UK Trade Exhibitions

The listing is available to subscribers as an Excel database here (a separate database of around 850 forthcoming worldwide construction exhibitions, sortable by date, is also available to download here). If you are not logged in, you will see above only those companies which have enhanced their entries** - non-subscribers may refer to our construction events calendar, which references all the UK exhibitions. 

(**Construction industry exhibitions are researched by us and automatically listed, but organisers may enhance their events to appear below.)

As mentioned above, there are many national and regional exhibitions relating to construction and allied industries, offering a wide range of opportunities for marketing, selling and networking.

Like so much else in the industry, the construction exhibition sector has seen many changes over the last decade. Most notable was the demise of Interbuild, which originally began life in 1895 as the Building Trades Show (it then became the International Building Exhibition and, later, Interbuild): it dominated the UK’s construction sector for over 100 years, in its later life spanning many halls at Birmingham's NEC.

Anyone who, perhaps understandably, might have imagined this marked the beginning of the end for construction exhibitions in the UK would have been proved very wrong. Ecobuild, having emerged in 2004 as a small ‘green building’ conference in London, subsequently grew into one of the world’s main construction exhibition brands, with annual events held not just in the UK, but also in Mexico and South East Asia. (In March 2019, Ecobuild became Futurebuild* and its first event in this format welcomed 27,283 visitors. Futurebuild still runs an exhibition in Malaysia.) In October 2015, the inaugural UK Construction Week* saw the concept of the multi-sector construction exhibition successfully return to the NEC, spanning five halls. With nine individual shows in one event, it confirmed that the construction exhibition sector had returned to health - and, from 2022, there will be two editions (the second in London). The next edition is scheduled for 5-7 October 2021 in Birmingham (followed by the London one on 3-5 May 2022). In addition, a number of regionally-focused, multi-sector, events have evolved to represent significant and important dates in the industry's calendar. These include South East Construction Expo* (next edition on 21^st October 2021 at Ardingly) and Oliver Kinross's London Build* (next edition on 17^th-18^th November 2021), whilst a range of specialist events covering specific sub-sectors and interests have also been launched, such as the Software in Construction Show.

Readers may also like to refer to our articles on Exhibiting at Trade Shows and Specialist Stand Designers. In addition to providing pertinent information on issues to consider when exhibiting and when selecting and appointing stand designers, the features also include relevant publications and links to guides on the dos and don'ts of exhibiting.

(* Construct UK acts as a media partner to these events)