The 12th edition of one of Europe’s longest-running startup events takes place on 7–8 May in Valletta. Alongside the usual pitch competition and investor matchmaking, this year’s programme includes a media panel featuring founders and editors from some of the continent’s most-read tech publications.
Most startup founders know they need press coverage. Far fewer know how to get it. The gap between “we sent a press release” and “a journalist actually wrote about us” is where a great deal of well-funded, well-built companies quietly disappear from the public record.
The EU-Startups Summit, returning to Valletta, Malta for its 12th edition on 7-8 May, is addressing that gap directly this year with a dedicated media panel: “The Startup Media Landscape, PR Tips & Tricks.”
The event, which expects around 2,500 founders, investors, and startup ecosystem leaders at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, has become one of Europe’s most consistent gathering points for early-stage companies and the people who fund them.
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Past editions have drawn unicorn founders, prime ministers, and several hundred investors looking for dealflow outside London and Berlin. This year’s speakers roster runs to over 80 names, with keynotes, fireside chats, and an investor showcase where 15 venture capital firms present their focus areas on the main stage each day.
The media panel brings together three figures who between them cover much of the European startup press landscape.
Akansha Dimri, founder and editor-in-chief of Tech Funding News, has spent more than 15 years reporting on venture capital and emerging technology across Europe, the US, and Asia, and has previously led the editorial teams at UKTN and Silicon Canals.
Thomas Ohr founded EU-Startups.com in 2010, when European startup coverage was a niche pursuit, and has spent more than a decade building it into one of the continent’s most-read platforms while organising this summit.
The third panellist is Alexandru Stan, CEO of TNW, who also co-founded Tekpon, a software discovery and review platform, and is an active investor in technology ventures.
The pitch competition remains the centrepiece of the programme. From over 1,500 startup applications, 15 early-stage companies will present on the main stage, competing for a prize package valued at over €700,000. Past editions have used the competition as a launchpad: several alumni have gone on to raise significant follow-on funding, in part on the back of the visibility the event provides.
The venue is the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta, a 16th-century former hospital that has served as Malta’s primary conference facility for decades. The evening programme both days moves to the rooftop terrace, which has views across Valletta’s Grand Harbour.
Malta Enterprise, the island’s economic development agency, is a sponsor, part of a longer-running effort by the Maltese government to position the country as a base for European tech businesses and talent.
The media panel session is, in miniature, a reflection of a genuine tension in the European startup ecosystem: European founders consistently report that coverage of the continent’s companies skews towards the largest markets and most-funded rounds, making visibility harder for earlier-stage companies and those based outside London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm.
Whether practical advice from working journalists can meaningfully shift that dynamic is an open question. But the fact that a summit of this scale is devoting main-stage time to media literacy rather than just investor access is a reasonable signal of where European founders currently feel the friction.
Disclosure: Alexandru Stan, CEO of TNW, is a panellist at the EU Startups Summit 2026. This article was written and edited independently of his participation.
