this was counter to misinformation being spread on social media that says people have been stuck in the UAE without accommodation. As he said, and reports have echoed, the government and hotels have provided stranded travelers with free stays.

Saidi caught an early flight out to Barcelona the previous Friday, but most other exhibitors from the Middle East usually fly out on Sunday, he said. By then, commercial flights from the area were largely grounded following the initial strikes by the US and Israel on Saturday morning. He said the impact of this region-wide air travel blackout was stark. After walking around the show floor twice, even all the way out to the startup area at the far end of the convention center, the presence of attendees from the Middle East is “near zero,” Saidi said. 

While he made it to MWC, many of the meetings Saidi was supposed to have with peers from other Middle Eastern companies had to be canceled or held online. It’s a loss all around.

“Usually, the main purpose of the exhibition is to show that we are present, we are there, and also to meet new leads and new business,” Saidi said. While executives may normally move in their own circles, at MWC, they can be met on the show floor by anyone. “The exhibition is always a good chance to meet people and do that first handshake and build on it,” Saidi said.

Waiting for the limbo to lift, but the impact remains

In three days of running around the MWC show floor, I tried to gauge the scope of these absences. None was more obvious than in the startup area, 4YFN, which was filled with company representatives from every corner of the Earth — except a strand representing the Palestinian Information Technology Association of Companies. Just two booths were manned out of what was supposed to be seven, with the rest of the startup representatives unable to fly to the show.

The representatives who were there politely declined to comment for this story and weren’t sure when they’d be able to fly back. 

Saidi said the same. While he asserted that his company was taking care of him, and that he felt totally relaxed as long as his family was safe back in Dubai, he had no inkling of when he’d be able to return home.  

“I have zero expectations,” Saidi said. “At this point in time, we cannot predict anything.”

From within Dubai, during our conversation, Xpanceo’s Volkov had a more optimistic outlook, with significant hope that the situation would stabilize within a week. But if it is a prolonged issue, he said his company would be prepared for that, too. And work is continuing remotely in the meantime. 

The war is likely to have an impact on the mobile industry beyond MWC. Analysts have adjusted their previously dim projection on 2026’s expected phone sales to an even bleaker outlook, expecting a 13% drop over the year. Mostly, they blame the RAM shortage, which is plaguing the tech industry as AI data centers gobble up memory. 

But when I chatted with International Data Corporation’s Jeronimo Francisco, he noted that the regional chaos of the war with Iran contributed to that drop, at least in terms of disrupting supply chains, increasing the cost of oil and forcing companies to find workarounds for wartime bottlenecks.

“If there was no memory crisis, instead of the market dropping 13% it would drop 5 in the worst-case scenario, something like that,” Francisco said. 

It was a poignant moment for the mobile industry. Even as the AI industry-caused RAM shortage is poised to increase phone prices in 2026, MWC was awash in company slogans embracing AI agents and other applications of generative AI. Satellite companies heralded the era of increasing connectivity beyond the range of traditional cell networks. Going to the show is an opportunity to catch wind of exciting trends awaiting phone owners in the months to come. 

But even when MWC feels like being in a bubble of wonky news and enthusiastic predictions, sometimes the bubble is popped by global events that significantly disrupt lives. At CNET, we have covered a lot of the coolest discoveries we made at the biggest phone show of the year — but even immersed in the deepest phone dives, it’s important to remember the human impact of conflicts that reach thousands of miles to a convention center in a Catalonian beach town.