Largest global music expo

Billed as the “most international and culturally diverse music meeting in the world and the biggest conference of the global music scene”, WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo) attracts 2,600 professionals (including 290 performing artists) from 102 different countries representing 1,270 companies to venues across Europe each October (2021 numbers highlighted).

The networking platform for the music industry features a trade fair, talks, films, showcase concerts and an awards ceremony at which WOMEX’s Artist and Professional Excellence awards are presented. Musicians from 21 different countries have won the Artist Award since it was inaugurated in 1999, including acts from Cuba (Juan de Marcos González/Los Van Van), South Africa (The Mahotella Queens/Hugh Masekela), Pakistan (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), Belize (Andy Palacio/Ivan Duran), Finland (Värttinä), Réunion (Danyèl Waro) and Mali (Oumou Sangaré).

Since 2020, the winners have been Mónika Lakatos (Hungary), Aynur (Turkey) and Ivo Papasov, a Bulgarian wedding-music clarinettist who was presented with an Artist Award statuette – an ancient mother goddess figurine dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic age – when WOMEX 2022 came to Lisbon, Portugal, on 19–23 October 2022.

WOMEX has hosted showcases from musicians representing 133 different countries since 1994, while 87 acts have been invited to perform at the expo’s opening concert since 2003. WOMEX asserts that its “musical spectrum is unparalleled in the international showcase performance market, ranging from the most traditional to the new global local underground, embracing folk, roots, jazz, local and diaspora cultures as much as urban and electronic sounds from all over the globe.”

Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, UK, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Finland and Portugal hosted WOMEX between 1994 and 2022. WOMEX can also be considered the longest-running global music awards, having hosted an awards ceremony annually for 24 years (1999–2022). The World Music Awards reached 22 editions between 1989 and 2014.