Hi All,
I’m back in the US for a few weeks after a great 6 week tour through SE Asia (🇱🇦 Laos, 🇲🇲 Myanmar, 🇸🇬 Singapore, 🇹🇱 Timor Leste, 🇮🇩 Bali, 🇻🇳 Vietnam & 🇧🇳 Brunei). The highlight was sharing our Vision for Pangea live at the Travel Massive Conference in Da Nang 🇻🇳 as we continue to ramp up 🚀
I'll be at the SKIFT Global Forum this week in NYC - if you'll be there too let me know, I'd love to connect. We're also hosting a meetup Saturday Afternoon - RSVP here.
A few announcements:
🇿🇦 ONLY 16 DAYS LEFT for Early Bird Pricing on NomadWeek in Cape Town (January 25 - 31, 2026). This is going to be an EPIC kickoff to the 2026 Season & if you're coming to Cape Town this year, you won't want to miss it. Join our Webinar on 23 Sep @7pm EST to learn more, or get your ticket now!
🕌 3 Month Central Asia Journey? I'm considering leading a 3 month Central Asia remote work journey this Spring from late-April-late July. Roughly a month in each of Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 and Uzbekistan 🇺🇿 with 4-7 day "transition trips" through Turkmenistan 🇹🇲, Tajikistan 🇹🇯. Possibly with a trip through Mongolia 🇲🇳 at the end... Interested in helping or joining? Follow along here.
👀 NomadNest dropped some AWESOME new destinations for 2026 including Quito, Ecuador 🇪🇨 (which I have my eye on if we don't go to Central Asia), Yerevan, Armenia 🇦🇲(which I loved in June), Punta Del Este, Uruguay 🇺🇾 (where I had my birthday last year), and San Sebastián, Spain 🇪🇸 (which is high on my list!). See full schedule.
🚢 NomadCruise sets sail in less than a month! Explore Vancouver 🇨🇦, Hawaii 🇺🇸, Samoa 🇼🇸, Fiji 🇫🇯, Vanuatu 🇻🇺 & Sydney 🇦🇺. The South Pacific is one of my favorite regions, and this is an AWESOME opportunity to see it while working with 250+ other digital nomads. Save EUR 500 with Pangea. DM me for discount code.
👋 We partnered with Pangia eSIM (great name), which provides unlimited data WORLDWIDE, on a single eSIM for as low as $27 / month. Their Founder (ironically named Matthew) is awesome, and the product they're building is fantastic compared to any alternatives I've found. Get 1 Week Free - Learn More.
📲 Our updated iOS and Android versions rolled out last week. There are a few rough edges we're working through before we launch them more widely, but excited to hear your feedback on the new scratch map, profile & community pages!
✅ The Pangea Verified Community
As Pangea continues to rapidly grow with now more than 40,000 digital nomads & travelers who have downloaded our apps or joined our communities, I'm so happy to see people connecting & traveling to more places around the world. However, what started as a close group of friends who met traveling, has become something much bigger, and we unfortunately are facing some of the negative sides of that with a small number of spammers messaging users. While we have many privacy controls in the app already, including the ability to control who can message you, see your profile and join your trips, we wanted to go a step further by starting to verify users more intentionally. My goal is to always keep Pangea a free platform where real travelers can connect, and Pangea Verified is an important step in in that direction as we continue to grow. To request verification, you can follow this link to request to join the community. There are 3 ways to get accepted:
👋 Ambassadors: If you've traveled with me, or one of our ambassadors, we'll add you straightaway. Just drop a message to the community with who you've met and where you met them.
🤝 Partners: If you haven't met our team but heard of us through one of our Verified Partners (Outsite, Wifi Tribe, Nomad Cruise, Nomad Nest, or Noma Collective), email [email protected] with a screenshot of your profile and a screenshot of a booking/membership confirmation from one of these programs along with a bit about you. We will review & add you or follow up for more information.
💬 Interview: If you haven't traveled with us or any of our partners, you can arrange an interview with our team. We charge a nominal, one time, $29 application fee to weed out spammers, and compensate our Ambassadors for their time.
Once you're verified, you'll get a badge on your profile, and have access to the exclusive verified community, group chat, meetups and more. We'll also be rolling out new features across the app to make it easy to find and connect with other Verified members around the world.
It's important I point out that we cannot be responsible for the actions of every verified member, and it's always important to exercise caution when meeting someone in-person who you don't know personally.
But I hope that it helps those of us active in the nomad community connect with other likeminded travelers anywhere we go.
As always, we'll continue to build and improve, so let me know if you have any ideas!
🗺 Looking to go off the beaten path?
Many of you have followed along and asked me about my less typical travel destinations as I continue on my path to EVERY country in the world. If you're also Chasing 193, or just want to get to a few of the less traveled places, I encourage you to join some of the premier events for the Extreme Travel Community over the next year. Here's the Tier 1 Lineup for 2026:
🇪🇹 Most Traveled People Summit: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (13-16 November). Save $100 with PANGEA100MTP Founded by Charles Veley
🇿🇦 Pangea Serendipity Summit @ NomadWeek: Cape Town, South Africa (25-31 January, 2026) Co-Hosted by Me and Andrae Smith
🇻🇳 Travelers’ Century Club International Conference: Hanoi, Vietnam (03-07 May, 2026)
🇧🇷 NomadMania Conference: Ouro Preto, Brazil (10-14 June, 2026) Founded by Harry Mitsidis
🌍 Extraordinary Travel Festival:Location TBA LIVE Tonight! (22-25 October, 2026) Founded by Ric Gazarian
The other attendees at all these events will be some of the most traveled people on earth - and you'll be fascinated by their stories & experience. Instead of asking "Have you been to " you can generally ask "What did you think of " which is pretty fun.
