MWC Barcelona is always a busy week, but this year was particularly intense for the Kaleido and Mobilesquared teams.
Across five days, from Sunday through Thursday, we logged 270+ meetings, hosted more than 300 executives, attended 14 evening networking functions, walked over 75 miles across the show floor, and recorded a steady stream of video interviews, briefings, and industry conversations. The event successfully attracted over 110,000 visitors but some booths were noticeably empty and meetings were cancelled.
However, somewhere between robots, robots boxing and the networking receptions, a clear trend continued to remain in focus.
No, not AI. I won’t cover AI in this blog. Maybe just a little.
Which is a funny sentence to write after spending a week at MWC Barcelona, where AI and intelligent infrastructure was once again the dominant theme across the show floors. Every keynote, booth demo, and strategy conversation seemed to be mostly around it in one way or another. Kaleido also demoed our AI tool Abi and the new roaming data portal to our clients and partners.
But while the industry debates AI agents, automation, and new intelligence layers across telecom, I’m going to focus on travel eSIMs, primarily because 80-90% of my meetings were focussed on this one trend.
The Travel eSIM Market in 2026
MWC 2026 reinforced what Kaleido’s research has been outlining for quite some time that travel connectivity is indeed evolving into a strategic battleground that now spans mobile operators, infrastructure vendors, aggregators, travel platforms, super apps, and device manufacturers.
Kaleido’s team spent the week speaking with vendors, operators, and travel eSIM providers across the ecosystem. The announcements and conversations together point to a market that is expanding rapidly, both in scale and in complexity.
The Demand Side Continues to Strengthen in 2026
Kaleido’s most recent travel survey highlighted a fundamental shift in traveller behaviour: a large share of international travellers still avoids roaming altogether due to cost concerns, relying instead on Wi-Fi or alternative connectivity solutions. These “silent roamers” represent one of the biggest growth opportunities in the market. As travel eSIM distribution expands, many of these users are likely to adopt digital connectivity products rather than traditional roaming.
At the same time, sentiment across the operator ecosystem is improving, with operators increasingly aligning their wholesale strategies with travel eSIM growth rather than viewing the segment purely as a threat to roaming revenues – something we often see at the GSMA WAS events.
The retail market shift was visible at MWC this year, where vendors and operators alike were actively discussing how to capture value in the expanding travel connectivity market.
Thales and Airalo Highlight the Infrastructure Race
One of the most notable announcements at MWC came from Thales and Airalo, who revealed a collaboration designed to deliver a more seamless global eSIM experience for travellers. The partnership focuses on enabling faster provisioning and broader device compatibility across global networks, reflecting the growing importance of robust infrastructure behind travel eSIM services.
From Kaleido’s perspective, this announcement also reinforces the role of vendors providing the underlying platforms for the market. In the Kaleido Travel eSIM MVNE Vendor Hub 2025 – 2026, Thales was recently assessed as a High Flyer, reflecting its strong positioning in enabling the next phase of eSIM deployment.
As the ecosystem grows, the quality of these underlying provisioning and connectivity platforms will become increasingly important.
Telna Moves From Connectivity Provider to Intelligence Platform
Kaleido also spent time with the team at Telna during the event, discussing how the company is evolving its role in the ecosystem. Telna, recently assessed by Kaleido as the #1 Champion in our Travel eSIM MVNE Vendor Hub used MWC to highlight the launch of embedded data intelligence, integrating real-time analytics directly into the connectivity layer.
The strategic shift is notable with more investments in AI across these platform providers. Rather than positioning solely as a supplier of international connectivity, Telna is moving toward a model where AI-driven analytics sit inside the connectivity core, giving partners insights into traveller behaviour, usage patterns, and monetisation opportunities in real time.
For operators and travel brands, this intelligence layer could become increasingly valuable as the travel eSIM market scales.
