The World Expo has always been the event for countries, most especially host countries such as Dubai in 2020, to show off their true capabilities in spectacle and organization. This was especially true with the construction of the Eiffel Tower back in the 1889 Paris Expo, and the Tower of the Sun in the 1970 Osaka Expo. Well, Dubai is especially notable for always seeking to topple previous records, especially with their latest announcement of a new tallest tower being planned specially for the event. As the host of the 2020 World Expo, they’ve come up with ambitious plans with a hope to attract 25 million visitors. To put that into some context, that’s more than the population of Australia but far fewer than the 73 million who visited the last World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.

“For the first time in the history of World Expos, each country will have an individual pavilion, enhancing the ability of nations to showcase themselves,” organizers said in a statement. You read that right, that’s one for every participating country, which means possibly more than 200 pavilions. All this will spread over the 438 hectares of site ground located next to Dubai’s smaller second airport, Al-Maktoum International which opened in 2013.

Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered in the Emirati city for talks on the event, where panel discussions and workshops were held aimed at providing potential participants with details on the Expo 2020 plan and highlighting “business opportunities in the UAE for innovation, trade and investment, and knowledge transfer” (added in the statement).

While we should probably be quite skeptical of grandiose announcements, it would be quite a thing to see the combination of the pavilions and the tower coming up in 2020. From what we know of Dubai, they’re sure to try the hardest to live up to their grandiose ambitions.

This story was written in-house, based on an AFP report and image from the AFP.