You'll also meet people with plans to go to some of the most remote corners on earth, and in my experience everyone is super inviting. I'm headed to 🇸🇸 South Sudan & 🇩🇯 Djibouti in November ahead of the MTP conference with a group I met at the last NomadMania event!
There are also dozens of other Digital Nomad geared conferences around the world which we'll round up over the next few weeks as we drop the aggregated 2026 travel community schedule! If you have one that you'd like featured, please email [email protected].
✈️ Pangea Verified Partners
If you run a travel community program, and want to get featured in our newsletter, submit it on our website and learn more about getting Pangea Verified.🛳 NomadCruise by Johannes Voelkner
ℹ️ 1-4 week cruises with 200+ Digital Nomads & Startlink WiFi.
📅 12 Oct - 09 Nov
📍 Seattle - Hawaii - Samoa - Fiji - Vanuatu - Sydney
📅 7 Feb - 14 Feb
📍 Singapore - Brunei - Philippines - Hong Kong
Get EUR 500 Off - DM me for code
🦅 NomadNest by Walid Elshahed & Joanna Asiukiewicz
Curated 1 month programs with co-working, accommodation and award winning former RemoteYear local city leaders
📅 Every Month
👀 NEW PLACES like Quito, Ecuador 🇪🇨; Montevideo Uruguay 🇺🇾; Mauritius 🇲🇺; Yerevan, Armenia 🇦🇲; plus favorites like Floripa, Brazil 🇧🇷, Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦 (pictured above) and more.
💻 WiFi Tribe by Diego Burke
Intentional community of 750+ boldly living Digital Nomads, hosting 3-4 1 month chapters around the world each month. My full review
📅 Every Month
📍 Places like New Zealand 🇳🇿, Namibia 🇳🇦, Georgia 🇬🇪 (pictured above), Nicaragua 🇳🇮, Kenya 🇰🇪, Australia 🇦🇺 & Sri Lanka 🇱🇰
Expedited applications for Pangea users. Just mention PANGEA in your application under "how did you hear about us"
🏡 Outsite by Emmanuel Guisset
High quality, co-living houses around the world designed for productivity with great amenities, community and workspaces in every room.
📅 Flexible dates
👀 NEW LOCATION in Barcelona 🇪🇸
📍Globally, some of my favorites include Lisbon, Porto, Madeira, Nicaragua, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and Marrakech.
Use PANGEA50 for $50 off your membership
🇿🇦 About NomadWeek 🇿🇦
I'm hosting this year's event with Andrae Smith, a native Capetonian, long time digital nomad, and Founder of both NomadWeek & Work Wanderers - the first and largest community of Digital Nomads in Cape Town! We've also partnered with all of the major travel communities in Cape Town including NomadNest, UZINZO, and more to unify the wider travel community this season. Our goal is for NomadWeek to become the ultimate kickoff for the year in Cape Town, open to everyone. We are also going much deeper in connecting with the local community in meaningful and lasting ways - something I've found doesn't happen with most travel programs which end up becoming a bubble of foreigners in a cool destination. NomadWeek will include access to:
Two days of talks from some great speakers on everything from building remote businesses/careers, to raising money for your startup, to building communities while traveling, to extreme travel in off the beaten path destinations from some of the most traveled people in history.
The Africa Expo where we’ll be hosting dozens of South African based startups, businesses & entrepreneurs. We want to create connections & partnerships that last longer than just the week and help connect our community of international professionals to these businesses to do big things together 🚀
Social experiences & networking events throughout the week, including our iconic Sunset Yacht Cruise, a weekend wine tour & villa pool party, and likely a gala event on the top of Table Mountain (...literally a Natural World Wonder!!!) Plus a lot more!
When I started Pangea, the slogan on our earliest mockups was "Explore the World, Together.". Nearly 5 years, 75+ countries, and thousands of new travel friends later, I think we've done a pretty good job staying true to that.
Re-reading this email (and probably missing a typo or two 😂), we literally have things featured from half the countries on earth, have met the leaders of ALL the top travel communities, and I love how Pangea continues to grow and bring the various parts of the travel world together.
On that note, we've got a HUGE announcement coming in a few weeks... so stay tuned 👀
Finally, if you haven't gotten your
ticket yet, I really encourage you to do so. It's going to be a one of a kind event, bringing together everything we've learned from traveling with these top communities over the past decade, along with my / Andrae's combined expertise in Cape Town from both the perspective of a traveler and a local.
The goal is to bring EVERYONE from all these communities together in one place, foster connection, share some epic experiences, and create amazing memories together. We're pulling out all the stops, and want to use it as the kickoff to make 2026 the BEST year for travel yet. I hope to see you there!
Cheers,
-Matt
Founder & CEO of Pangea
108/197 Countries (130 UN+) & 7 Continents Traveled
Join me & 250+ others at NomadWeek
