Advanced Factories 2026 will bring the major debate on how to automate the food industry to Barcelona

The food industry will once again turn its attention to Barcelona from 5 to 7 May, when Advanced Factories 2026 gathers at Fira Barcelona Gran Via some of the major companies that are redefining how food is produced, controlled, and distributed in an increasingly automated environment. This year’s edition will focus on a very specific question: how to build more efficient and sustainable factories without losing control over quality, costs, and traceability.

The real draw is not the event itself, but the moment the sector is experiencing. Food remains the main manufacturing branch of Spanish industry, with a turnover of nearly 179 billion euros, according to figures cited in the congress announcement. In this context, the pressure to produce more, reduce waste, and meet ever-increasing demands for safety and transparency is pushing companies to accelerate plant automation.

That’s why the food block of the Industry 4.0 Congress promises to be one of the most closely followed parts of the event. Executives from companies such as Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, GB Foods, Damm, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars, and Prolongo will share cases related to automation, line control, energy optimisation, process digitalisation, and end-to-end traceability. Rather than a theoretical conversation about innovation, the focus here is on how to help a food factory make better decisions, waste less, and respond more quickly.

One of the key points of the debate will be the shift from reactive processes to predictive environments. The congress agenda features technologies such as AI, digital twins, IIoT, advanced vision, industrial analytics, and MES systems—tools that connect production, logistics, and distribution in a single flow of information. In other words, the food factory of the future not only automates tasks, but also anticipates failures, adjusts consumption, and tracks each batch with much greater precision.

Traceability will be another major theme. And it makes sense: in food, knowing what has happened with each batch, where an incident has occurred, or which part of the process has failed is no longer a technological extra, but a competitive requirement. The congress aims to show precisely how sensors, industrial platforms, and recording systems can strengthen control, safety, and trust throughout the chain.

There will also be a clear message about sustainability, but it’s worth grounding it. In practice, the sector’s new competitiveness depends on producing more with fewer resources, cutting waste, making better use of energy, and designing more circular processes. This is the less glamorous side of the technology conversation, but probably the most decisive for companies operating with tight margins and rising industrial costs.

Advanced Factories will celebrate its tenth edition in 2026, and the organisers expect to bring together more than 680 companies and over 33,000 professionals. That scale helps explain why the congress wants to present itself not just as a showcase for robots and software, but as a barometer of where the industry in Europe is heading. And this year, one of the clearest answers seems to be in food.