Top 100 Trade Shows, Expos, & Events In UK (2024)

The Power of UK Trade Shows for B2B Growth

UK trade shows offer unrivalled opportunities to accelerate your business growth.

By showcasing your company to highly targeted audiences using industry specific exhibitions in the UK, these events provide proven returns through qualified leads, strategic partnerships, and a platform to demonstrate your leadership.

Whether launching new products, connecting with purchasers and influencers, or gaining actionable insights from industry luminaries, trade shows give access and exposure impossible to achieve through other channels.

Industry trade shows and expos connect you with thousands of engaged attendees in just a few days. The immersive experiences lead to relationships that drive revenue for months and years to follow.

Here are some stats that trade show exhibitors have highlighted in terms of just how well exhibition marketing has improved their ROI in vital areas:

47% increased market visibility
44% more leads captured
41% rise in sales pipeline revenue

UK trade shows deliver business outcomes that cannot be matched through other marketing, sales, or networking channels. The sheer depth of interactions, visibility, and connections produce leads, partnerships, and insights that carry business impact for years.

But you have to be strategic and proactive to realise the full value. Use this guide to determine the right shows for your objectives, optimise your presence, and follow up effectively after the event.

Start planning today, and determine which 2024 shows make the most sense to accelerate your business growth through exhibitions. The opportunity is immense—be ready to seize it.

Building Your Brand at Industry Events

Trade shows offer a unique stage to elevate your brand presence and solidify your position as a thought leader in your field. Here’s how to build a powerful brand narrative at these events:

Showcase Your Authority:Be seen as the solution provider your target audience needs. Participate in speaking engagements, panel discussions, or sponsor seminars that address key industry challenges.
Thought Leadership Through Content:Offer industry reports, whitepapers, or insightful case studies as downloadable resources for attendees. Tie these assets to compelling calls to action to continue the conversation beyond the show.
Standout Booth Design:Make a bold statement with an eye-catching booth design aligned with your brand identity. Feature vibrant visuals, strong messaging, and interactive elements that draw interest and highlight your unique value.
Leverage Awards & Recognition:Proudly display industry awards or certifications gained. These instantly signify your credibility and excellence within your field.
Strategic Media Partnerships:Collaborate with relevant media outlets on pre-show interviews, blog posts, or featured event listings. Tap existing partnerships to enhance your visibility to their niche audience.

Remember:Brand building at trade shows isn’t just about your booth and interactions during the event. Make an impact with effective pre-show promotion on social media and targeted outreach that generates anticipation about your presence.

Targeted Lead Generation & Networking

Trade shows provide an unparalleled concentration of qualified industry decision-makers and influencers. Maximise your return with these proactive lead generation and networking strategies:

Pre-Show Outreach:Identify promising attendees in advance by reviewing attendee lists (if available) or targeting key companies you’d like to connect with. Contact them for appointments or to invite them to your booth.
Optimise for Interactions (this one is the best kept, worst executed trade secret):Ensure your booth personnel are trained not just on your product but on efficient, qualifying conversations. They should be able to quickly assess needs and lead fit based on common pain points in your industry.
Lead Capture Tools:Avoid relying on handwritten notes alone. Invest in technology like lead retrieval apps or even engaging contests to collect attendee information smoothly and efficiently.
Beyond the Business Card:Leverage networking events, seminars, and dedicated lounge areas to forge connections. Ask thoughtful questions, focus on building rapport, and exchange details to open the door to further follow-up.
Social Media Amplification:Create a hashtag for your presence at the show. Promote it in advance and during the event by live-tweeting highlights, interacting with mentions, and sparking online conversations that complement your in-person engagement.

Pro Tip:Categorise your collected leads immediately post-show based on level of interest and readiness to close. This guides your follow-up sales strategy and prioritises where to invest your resources for the highest ROI.

Just imagine…..

