Barcelona gym managers target Centennial users and better onboarding in 2026

Gestiona Catalunya used its annual general assembly at MUHBA Bon Pastor in Barcelona to put Centennial users and better gym onboarding at the center of its 2026 agenda. Roughly 70% of member entities took part, a strong turnout for a sector that runs much of Catalonia’s public sports infrastructure and shapes how Barcelona residents enter, stay in, or leave the fitness system.

The priorities are practical, not abstract. Gestiona said much of its 2026 work would focus on improving the user experience from day one, studying how the Centennial generation behaves, and developing new skills for technical staff. In a city where public and concession-run sports centers are central to participation, that means cleaner digital onboarding, faster sign-up flows, more deliberate front-desk guidance and a tighter link between the first visit and a habit that survives the first month.

The setting carried its own message. MUHBA Bon Pastor is a museum space devoted to Barcelona’s 20th-century housing history, and the original Bon Pastor cases barates were built in 1929. Placing the assembly there tied today’s management debate to a district built around social access, which fits the role Barcelona’s sports system has long claimed for itself. The Barcelona Sports Institute says the city’s municipal network is designed to make sport accessible to residents across the city, and the International Olympic Committee has linked Barcelona 1992 to the spread of Sport for All programmes, including Campus Olímpia for children and young people.

Gestiona’s message also reflected a longer institutional pattern. In May 2025, the association met with sports councillor Berni Álvarez in what it described as a first step toward stable dialogue between the Generalitat de Catalunya and Gestiona. That conversation focused on the situation of managers of public facilities and on the map of sector associations, companies and organisations, while presenting the Barcelona model of public-private collaboration in sport as a reference with more than 40 years of history.

The staffing side of the agenda is not incidental. The Catalan collective agreement for private entities managing sports and leisure activity ran from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2025, placing labour conditions and training squarely inside the 2026 debate. For Barcelona’s municipal operators, the next test is whether onboarding, staff development and community-building can keep first-time users from drifting away after the first few visits.