The New Race among Global MICE Cities: How Sustainability, AI, and Local Culture Are Reshaping the MICE Ecosystem

What makes a city the choice of the world's top associations, multinational corporations, and professional conference organizers? In the past, the answer might have been the size of its convention center, the number of five-star hotels, or the throughput of its airport. Yet a series of events in the summer of 2026 shows that the answer is being rewritten.

In Copenhagen, delegates attending UNLEASH Europe Innovation Lab and the annual meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution will pick up litter during a morning run, then exchange their contribution to the city for a cup of coffee and a Danish pastry. This is the latest extension of the CopenPay initiative—a "reward for good behavior" program originally aimed at tourists, now formally embedded in the social program of business conferences. Just a few months earlier, Copenhagen announced that CopenPay would move from pilot to year-round operation, attracting destinations from around the world to learn from its model.

In Cape Town, details released for BestCities Global Forum 2027 introduce a points system called "Engage for Good": delegates' level of interaction will be directly converted into charitable donations, used to build an early childhood education center in the Heideveld community constructed from 5,000 tires and 12,000 plastic bottles. This is not one-off brand PR, but rather part of a transformation of conferences themselves into social infrastructure.

These details may read like heartwarming community stories, but behind them lies a structural shift in the convention industry under global competitive pressure. As the post-pandemic recovery has gradually completed and the number of international conferences steadily rebounds, cities are no longer competing simply over "venues" and "audiences," but over something deeper—resonance of values, cutting-edge applications of technology, and the ability to solve real local problems.

Sustainability moves from slogans to the agenda

Copenhagen's CopenPay is the most direct window into this shift. The program was initially launched as an experiment, rewarding tourists for taking environmentally friendly actions during their stay, such as cycling, participating in clean-up activities, or visiting green attractions. In 2026, the city decided to make it permanent and extend it into the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, exhibitions) sector. Three international organizations have agreed to include CopenPay-related activities in their social programs, two of which take place in late June. This means that scientists and innovators from around the world will, outside the official conference agenda, engage with the city the way locals do—morning runs, litter picking, and transactions with local coffee shops.

The appeal of this "embedded sustainability" is that it does not require delegates to make extra sacrifices; rather, it designs environmentally friendly behavior as part of the conference experience. For organizers, this both addresses corporate social responsibility requirements and creates a more memorable attendee experience. For the city itself, it is an efficient "display of values"—it no longer needs to publish volumes of reports to prove its green credentials, but instead lets visitors experience them firsthand within a few hours.It is worth noting that CopenPay has been exported from Copenhagen to overseas destinations, becoming a replicable model. This marks the shift of sustainability from a differentiating label for individual cities to common infrastructure for the global conference and exhibition network. When a city proves to the world that "rewarding green behavior" can become the norm, other competitors will have to respond, or they will lose their appeal before clients who prioritize ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).

AI Reshapes the Underlying Tools of Conference Planning

Sustainability has changed the events industry's "experience layer," while artificial intelligence is restructuring its "operations layer." At the latest BestCities Community Café online seminar, industry experts showcased practical AI tools in event management: from automatically generating speaker profiles and segmenting registration data, to capturing meeting content in real time and analyzing its impact—even making it possible to quantify "intangible value."

The conference industry has long been seen as a field heavily reliant on people, and AI's involvement is reallocating manpower and efficiency. Planners can hand repetitive tasks over to algorithms and instead focus on creativity and relationship maintenance. But this also raises a new question: will technology make conferences more homogeneous? The answer given by BestCities' experts is that AI's value lies precisely in unleashing personalization—when data can accurately identify the interests and needs of different attendees, cities and organizers can provide more customized paths, making every attendee feel that "this conference was designed for me."

This trend goes hand in hand with international associations' interest in the technology. When AI can help associations prove the long-term impact of a conference—for example, by analyzing attendees' career trajectories or the expansion of collaboration networks—the return on investment of a conference becomes quantifiable and demonstrable. This not only affects corporate decisions, but also government subsidies and sponsorship intentions. It is worth noting that the application of AI in conferences is not meant to replace human contact, but to strengthen the quality of human connection on site, which is precisely the irreplaceable core of the conference industry.