Accessing 10, 20, 30,000+ targeted prospects in a few days.Showcase your brand to more qualified leads in one location than you could reach through months of cold outreach or digital campaigns. Trade shows aggregate your total addressable market and buyer personas into an engaged audience committed to discovering industry solutions.
Developing deeper partnership Dialog.Face-to-face engagement during events leads to more strategic relationships with higher shared value. Whether person-to-person, in conference sessions, or exploring the expo hall, both parties can align on fit and opportunities in ways less likely through emails, calls or virtual interactions.
Maximising sales productivity –On-site meetings convert to sales at 6x times the rate of other lead sources. Attendees come prepared to buy solutions like yours. Your sales reps can connect with decision-makers, identify needs, provide demos, and close business at the event and afterwards—driving results against tough revenue targets.
Gaining Market Insights Ahead of the Curve –Trade shows offer exposure to game-changing insights before broad awareness. Learn from talks, exhibitors, and attendees and apply these trends, innovations, best practices or partnerships to outmanoeuvre competitors who didn’t attend
Elevating market leadership –High-visibility presences such as speaking, sponsorships, and compelling booths establish your company as an authority brand. Remember – awards validate expertise; do you have any? Also, media exposure further grows brand equity and trust. Competitors take years to match such rapid elevation, so ensure you are using all the tools available to you!

This is the reality for your business if you take your trade show and offlineexhibition marketing strategyseriously.

Must-Attend UK Trade Shows in 2024 – Shows to Accelerate Business Growth

Connect with your best-fit audiences and accelerate business success by exhibiting at premier events across every major sector.

Venues for UK Exhibitors

The NEC (National Exhibition Centre) in Birmingham – The UK’s largest exhibition centre, hosting over 500 events per year, including The Skills Show, Grand Designs Live, and the BBC Good Food Show.
ExCeL London – Located in East London, it hosts over 100 annual events, such as the London Wine Fair, Bett, and Infosecurity Europe. It has over 100,000 sqm of flexible space.
SEC (Scottish Event Campus) in Glasgow – Located next to the River Clyde and home to over 100 events per year, including Offshore Europe and the SEC Hydro arena.
Manchester Central Convention Complex is a centrally located events venue in Manchester city centre that hosts conferences, exhibitions, and award ceremonies.
ACC Liverpool (Arena & Convention Centre Liverpool) – Hosting over 70 exhibitions and conferences annually, including the Liverpool International Horse Show.
Olympia London – This historic exhibition venue, renowned for its Art Nouveau architecture, has been hosting events since 1886. It also hosts concerts, conferences, and trade shows.
ICC Wales (International Convention Centre Wales) in Newport is an ultramodern convention centre with a 4,000-seat arena and two large exhibition halls.
Titanic Belfast – State-of-the-art facility in the famous Titanic Quarter, ideal for gala dinners, conferences and banquets.
Edinburgh International Conference Centre – Located in the heart of Scotland’s capital city, close to Edinburgh Castle, this conference centre hosts association conferences and corporate events.

Exhibiting at a top UK venue soon? Our global experience & in-country team make Booth Exhibits™ your ideal partner. Calculate your project costs with our price calculatororspeak to one of our team!

The Premier UK Expo Venues

Exhibiting at these prime locations allows you to connect with engaged audiences year-round. Their versatile capacities, infrastructure, and accessibility make them ideal show homes for virtually any industry and event scale.

NEC Birmingham– England’s flagship venue hosts 500+ events annually, including trade, consumer, and technology shows.

ExCeL London– 100+ yearly events spanning sectors like biotech, manufacturing, and hospitality with abundant customisation options.

SEC Glasgow– Scotland’s largest exhibition centre located by the River Clyde, hosting major energy, construction, and entertainment shows.

Manchester Central– The convention complex in England’s “Capital of the North” welcomes over 1 million business visitors per year.

For a comprehensive list and more info onattractions and transport links, click here.

