The RedTech Summit was never designed to be a conventional industry conference. There are no crowded exhibition halls, no hurried booth visits or rushed sales presentations. Instead, over the past five years, it has evolved into something far rarer in audio broadcasting: A closed, senior-level environment where CEOs, CTOs and strategic decision-makers compare realities, challenge each other’s assumptions and speak candidly about the industry’s future.
At RedTech Summits, discussions can get gritty. Broadcasters from across the world arrive with radically different market pressures and experiences. When those collide, useful friction emerges, and that’s where RedTech Summits find value.
Again and again, attendees leave with altered perspectives. Ideas that seem settled in one market are reviewed when seen through another lens. That has become one of the summit’s defining strengths: Strategic comparison.
As the fifth RedTech Summit prepares to gather on Spain’s Costa Brava, it is worth considering how such strategic conversations have evolved and why this year’s setting may provide an especially fitting backdrop for the next chapter.
From Paris to the Mediterranean
The first RedTech Summit in Paris in 2022 established the central premise that has underpinned every gathering since: “Radio” is no longer just radio. The consensus was that broadcasters were becoming broader audio publishers, with responsibilities extending across streaming, podcasting, metadata, digital distribution and multiplatform audience engagement.
When the summit reconvened in Chantilly, France in 2023, the discussion had shifted from conceptual transformation to operational urgency. Declining linear listening, especially among younger demographics, was forcing broadcasters to reconsider both content strategy and revenue structure. Artificial intelligence was in the room. Questions of digital monetization, platform convergence and regulatory imbalance moved to the center of executive concern.
Lisbon in 2024 pushed that conversation further. AI was no longer theoretical. Broadcasters were beginning to test workflow automation, voice technologies and personalization tools in earnest. Podcasting had become less a side initiative than an embedded part of broader content architecture. At the same time, the connected car emerged as one of the most contested battlegrounds in modern audio distribution, with broadcasters increasingly aware that dashboard prominence could no longer be taken for granted.
Then came Stresa, Italy, in 2025, where the discussions broadened into a more complex strategic picture. AI acceleration, revenue diversification, audience data, digital leverage and regulatory frameworks all came under scrutiny, but so too did a deeper philosophical concern: As technology gives broadcasters more ways to distribute and automate content, what exactly remains distinctively human — and therefore distinctively valuable — about audio broadcasting?
That question has intensified.
A setting built for conversation
This year’s summit moves to Spain’s Costa Brava, the rugged Mediterranean coastline north of Barcelona, long associated with secluded coves and pine-covered cliffs. It is a destination known less for spectacle than for privacy, and that is part of why that location was chosen.
The 2026 venue, Hotel Santa Marta, sits between forest and sea above Santa Cristina beach, offering a contained five-star setting deliberately removed from the noise of traditional event venues. With its sea-facing terraces, private meeting spaces and isolated coastal environment, it provides exactly the kind of atmosphere the RedTech Summit has increasingly come to prize: Where discussion continues naturally after formal sessions end.
That has become one of the hidden mechanics of the summit’s success. Some of the most useful exchanges do not happen under stage lighting, but over dinner, on a terrace or in the spaces between scheduled debates, where executives are often more willing to discuss what is actually happening inside their organizations. The absence of trade-show distraction changes the rhythm. Conversations deepen, comparisons become more candid, and assumptions are tested more freely.
Costa Brava, with its combination of discretion and openness, seems particularly well suited to that dynamic.
What will dominate the 2026 debate?
This year’s RedTech Summit is likely to confront a harder reality than before: Many of the technologies broadcasters have spent recent years discussing are embedding themselves in everyday operations.
Artificial intelligence will remain central, but the conversation is shifting. Broadcasters must decide where automation creates genuine value, where it risks eroding trust and how synthetic efficiency can coexist with the human connection that still gives audio its distinctiveness. Voice cloning, automated production and personalized content may offer scale, but scale alone does not create loyalty.
The connected car will remain a major concern. Broadcasters increasingly understand that the dashboard is a highly competitive digital environment shaped by metadata visibility, search logic and audience analytics. Radio still depends heavily on in-car listening, but dashboard prominence can no longer be taken for granted.
Monetization and fragmentation will run through the wider debate. Traditional advertising remains under pressure, while broadcasters now compete not only with rival stations but with podcasts, streaming platforms, YouTube and algorithm-driven audio services. As platforms take greater control of discoverability, data and user relationships, the broader question becomes unavoidable: How much of the future do broadcasters actually control?
On the Costa Brava this June, those questions are unlikely to produce quiet agreement. Nor should they.
Watch an overview of RedTech Summit 2025 here.
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2026 edition of RedTech Magazine. You can read or download that edition for free here.
You can access all past RedTech publications, also for free, here.