Gemma Bastida | Málaga (EFE).- In less than a month, Málaga has become a winning city by being chosen to host a new CaixaForum, a performing arts center and the Final Four of the Basketball Champions League (BCL ).
The success of the city is consolidated with the arrival of top-level facilities and events and could reach its peak in June, when it will be known if it is also organizing Expo 2027.
Rare is the week in which the arrival of some new event, company or facility in Malaga is not announced, which has become one of the fashionable cities in the country thanks to the boost of the economy, tourism, technology and the culture you have experienced in recent years.
Despite being a medium-sized city, with approximately 600,000 inhabitants, Malaga has managed to sell itself to the world and place itself on the map, rubbing shoulders with the great capitals of the country.
An emerging cultural scene
Malaga has a first-rate cultural ecosystem, led by institutions such as the Picasso Museum and Birthplace, the Russian Museum Collection, the Carmen Thyssen, the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) or the Pompidou, whose cube of colors is already one of city icons.
A CaixaForum center will soon be added to the cultural scene in Malaga, which the La Caixa Banking Foundation plans to open in 2026 thanks to the protocol recently signed by the president of the entity, Isidro Fainé, and the mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre.
Malaga, which thus fulfills the long-standing desire of being part of the network of CaixaForum centers together with cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Seville or Valencia, will also house the new cultural space focused on the stage and audiovisual sector that the AISGE association (Performing Artists, Intellectual Property Rights Management Entity) will open in the old Fiat Lux electricity factory.
To this we must add the new project of the actor Antonio Banderas in his native Malaga, where after opening the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank will inaugurate a center aimed at training technical personnel from the world of entertainment.
Tennis, golf and much more
The sports world has also set its sights on Malaga, which has been chosen by FIBA to host the Basketball Champions League (BCL) Four-Four Final, which will be held from May 12 to 14 at the Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena with Unicaja as host.
The tennis player Rafa Nadal has also opted for Málaga, who will build one of his sports clubs here, the fifth in the world, which will include twelve tennis courts, a dozen paddle courts and a central court with capacity for 3,000 spectators that would allow host international competitions.
In fact, the Martín Carpena hosted the final phase of the Davis Cup last November, which brought together some 63,000 fans, and this year it will be the venue again. According to the Board, the event had a global impact of more than 143 million euros in Andalusia, including economic, media and advertising.
Another sporting event marked in red on the province’s calendar is the Solheim Cup, which will face off, for the first time in Spain, the European and American women’s golf teams from September 18 to 24 at Finca Cortesín, in Casares.
It is expected that 350 million households around the world will follow this tournament, for which more than 72,000 tickets have already been sold to fans from thirty countries.
Technological Malaga dreams of the Expo
But if Málaga has become something in recent times, it is one of the great technological poles of southern Europe, thanks to the push of its Málaga TechPark and the arrival of multinationals such as NTT Data, Oracle, Santander, Vodafone, Globant, Ernst & Young (EY), Accenture, Citi, Quantexa or GlobalLogic, a subsidiary of Hitachi.
The most important milestone from a business point of view, however, is expected in the second half of this year, when the giant Google will open its cybersecurity center in the port area, a key global hub for the group’s cyber defense strategy.
The Málaga ‘tech’ community is completed with leading native companies such as Freepik Company, specialized in the production and distribution of graphic resources and which aspires to become a unicorn, or Giants, the national benchmark electronic sports team.
In the midst of a process of growth and transformation, Malaga has its sights set on a key date, June 21, when the International Exhibitions Office (BIE) will announce which city is hosting the 2027 Expo. The capital of the Costa del Sol competes with San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina), Minnesota (USA), Phuket (Thailand) and Belgrade (Serbia).
The Malaga Expo would be held between June 5 and September 5, 2027 and it is estimated that it would attract 7.5 million visits.
The event would mobilize an investment of at least 1,800 million euros and among the projects planned is the expansion of the Palacio de Ferias, the construction of an auditorium or the creation of a new stop for the Cercanías train.