Key Reasons to Showcase at UK Events

Trade shows deliver unrivalled opportunities to accelerate business growth by:

Accessing 20,000+ targeted prospectsacross just a few jam-packed days per top event.
Building strategic partnershipsthrough hours of meaningful face time with decision-makers.
Generating abundant sales leadsby connecting with audiences at critical points in their buying journeys.
Launching new offeringsandvalidating R&D directionthrough real-time voice-of-the-customer insights.

Maximise Your Exhibition Investment

Follow these best practices to ensure exhibiting success:

Stand Out with Creative Booth Designs:Steer prospects to your location through attention-grabbing architecture, visuals and styling aligned to your brand identity.

Beyond the Booth: Post-Show Success Strategies

Personalised Outreach Wins Post-Show

Timely Leadremember leads go cold quickly, so make sure you are following up as fast as you possibly can!
Categorise Your Leads:Don’t treat all leads equally. Divide them by interest level and sales readiness (hot, warm, cool) to prioritize efforts and personalize your messaging.
Content is King:impactful, customised email outreach templates relevant to specific pain points (discovered through show conversations) save time and ensure consistent lead nurturing.

We can help you transform raw leads into revenue. While competitors flounder post-show, leverage our proven lead nurture systems. From segmentation to outreach templates, we ensure no qualified prospect falls through the cracks.

Technology Matters:

CRM Integration:Ensure any new leads flow directly into your CRM of choice. Manual data entry adds delay and errors, wasting valuable time gained by exhibiting.
Track Success Metrics:Define KPIs in advance for evaluating show performance. Measure not just lead volume but conversion rates and revenue generated, and compare across shows to gain actionable insights.
Marketing Automation:If feasible, have lead nurturing drip campaigns ready beforehand. Trigger sequences customized to attendee pain points (identified during the show) based on lead categorisation.

Leverage Show-Focused Content

Repurpose Presentations:Were demos given? Turn these into webinars or gated content on your website to continue fostering interest, positioning you as the expert beyond the event itself.
Gather Testimonials:Collect quick “success stories” from satisfied on-site clients. Even short, genuine quotes make compelling marketing tools for attracting future attendees to your booth.
Show Highlights Content:Share a recap blog post or social media updates featuring booth interactions, key event takeaways, or exciting announcements made during the trade show. This helps with continued engagement.

Why UK Events Offer Unmatched B2B Impact

Trade shows deliver unrivalled opportunities to accelerate business growth by:

Accessing 20,000+ targeted prospectsacross just a few jam-packed days per top event.
Building strategic partnershipsthrough hours of meaningful face time with decision-makers.
Generating abundant sales leadsby connecting with audiences at critical points in their buying journeys.
Launching new offeringsandvalidating R&D directionthrough real-time voice-of-the-customer insights.

Exhibition Success: Best Practices

Follow these best practices to ensure exhibiting success:

Stand Out with Creative Booth Designs:Steer prospects to your location through attention-grabbing architecture, visuals and styling aligned to your brand identity.

Capture Contacts:Employ lead retrieval tools, gamification, content offers and conversations that collect interested attendees’ information for sales follow-up.

Follow a Clear Post-Show Strategy:Categorise leads by sales readiness and assigns them for prompt nurturing and closing based on the interactions and interests gained at the event.

Expos In the UK – The Untapped Potential for Your Business

World-class trade shows exist, so you don’t have to start from scratch fueling UK growth. Leverage the immersive buyer platforms already assembled. Prioritise your 2024 events that most align with projected offerings, customer bases, and business objectives.

Seize the unmatched efficiencies trade shows offer. Competitors who dismiss exhibition impact cede advantage—don’t follow their mistake.

Every show on the calendar promises business transformation camouflaged as an industry congregation.

The question becomes, are you ready? The gathered audience, leadership stage, and revenue pipeline await.

Join hundreds of the most ambitious UK companies already committed. London-based or regionally headquartered, now comes the time to stake your claim at the premier events aligned with your goals. Will you claim the exhibitor opportunity or leave ROI untapped? The choice and returns are clear.