Romania's URBIO wins World Smart City Award for street lighting

Editor's note: The following text is based on a press release issued by URBIO (Urbioled SRL), Iași, Romania, on 6 November 2026, after the award ceremony at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on 4 November. The structure and wording of the release have been kept; only first-person phrasing was adapted.

Romania wins on the global smart city stage. URBIO beats South Korea, Spain and the Netherlands to win the 2026 World Smart City Award with a project completed in Botoșani County.

Founded in Iași 13 years ago, URBIO becomes the first Romanian company ever to win at the World Smart City Awards, the world's leading smart city competition, which drew 533 entries from 68 countries this year. Other 2026 winners include Tokyo, Madrid and Riyadh.

BARCELONA – URBIO (URBIOLED), Romania's largest manufacturer of street luminaires and remote management systems, has won the 2026 World Smart City Awards in the Energy & Environment category with its smart public lighting project "Smart Light for the Ones Left Behind", delivered in Botoșani County, which demonstrated a 64 % reduction in public lighting energy use, saving local budgets more than €570,000 a year and avoiding 1,943 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually. The award was presented on 4 November at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, the world's largest event on urban innovation. Only four companies reached the category final, and URBIO was chosen over South Korea's state-owned Korea Land & Housing Corporation, Spanish lighting manufacturer Salvi Lighting and Dutch start-up The Great Bubble Barrier.

The winning project modernised public lighting on 923 km of roads in Botoșani County with 30,766 connected LED luminaires (Image: URBIO)

Behind the award is a company that chose to invest in its own technology, production capacity and research, building the entire value chain in Romania, from product development to equipment manufacturing. Founded in 2013 in Iași, URBIO has grown into a group of more than 250 people, including 45 R&D engineers, and operates two factories in Romania. In 2026 it expects revenue of RON 350 million (about €70 million). Over the past six years, URBIO has invested more than €30 million in research and development. The company holds two patents and its products carry international certifications. Everything URBIO installs is designed in house and manufactured in Romania, in its own production facilities.

URBIO is the smart city market leader in Romania, also named Best Smart City Company at the 2026 Smart City Industry Awards. Already present in the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, it continues to expand internationally. For cities that cannot fund the upfront investment, it also offers Lighting as a Service, a monthly subscription per luminaire with no upfront cost.

"This award shows that Romania can be more than a market for the technologies of the future: it can be the place where they are conceived, developed and manufactured. We built the whole chain here, from research to the factory floor, and today we compete on equal terms with the biggest names in the world. Our next step is to bring Romanian technology to many more cities in Europe and beyond. This award belongs to everyone on the URBIO team."
— Ana Maria Ciotir, CEO of URBIO

The World Smart City Awards 2026 ceremony on 4 November at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (Image: URBIO)

URBIO took part in Smart City Expo World Congress 2026 (3–5 November) as a Global Partner of the event, which brought together over 1,100 exhibitors and representatives of more than 1,000 cities.

The URBIO team at the company's stand in Barcelona, where it exhibited as a Global Partner of the congress (Image: URBIO)

Official list of winners: World Smart City Awards 2026 winners

Source: URBIO press release "URBIO is Winner of the Energy & Environment Award at the World Smart City Awards 2026", 6 November 2026 – urbio.ai