By Mary Tucker | Senior Communications and Content Manager | IAEE
Trade tariffs turning on and off. A new conflict in the Middle East pushing energy costs higher. And yet, corporate profits and investment are climbing. For those trying to plan their exhibition strategy to finish out 2026, the signals right now are genuinely mixed and hard to read.
That’s exactly why we sat down with two people who read these signals for a living. Omneya Fahmy serves as Senior Economist at Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics Company, and manages the CEIR Index for the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR). She has directed research programs for major industry associations since joining the firm in 2023, and her work spans economic impact modeling, industry benchmarking and scenario forecasting.
Nancy Drapeau, IPC is CEIR’s Vice President of Research and a market research veteran with more than 31 years in the B2B exhibitions industry. Her industry-wide studies have made her a go-to voice on exhibition trends and earned her a spot in the past on BizBash’s 1,000 Most Influential People in Events list.
Ahead of their upcoming webinar, CEIR Session – Midyear Update: U.S. B2B Exhibitions Performance, Outlook & Economic Trends, we asked them to unpack what they’re seeing and what it means for organizers, exhibitors, and attendees heading into the rest of the year.
Here, Omneya and Nancy share a first look at how they’re weighing the mixed economic signals shaping the industry, which sectors may see growth or setbacks in the months ahead, and how organizers can start building strategies to manage the risks on the horizon.
OMNEYA: How do you weigh the competing forces in the macro “big picture” when you’re forecasting exhibition activity and which force do you think will matter most in the remaining months of 2026?
Omneya: The first question I ask is whose money we’re talking about. Exhibitions are paid for out of corporate budgets, not household ones, and those two economies are pulling in opposite directions right now.
Households are under pressure – energy and tariffs are eating into real incomes, and the saving rate is down to 2.8% against a long-run average of 5.9%. Companies are in the opposite position. Margins are the widest they’ve been in a series going back to 1950, and investment has started broadening out beyond AI into manufacturing, equipment and construction.
That corporate side is the one I’d watch through the rest of the year. It’s a reason the industry has kept advancing while the household numbers have weakened.
NANCY: You’ve spent over three decades watching how exhibitors and attendees respond to economic uncertainty. Are you seeing organizers change their strategies differently this time around compared to past periods of volatility?
Nancy: Organizers are incredibly resilient because they are accustomed to planning and running events in turbulent business environments. If you look back over the last two decades – from 9/11 and the financial crisis to the pandemic and today’s economic uncertainty – periods of disruption have become the norm, not the exception.
As a result, organizers are battle-tested. They take lessons learned from previous challenges and continually adapt their events to meet evolving exhibitor and attendee needs.
What’s different today is the nature of the headwinds. For many events, international participation remains a challenge, so where appropriate, organizers are placing greater emphasis on domestic and regional markets. More broadly, they’re refining their exhibitor mix, content and engagement opportunities to align with where demand exists today.
Digital also plays an integral role. It is an important tool for marketing and selling events, supporting engagement with exhibitors and attendees, and enhancing interaction among participants. Interestingly, digital has not overtaken the exhibition channel. Instead, it has become a complementary channel, and the two work well together.
OMNEYA: The CEIR Index has tracked exhibition performance through decades of economic cycles. Based on what you’ve seen so far this year, are you able to identify a pattern or is today’s uncertainty affecting the industry in a completely different way?
Omneya: Some of it rhymes with past cycles. The fast rebound ran out in 2022 and growth has been in a narrow band ever since – the industry has stopped bouncing back and started growing at a normal rate, with the last of the gap to 2019 still to close.
What’s new is that confidence has come unstuck from behavior. It used to be that when sentiment fell, spending followed. Since 2021 sentiment has sat near record lows and spending has kept growing anyway – households have funded it from savings and wealth rather than income. What people say about the economy has become a poor guide to what they actually do.
That’s the part I’m watching, because it’s a five-year pattern now, not a blip.
NANCY: One of the session’s learning objectives involves strategies to navigate and mitigate emerging risks. In practice, is this about changing show formats, pricing, timing or something else entirely?
Nancy: Risk mitigation today is less about changing event formats, pricing or timing, and more about staying aligned with buyer demand and industry opportunity.
Organizers should continually assess what buyers are likely to purchase over the next 12 months and ensure their exhibitor mix, content and networking opportunities reflect those priorities. CEIR research shows that exhibitors need measurable business results, so helping connect qualified buyers and sellers remains fundamental.
We also see that events growing attendance are more likely to offer hosted buyer programs, matchmaking and other structured engagement opportunities that extend buyer-seller interactions beyond the exhibit booth. For industries facing greater challenges, mitigating risk means identifying and investing in growth opportunities within the markets they serve, while implementing strategies that attract new market entrants, innovators and emerging solutions.
Ultimately, the best way to mitigate risk is to ensure an event reflects where the market is going, not where it has been.
OMNEYA: You will be talking about which sectors are poised for growth versus which may face headwinds. Without going too deep, is there one sector you think might surprise people, in either direction?
Omneya: Building and construction. It’s been among the strongest sectors against 2019, which surprises people who expect the momentum to sit with tech.
It makes sense when you think about what’s being sold. You can’t inspect heavy equipment or building materials on a screen, and the money behind those buyers – business investment – is the strong side of the economy right now.
NANCY: Given your research on industry-wide trends, what’s a question you wish more exhibition organizers were asking themselves right now, but aren’t?
Nancy: That’s a great question. Organizers are often asking themselves how to improve their events, but perhaps the more important question right now is, “What should I prioritize?”
There are always multiple challenges and opportunities competing for attention. As the midyear report highlights, growth has slowed since the strong post-pandemic rebound, but there are also encouraging signs, including sustained corporate profitability that could translate into future investment.
The challenge for organizers is determining which opportunities will have the greatest impact on their event and focusing resources there first. That’s why strategic planning is so important and understanding market conditions, identifying where demand is growing, and making informed decisions about where to invest time and resources.
Our goal in the webinar is to help organizers think through what the midyear report signals, identify which insights are most relevant to their events, and discuss how those insights can be translated into strategies for exhibitor sales, attendee marketing and long-term event growth.
Click here to register for CEIR Session – Midyear Update: U.S. B2B Exhibitions Performance, Outlook & Economic Trends and learn more about upcoming IAEE webinars here.
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