The federal, provincial and municipal governments have pledged a combined $14.8 million in funding and other support to bring Web Summit’s massive North American conference to Vancouver, a shift the agency behind the move hopes will put the city’s tech sector on the global map.

The Dublin-headquartered events firm announced Wednesday that in 2025 it is moving Collision, held in Toronto since 2019, to Vancouver and rebranding it as part of its Web Summit series. The event will “immediately give lift and amplification to the tech sector,” said Royce Chwin, CEO of Destination Vancouver, a tourism-development non-profit that will work with Web Summit to stage it.

Web Summit has committed to hold the conference in the city through 2027. Chwin declined to disclose the overall financial terms of Destination Vancouver’s deal with the firm, citing contractual confidentiality. Web Summit did not respond to a request for comment.

All three levels of government told The Logic they are providing funding for the conference. Federal agency Pacific Economic Development Canada will give Destination Vancouver a total of $6.6 million for the three years the event is in the city, said Haley Hodgson, a spokesperson for PacifiCan Minister Harjit Sajjan. 

British Columbia will provide $6.6 million in cash and in-kind contributions over three years, according to Economic Development Minister Brenda Bailey. The province expects the conference to draw “a global audience that will help B.C. tech companies to scale up, anchor and create well-paying jobs,” she said.

The City of Vancouver has pledged up to $1.6 million worth of assistance for the event. In a closed-door meeting in April, councillors approved incentives including a $250,000 first-year grant via Destination Vancouver; waiving permits worth up to $355,000 a year for the conference to host events in city-owned outdoor areas; and up to $75,000 in-kind annually to offset the safety and running costs the city will incur for providing those venues. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim touted the local innovation ecosystem, and said Web Summit will “attract thousands of tech leaders, startups, investors and global partners to our city.” 

The combined sum the governments have pledged is significantly less than Web Summit has secured for its events in other places. After moving Collision north from New Orleans in 2019, the firm received about $6.5 million a year from Toronto and partners, BetaKit reported in May 2023. In October 2018, the Portuguese government agreed to pay Web Summit €11 million ($16.3 million) annually for 10 years to continue hosting its namesake event in Lisbon.

In addition to the government subsidies, Chwin said Destination Canada will work to secure private-sector funding for some of the costs of hosting Web Summit Vancouver, and will contribute money from an agency program fed by levies on area hotel rooms. Some of the financing is earmarked for yet-to-be-designed programming to help local entrepreneurs and startups take advantage of the conference.

It’s too early to say exactly how many people will visit Vancouver for the event, according to Chwin. Web Summit reported 36,378 attendees for the 2023 edition of Collision, held at Toronto’s Enercare Centre. Chwin said the new Vancouver event will be anchored at the Convention Centre West, but will also likely include programming at the other convention centre and other spaces around the city. The event venues are owned by a provincial Crown corporation.

Vancouver was recently home to another new tech conference. In April, the city hosted the inaugural InnovateWest, put on by local event organization company Cube Business Media, which estimated it would draw up to 5,000 attendees. Web Summit Vancouver will take place in May 2025. 

Chwin insisted Destination Vancouver isn’t helping global player Web Summit upstage homegrown offering InnovateWest. “We have had several different types of startups over the past years,” he said. “They haven’t gotten where we needed to go internationally with the degree of impact that we’ve needed to see.” Attracting Web Summit helps accelerate Vancouver’s fast-growing but “relatively unknown” tech ecosystem, he said.

The tourism agency and Web Summit also project it will boost the local economy. Web Summit’s press release Wednesday quoted Chwin as saying the conference will “generate $172 million in direct spending and $279 million in overall economic impact for British Columbia in its first year.”

But in an interview with The Logic Friday, Chwin distanced himself from those figures. “I can’t really tell you where those numbers are coming from,” he said. Destination Vancouver’s internal calculations, using a widely-employed methodology, forecast that Web Summit will result in $57 million of direct tourism spending and $93 million of total economic impact for B.C. in 2025, said Chwin.

Numbers aside, Chwin said landing the conference is a win for the city, and the country. “The fact that Web Summit is staying in Canada—it’s a big, big deal.”