What remains in a city when a congress ends and its delegates return home? This question lies at the heart of one of Zentropy MICE’s key areas of work: transforming the concept of legacy into a practical approach capable of generating lasting benefits for Valencia and its residents.
The fourth analytical article on the project published on PORTICO explores this question through a conversation with Noelia Rigoberto, who coordinates the Zentropy MICE legacy strategy at Valencia City Council.
The starting point is simple, although it poses an important challenge: not everyone involved in a congress understands legacy in the same way. It might mean scientific knowledge that continues to circulate after an event, new professional networks, or tangible improvements for a neighbourhood. Zentropy MICE is working to bring these different perspectives together into a shared vision.
From event impact to value that remains in the city
For Zentropy MICE, legacy is the lasting effect that a congress leaves behind once the event has ended. The aim is for the value generated during those few days to become part of the city’s ecosystem rather than disappearing when delegates leave.
This perspective complements the conventional approach to sustainability in the events sector. Reducing environmental footprints remains essential, but the project introduces an additional question: what positive and lasting value can a particular congress generate for Valencia?
The answer cannot be the same for every event. A scientific congress, a medical society or a corporate event brings together different communities, objectives and priorities. For this reason, Zentropy MICE approaches legacy design as a process of co-creation with congress organisers, rather than as a standard checklist applied to every event.
The model also embraces a broader understanding of legacy, incorporating social, innovative and academic dimensions and seeking to create relationships that can continue well beyond the congress itself.
Building the methodology through collaboration
One of the lessons emerging from the project is that a shared understanding of legacy cannot be achieved simply by defining the concept on paper. It needs to be built through practical experience and concrete cases.
Zentropy MICE therefore adopts a collaborative model in which Valencia City Council, the Valencia Conference Centre, València Innovation Capital, the Universitat Politècnica de València and Khora Urban Thinkers work together to shape the approach.
Municipal leadership plays a particularly important role. While legacy strategies in other European cities are often led primarily by convention bureaux, Valencia City Council is in a position to connect congresses with the city’s stakeholders, needs and policies, with the longer-term ambition of progressively embedding legacy within public policy.
Learning from other European cities
Zentropy MICE is also learning from experiences in Barcelona, Copenhagen and Glasgow, cities with more established approaches to creating legacy through congresses.
These examples illustrate the different forms legacy can take, from employability programmes linked to individual congresses to research funds that continue after an event or permanent networks that help congress organisers develop activities for local communities.
One of the key lessons is that there is no single formula for creating legacy. Each city and each congress requires a different response. However, common principles can be identified: defining who should benefit, maintaining relationships beyond the event and evaluating results transparently.
Valencia’s work is also of interest to Zentropy MICE’s transfer partners, Heidelberg, Ljubljana and Larissa, which are following the process with a view to potentially adapting some of its lessons to their own local contexts.
From theory to Valencia’s first experiences
The project has already started to translate this approach into practical experience.
In May 2026, Congress 0 provided the setting for a first measurement exercise connected to the Valencia Conference Centre’s digital twin and began the process of calibrating the Zentropy MICE entropy calculator.
This initial experience has already produced an important lesson for the next phases of the project: meaningful information needs to be captured during the event itself, working closely with the Universitat Politècnica de València, rather than relying solely on post-event surveys.
At the same time, Zentropy MICE has begun conversations with medical societies that will hold their congresses in Valencia, starting with fields including geriatrics and allergology.
At this stage, the priority is to listen: to understand each organisation’s scientific priorities and community, and to identify where these might intersect with the city’s own challenges and needs.
In this way, legacy is beginning to move from an abstract concept towards an approach shaped around individual congresses and the communities with which they can connect.
From a project pilot to a city policy
Over the coming months, working groups involving Valencia City Council, Khora Urban Thinkers, the Universitat Politècnica de València and València Innovation Capital will begin turning these initial conversations into concrete legacy proposals.
Zentropy MICE therefore provides a space in which this methodology can be tested and refined at a manageable scale. Its ambition, however, reaches beyond the project itself: to progressively develop a model in which congress legacy can become a structural component of city policy.
Valencia is still building its own legacy methodology, but these first experiences provide a foundation for answering the question at the centre of the process: not only how to reduce the impact of a congress, but how to ensure that it leaves something positive and lasting for the city and the people who live there.