Embedded Connectivity is Becoming the Dominant Distribution Model
One of the strongest themes across the show was the growing focus on embedding connectivity inside existing digital services. Kaleido met with the leadership team at Mobilise, including CEO Hamish White, to discuss the company’s strategy in this space. Their flagship approach centres on eSIM SDKs, designed to allow airlines, banks, and travel agencies to integrate a fully functional eSIM store directly into their existing applications. Kaleido agrees with Mobilise’s viewpoint that the importance of automation and lean operational models will determine which MVNOs succeed in the travel eSIM market.
Super Apps and Messaging Platforms are Moving Closer to the Connectivity Layer
Another interesting signal from MWC came from Kaleido’s meetings at Rakuten’s booth, where Viber introduced its own travel eSIM capability as part of its broader product roadmap. While a full announcement from Viber is expected in the coming days, Viber CPO, Nadav Melnick, also confirmed the news on LinkedIn, following months of work across carrier integrations, provisioning systems, and operational edge cases.
Viber’s strategy for several years has been to evolve into a super app built around a full set of communication tools including messaging, voice, communities, and payments. Once Viber adds the connectivity layer, it no longer sits purely on top of the network but becomes part of the access layer that gets users online.
From a platform perspective, that is a meaningful step toward the company’s ambition of becoming a genuinely unified communication ecosystem and Kaleido is aware of more super apps expected to follow this in the coming months.
Device Manufacturers are Becoming Part of the Distribution Chain
Another notable development here is from Redtea Mobile, which during the build-up to the event highlighted its partnership strategy around launching eSIM solutions directly with handset manufacturers such as OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and others.
Although not a new approach, this pushes connectivity distribution even further upstream in the value chain. Instead of acquiring travellers through apps or travel platforms, connectivity is being offered directly on the device itself, perhaps one of the primary trigger points and distribution channels for travel connectivity.
The Ecosystem Around Travel eSIM Continues to Expand
Beyond the larger announcements, the show floor conversations reflected a rapidly expanding vendor ecosystem.
Kaleido spoke with teams from eSIMCopilot, Bondio, eSIMGo, and others providing infrastructure capabilities that allow enterprises, travel eSIM brands and MVNOs to scale globally. We also held discussions with the team at Gigs, focusing on the continued growth of travel eSIMs and how they are lowering the barriers for digital companies to launch connectivity services.
Taken together, these platforms are gradually transforming connectivity into a programmable capability that can be embedded into digital services far beyond traditional mobile channels.
Ongoing Conversations Across the Travel eSIM Ecosystem
Alongside the announcements, Kaleido continued its ongoing dialogue with many of the leading travel eSIM brands in the market. Throughout the week, we met with partners and companies across the ecosystem, including Airalo, Holafly, TravelKon, and others, discussing the evolving competitive landscape and the next phase of market growth.
These conversations reinforced the same conclusion emerging from the product announcements: the travel eSIM market is moving rapidly from a consumer-app category toward a much broader digital connectivity ecosystem.
The 2026 Market Outlook by Kaleido
“Looking across the announcements and discussions at MWC 2026, the trajectory of travel connectivity is becoming clearer and as Kaleido’s latest data predicted, looks set to approach the $5 billion spend mark by the end of the year.”
The first wave of the market was driven by cost effective consumer travel eSIM apps offering an alternative to roaming, followed by a new wave of growth driven by enterprise adoption, operator adoption, and growing partnerships between infrastructure vendors, and platform providers. The next wave is already emerging: connectivity continues to be increasingly embedded inside the digital services travellers already use, from super apps and travel platforms to banking apps and even devices themselves.
For the industry, an expanding range of companies now want to own that moment.
Now, is this good or bad for the travellers? Is this also creating a paradox of choice that can make travel connectivity options more confusing? Will there be app fatigue at some point? What does that then mean for roaming? It seems like the transition to a seamless, hyper-competitive ecosystem will continue where the consumer benefits from lower prices, easier access and enhanced digital experience, but they must be ready to navigate increased market fragmentation and potentially other trade-offs. We continue to study this.
Our widely recognised travel eSIM research is underway, and we will present our 2026 travel survey findings, market intelligence and forecast data at the upcoming GSMA WAS#23 event in Cairo.
Blog Author: Nitin Bhas, Chief of Strategy & Insights at Kaleido Intelligence
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