Knowledge Assets Become New Bargaining Chips in City Bidding

If sustainability and AI are methods and tools, then a city's inherent "knowledge capital" is becoming a more fundamental competitive dimension. The example of Cape Town is especially illustrative. In the latest QS World University Rankings, the University of Cape Town maintained its position as number one in Africa. Meanwhile, in StartupBlink's Global Startup Ecosystem Index, Cape Town regained the top spot in South Africa, rising to 114th globally with annual growth of 39%, ranking third in Africa. For conference bidders, these are not merely honorary titles—they mean greater local research strength, more expert talent to connect with, and a more vibrant technology community.Cape Town has successfully secured the right to host a series of high-quality international conferences, including the African Transport Research Conference in 2027, the ACM CHI conference (CHI) and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations conference in 2028, and the International Congress on Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) in 2030. These events, seemingly scattered across different disciplines, point to the same logic: when a city can provide academic support across law, technology, transportation, and the humanities, it is no longer merely a "scenic MICE destination" but a smart partner worth long-term collaboration.

This logic aligns with the judgment of urban observers: global knowledge networks are increasingly concentrated in a few "hubs," and conferences are the most important visible vehicle for the flow of knowledge. Whether a city can secure a position in the international division of knowledge depends not only on its university rankings, but also on whether it can turn its academic strengths into a platform for industrial collaboration, policy innovation, and multilateral dialogue on international issues. Cape Town's rise is also a microcosm of Africa's growing weight on the global knowledge map—it has not been easy, but it is happening.

Cultural Customization in the Experience Economy

From the supply side, cities are shaping their own convention and exhibition brands. From the demand side, buyers in emerging markets are demanding experiences that are more culturally inclusive. Melbourne offers an example here. The Melbourne Convention Bureau, in partnership with Singapore Airlines, designed an immersive familiarization itinerary for a group of Indian MICE planners—from the backstreet laneways of central Melbourne to the welcome ceremony at City Hall, followed by visits to the cricket ground and sports museum, even an impromptu encounter with legendary cricketer Adam Gilchrist, and finally extending to the Great Ocean Road and Geelong to visit the newly opened Nyaal Banyul Geelong Convention and Event Centre.

This was not simple sightseeing, but a carefully choreographed narrative built around "Indian market values": cricket is India's national passion, a family-first itinerary pace, and venue choices that satisfy both international standards and local cultural identity. Melbourne has clearly noticed that India, one of the fastest-growing MICE source markets in the world, has decision-makers whose expectations of a destination can no longer be captured by the word "luxury." They need to see their culture respected, understood, and integrated. The signal sent by the Melbourne Convention Bureau is this: the decisive factor in competition between cities in the future may not lie in who has the larger exhibition hall, but in who better understands how to fuse the "global" and the "local" into a unique experience.

This capacity for cultural customization will become a new form of professionalism. Cities will no longer promote only architecture and landmarks; they will promote their ability to "translate culture"—transforming global issues, local traditions, and the specific needs of participants into coherent and sensible event design. And in the near future, this ability will be influenced by even more dimensions, including delicate geopolitical situations, new changes in air route connections, and divergent definitions of sustainability across different regions.

Redefining the Value Radius of ConferencesPutting the above trends together, a more complete picture emerges: competition in the global MICE industry is shifting from "cost-effectiveness" to "a sense of value." The value perception here includes both the knowledge gains a conference brings to attendees and the long-term social, environmental, and intellectual impact it brings to the host city.

Copenhagen has attendees pick up trash to make sustainable behavior perceivable; Cape Town uses conference funds to build education centers, making the social benefits of meetings tangible; the application of AI tools attempts to make these intangible values measurable and disseminable. And those seemingly most traditional cities—such as using cricket to connect with Indian visitors, or using university rankings to demonstrate academic output—are actually all adopting the same strategy: turning meetings into a medium with depth, carrying far more complex information than merely "having a meeting."

For global associations, PCOs, and destination managers, understanding this shift is a prerequisite for formulating strategies for the next decade. The city is no longer a static stage, but a fluid participant with its own character. It must have its own agenda, have its own voice in areas such as climate, technology, and social equity, and be able to convey these voices to the world through conferences. Perhaps a new evaluation framework will soon emerge, linking a city's "conference attractiveness" to its "impact assets"—assets that may include community resilience, academic breakthroughs, the density of startups, or how it treats those who come to pick up trash.

Beyond all this, the most noteworthy thing is that these are not abstract trends. They are being turned into reality, step by step, in the summer of 2026, by a group of specific people on specific streets and in specific venues.