The Olympic badminton medalist, three-time world champion and seven-time European champion, will participate on Friday, October 30, in a discussion within the meeting organized by the Zona Franca and the UCA
Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2024, the Huelva athlete has become an international benchmark for a career marked by excellence, resilience and a winning mentality.
Carolina Marín's presence will coincide with a new edition of the Blue Women Forum, which will focus the last day of the meeting on the impact of female leadership in the Blue Economy
The Olympic badminton champion Carolina Marín will be one of the featured participants of the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026, which will be held in Cádiz from October 28 to 30 under the motto “Projecting in blue.” The Spanish athlete will participate on Friday, October 30, in a discussion in the auditorium during the closing day of a meeting that will bring together companies, entrepreneurs, researchers, institutions, students and experts linked to the Blue Economy.
The presence of Carolina Marín will incorporate into the program the experience of one of the most prominent figures in Spanish sport and an international example of effort and ability to improve. She has been Olympic champion in Rio 2016, three-time world champion and seven-time European badminton champion. Her career has placed her among the great figures in the history of world badminton and among the main European references in this discipline.
Beyond her sporting successes, Carolina Marín has faced especially difficult moments throughout her career, in which she has had to demonstrate her ability to recover and adapt. His experience in top competition offers a perspective on resilience, management of adversity, trust and perseverance, values that have accompanied a career built at the highest international level.
In 2024 she received one of the greatest recognitions in Spanish sport with the awarding of the Princess of Asturias Sports Award. The award distinguished both his sporting successes and his status as a reference on and off the track.
Their participation in the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul brings to the meeting a different and complementary perspective to that of the scientific, business, technological, university and institutional fields present in the program. The forum promotes the exchange of experiences and knowledge between different disciplines around future challenges, talent, innovation and activities linked to the Blue Economy.
Carolina Marín joins the already confirmed presence of astronaut and researcher Sara García Alonso, who will give the inaugural conference of the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul on Wednesday, October 28. García Alonso, a researcher at the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), was selected in 2022 by the European Space Agency (ESA) as a member of its astronaut reserve and became the first Spanish woman to achieve this condition. His career combines scientific research in the field of biomedicine with training as an astronaut.
The program will also feature, on Thursday, October 29, the intervention of the marine biologist, documentary filmmaker and explorer Manu San Félix, who has 45 years of experience in the study and protection of the oceans and has made nearly 15,000 dives, many of them linked to his work with National Geographic.
Blue Women and female leadership
Carolina Marín's intervention will coincide with the third and final day of the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026, which will once again incorporate the Blue Women Forum, an initiative dedicated in this edition to analyzing "The impact of female leadership in the Blue Economy."
Blue Women focuses its gaze on the role of women in different sectors related to the sea and in areas such as research, business, entrepreneurship, innovation and the generation of new projects. The program will include spaces for reflection on women's capacity to lead, their participation in activities linked to the Blue Economy and the challenges they face in these sectors.
In this context, the presence of Carolina Marín on the same day offers a female reference from a field other than business or science. His career represents a trajectory built from effort, competitiveness, resilience and the achievement of objectives at the highest international level.
Three days to project the Blue Economy from Cádiz
During its three days, from October 28 to 30, the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026 will address the main challenges and opportunities of the Blue Economy through an international program that will bring together business, scientific, university and institutional representatives, along with entrepreneurs, students and professionals.
Under the motto “Projecting in blue”, the meeting will analyze issues related to innovation, sustainability, technology, entrepreneurship and employment, in addition to facilitating contact between the different agents that carry out their activity in the maritime and marine sectors.
Among its contents will be the oceans as a guarantee of life, technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, sustainable coastal tourism and marine ecotourism, the transformation of marine resources and waste into high-value products, the decarbonization of maritime transport and green ports or international projects linked to the Blue Economy.
The meeting will also incorporate a Blue Economy Job Fair designed to connect talent and companies, as well as specific spaces dedicated to training and new professional opportunities. Attracting young talent to blue sectors is also one of the issues that will be addressed during this edition.
The programming will also include spaces dedicated to the transfer of knowledge between research and the business community, with the participation of universities, technology centers, companies, administrations and other agents linked to innovation. These meetings will be aimed at exploring practical applications of scientific and technological advances and identifying the needs of the different economic sectors related to the sea.
Organized by the Free Trade Zone and the University of Cádiz
Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026 is the second joint edition of the meeting organized by the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz and the University of Cádiz, which in 2024 integrated for the first time in the same event two initiatives born with complementary objectives.
The Blue Zone Forum was born promoted by the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz with the Blue Economy as the thematic pillar and with a special orientation towards companies and entrepreneurs, also incorporating technological content linked to the ecosystem developed around Incubazul.
InnovAzul, for its part, was born by the University of Cádiz as an international meeting on knowledge and blue growth, with special attention to research, knowledge transfer, entrepreneurship and the connection between the scientific field and the productive fabric.
Registration to participate in the Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026 remains open and can be formalized through the official website of the meeting, www.proyectandoenazul.es, where you can also consult information about this new edition and its programming.
Blue Zone Forum InnovAzul 2026 is part of the ZF Blue Core-Business Incubator 4.0 project, 85% financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) within the Pluriregional Program of Spain FEDER 2021-2027, through the INCYDE Foundation.