Tampere's victory in the Mobile World Capital Barcelona competition for public organisations was announced on 12.6.2025. The final was held in Barcelona. The project, called Tampere Smart City for Citizens, presented in its application the Tampere Pulse app and a digital twin of the station area and its various uses.
The competition criteria emphasised the human-centredness of the innovations and the commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
-The win is really great news for Tampere. International recognition enables the city to open up new areas of cooperation. Winning in a tough competition is a tangible recognition of how Tampere has taken a pioneering role in the development of the citiverse, the fusion of physical and digital urban space to improve the everyday lives of citizens. This brings us opportunities for co-development and the benefits will also be felt by the people of Tampere, says Irene Impiö , Director of Innovation and Economic Policy at the City of Tampere.
Tampere's application highlighted the use of sustainable artificial intelligence, the city's IoT platform, smart data management system, digital twins and citizen participation. In particular, the application presented Tampere's Pulse application and the use of digital twins from the station area.
-If we can test the use of Pulse app and our advanced digital twins in a city the size of Barcelona, for example, we can learn in particular about the use of technologies that involve citizens. With our international projects, we can, for example, organise co-creation workshops to test digital plans, use artificial intelligence to analyse the views of city residents and develop gamification to strengthen youth participation, says Anniina Autero, Development Manager at the City of Tampere.
- International recognition is an excellent opportunity for new co-creation openings. For example, testing the Pulse application in Barcelona would bring us valuable lessons for further development of the application in Tampere, says Sebastian Valkama, ICT Project Manager at the City of Tampere.
In recent years, Tampere has won the Smart City World Expo & Conference Grand Prize for innovative use of technologies, the Seoul Smart City Prize together with Nokia Arena and LG, and been in the final six of the European Innovation Capital.
