The McDonald’s Worldwide Convention is not just another corporate convention. It feels more like a global gathering under the Golden Arches, bringing together franchisees, operators, suppliers, employees, and leaders from different parts of the world. The first edition took place in Florida in 1965, at a time when Ray Kroc was still trying to imagine just how far that network could go. Decades later, the question has changed in scale: it is no longer only about how many restaurants can exist, but about how a brand manages to create a sense of belonging across such different cultures, languages, markets, and habits.
That scale interested me even before I walked into the event. McDonald’s is one of those brands everyone feels they know. You recognize the logo from a distance, you know the taste of certain products, and you may associate it with childhood, hurry, travel, a break between things, airports, road trips, adolescence, capitalism, standardization, nostalgia, or criticism. Each person carries their own private McDonald’s, even though the brand itself seems so universal. That is why there was something curious about seeing it outside its usual place of quick consumption. There, it took on bodies, accents, jackets, memories, enthusiasm. Something that usually passes through our lives almost without ceremony was gathered, celebrated, discussed, worn, and photographed by people from many different places.
In that sense, Las Vegas felt almost too obvious a setting. The city was born and grew by turning excess into a language of its own. Too much light, too much sound, too much heat, too many façades, too many casinos, too many replicas. Paris, Venice, Egypt, New York, Rome: everything appears compressed into a few miles, with a kind of brutal honesty. Vegas does not pretend to be subtle. It works through amplification. If something can shine, it shines. If it can spin, sing, blink, sell, move you, or distract you, it will probably do all of that at once.
At the same time, it would be reductive to see Las Vegas only as a caricature. The city has a more complex history than its lights suggest. Railroads, desert, legalized gambling, Hoover Dam, tourism, conventions, massive hotels, corporations, entertainment, air conditioning, and recycled water all make up a machine far more sophisticated than the easy image of “Sin City.” Vegas is artificial, yes, but it is not improvised. Its excess is planned. Its fantasy depends on logistics. Its delirium relies on engineering, labor, cleaning crews, energy, transportation, refrigeration, and an enormous number of people working so the spectacle can feel effortless.
It was at this intersection between a global brand and a spectacle city that I had the chance to visit the McDonald’s Worldwide Convention 2026, during Friends and Family day. I did not enter as someone from the company, but as a guest, thanks to my wife’s involvement in organizing and presenting the awards gala dinner. That position, as an outsider with access, was a privileged one. I did not have a schedule to follow, goals to defend, solutions to sell, or any market to represent. I could simply walk around, observe, feel slightly out of place, and let the experience affect me.
From the moment I arrived, the scale of the event was visible in the way everything had been organized. There were shuttles bringing visitors in and taking them back, people moving in every direction, delegations arriving from different places, but without that sense of chaos that often comes with events of this size. The flow felt carefully planned. Lines moved, directions were clear, and the staff seemed to know exactly what they were doing. It may sound like a small detail, but it is not. To welcome thousands of people without turning the experience into confusion, brand enthusiasm is not enough. It takes planning, logistics, and an enormous amount of invisible labor.
Inside, the delegations moved around wearing their jackets, some of them truly beautiful, many filled with symbols of their countries, regions, and markets. I saw people exchanging jackets as if they were exchanging souvenirs, almost like athletes at the end of a match. That felt more revealing to me than any corporate presentation. The jacket was not just a uniform. It was an emblem, a sign of belonging, a shared memory. Each one seemed to say: I come from somewhere, I represent one part of this system, I belong to something larger than my own restaurant, my city, or my country.
One of the things that struck me most was the restaurant set up inside the convention. It was not just an improvised food court, but a huge operation built to serve McDonald’s menu items from different countries. I tried a sandwich from Germany, flavorful and spicy. It was interesting to see that idea in practice: McDonald’s is recognizable anywhere, but it is not exactly the same everywhere. The brand keeps a common language, something easy to identify, while still making room for local flavors, habits, and preferences. Perhaps part of its strength lies there: in feeling familiar without losing the ability to adapt to the place it inhabits.
There were also McCafé stations, partner brands, activations, giveaways, sponsors, a shop selling McDonald’s merchandise, and an impressive number of objects people chased with almost childlike enthusiasm: pins, T-shirts, cups, accessories, small souvenirs. At first glance, it would be easy to reduce all of this to consumption or corporate fetishism. Too easy, in fact. What I saw there seemed more complex. Those objects worked as small proofs of having been there. They were not just things. They were material traces of a shared experience.
As I walked around, I kept coming back to a question that was simple and difficult at the same time: how does a brand create this kind of attachment? I do not say this naively. Of course there is business, interest, strategy, hierarchy, marketing. None of that disappears. But it would also be too reductive to pretend that what was happening there was just advertising. People seemed genuinely involved, proud to be there, happy to meet others from different countries, eager to exchange pins, jackets, stories, and small souvenirs. In that context, “I’m lovin’ it” did not feel like just a campaign line. For many people, there was something actually lived in it.
It was impossible not to think of Christophe Dejours and the psychodynamics of work. For Dejours, work is never just the execution of a task. It involves the body, intelligence, suffering, desire, recognition, and belonging. Between prescribed work and real work, each person has to invent ways of doing things, sustain gestures, deal with the unexpected, and seek recognition from peers, from hierarchy, and from oneself. At the convention, this dimension appeared in a condensed form. The brand offered a stage, a language, a narrative, and symbolic rewards. The workers and operators, in turn, seemed to respond with presence, energy, pride, and commitment.
One of the most interesting moments was stopping to watch the teams working in the kitchens. Every now and then, they were encouraged to sing, shout, make noise, and keep the energy high. It could be read cynically, as a motivational technique. And, in part, it is. But reducing the scene to that would miss its most important ambiguity. In that context, the chant seemed to work as release, rhythm, and collective support. The work took on a kind of emotional choreography. Tired bodies were being called to keep going, not only out of obligation, but also through the vibration of the group.
This was the most delicate part of the experience. The very mechanism that energizes can also capture. The sense of belonging that gives recognition can also demand loyalty. The same collective energy that gives meaning to work can also cover up fatigue, tension, and contradiction. An ethical reading has to hold both layers together. It is not about mocking those who love the brand, nor about romanticizing the workings of a global corporation. The point is to observe how work, when it finds recognition, narrative, and collectivity, can become part of one’s identity.
In the middle of all this, I also had the privilege of receiving a signed copy of McAtlas from Gary He himself. The encounter made sense in that environment. His book looks at McDonald’s as a cultural, architectural, and anthropological phenomenon, showing that the Golden Arches are not simply an American template reproduced around the world. In many places, the brand blends with local histories, unexpected buildings, regional menus, and very specific forms of cultural appropriation. Receiving that book there, inside the convention, reinforced the impression that I was standing before something larger than a corporate trade show.
I left the event with the feeling that I had seen a piece of machinery from the inside, without pretending to fully understand it. I saw Las Vegas offering its stage of excess. I saw McDonald’s staging its global strength. I saw workers, franchisees, suppliers, and guests moving through affection, business, spectacle, and belonging. I saw a brand being consumed, celebrated, worn, collected, sung, and embodied.
This experience is not finished with me yet. It opened up other questions: about work, brands, desire, recognition, and the way certain symbols cross borders and begin to organize both personal and collective memories. Perhaps I will return to some of these observations more calmly at another time. For now, I keep the image of the Golden Arches in the desert: shining in a city made of artificial lights, surrounded by real people from many different places, all trying to celebrate something that, for them, seemed to be much more than a sandwich.
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