Portugal Expo 2020 Dubai  The Portuguese Culture

AICEP approached Hypnotic with a high-stakes, time-sensitive challenge: rebuild the official website for Portugalʼs presence at the World Expo 2020 Dubai in just 30 days. The existing site was outdated and failed to represent Portugal with the quality, ambition, and visual identity the event demanded.

The mission was to deliver more than just a digital facelift. The platform had to serve multiple functions: inform international audiences about Portugal, showcase the Pavilion and its events, provide journalists with press resources, and create a cultural touchpoint for Portuguese citizens. All content—from exhibitions to gastronomy—had to be live and ready by October 1st, 2020. And all of this had to happen during the peak of summer holidays.

With a 30-day deadline and the weight of national representation, we focused on executional precision. We built a fully responsive, SEO-optimized, high- performance WordPress site with an exclusive design and an intuitive CMS tailored for Pavilion staff—requiring no technical expertise to update.

The UX was simplified into key user journeys: discover Portugal, explore events, access media resources, and navigate the Pavilion experience. We built custom modules for content updates, event timelines, and featured stories, all optimized for mobile-first audiences.

Despite limited time and team availability, we delivered a scalable platform that looked, felt, and performed like a flagship experience—on time and without

Designed and developed in under 30 days, the Portugal Expo 2020 Dubai website launched on October 1st as the official digital face of Portugal at the World Exhibition. Fully responsive, accessible, and built with SEO and performance in mind, the platform allowed Pavilion managers to update content indepedently—keeping the site dynamic and alive throughout the Expo.

The site scored high on Lighthouse audits for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO—proving that speed and quality donʼt have to be mutually exclusive.

• WordPress (custom theme, modular CMS
• Bootstrap
• Fully responsive design
• Optimized for performance and accessibility SEO-ready architecture