SPS (Smart Production Solutions) is the anchor event of the European industrial automation calendar, and for exhibitors in control technology, drives, sensors, industrial communication and manufacturing software, it is the single most important selling window of the year. The 2026 edition runs 24 to 26 November 2026 at the Nuremberg exhibition centre, organised by Mesago Messe Frankfurt, and gathers more than 1,000 exhibitors in front of over 50,000 specialist visitors. This guide sets out what exhibiting at SPS actually costs, how the Nuremberg halls shape stand design, and the operational decisions that separate a smooth build from an expensive one.
Why SPS is a different exhibiting problem
Most trade fairs ask an exhibitor to attract attention. SPS asks something harder: it asks a control-cabinet builder, a drive manufacturer or an industrial-software vendor to demonstrate working technology to an audience of engineers who came specifically to evaluate it. The visitor profile at SPS is unusually technical and unusually decisive. These are automation specialists, machine builders, system integrators and plant engineers with live procurement questions, and they judge a stand on whether the demonstration in front of them answers those questions.
That changes the brief. A stand at SPS is closer to a working demonstration environment than a branded space. It typically needs powered demonstration benches, running PLCs and drive systems, screens showing live process data, and enough quiet meeting capacity to move a qualified engineer from open display to a closed technical conversation. The build carries real electrical load, cable management for running equipment, and often network infrastructure, all of which push the design toward function first.
“At an automation show, the stand is the proof. Engineers don’t want a rendering of your controller running a line, they want to see it running a line. That single expectation drives most of the cost and most of the layout decisions.”
Because the audience is time-pressured and specialist, wayfinding and the speed with which a visitor can reach the right demonstration and the right person matter more than spectacle. The most effective SPS stands are legible from the aisle, clear about which technology sits where, and staffed by people who can talk at the depth the audience expects.
SPS has run in Nuremberg since 1990, and over three decades it has become the reference point for the European automation industry’s annual cycle. Formerly known as SPS IPC Drives, the fair rebranded to Smart Production Solutions to reflect how the sector has shifted from discrete components toward integrated, digital and networked automation. That shift matters to exhibitors because the modern SPS visitor increasingly wants to see not just a controller or a drive in isolation, but how it connects, how it exchanges data, and how it fits into a digitalised production line. A stand that shows a component without showing its role in a connected system is answering last decade’s question.
The categories on display run from control technology, electric drive systems and sensors through to industrial communication, human-machine interfaces, and software and IT for manufacturing. An exhibitor’s position within that spectrum shapes both where in the halls the stand belongs and what the demonstration needs to prove. A sensor manufacturer and an industrial-software vendor are exhibiting at the same fair but solving very different demonstration problems, and the stand design has to follow from that.
The venue: how the Nuremberg halls affect your stand
SPS is held at the Nuremberg exhibition centre, one of Germany’s leading fairgrounds, with around 180,000 square metres of gross exhibition space across 16 halls. Two of those halls, 3A and 3C, were designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and carry DGNB Platinum sustainability certification, among the most energy-efficient exhibition halls anywhere. For exhibitors, the practical points are the venue’s scale, its managed hall and dock schedule, and standard German technical rules on floor loading, power provisioning and rigging. Our NürnbergMesse venue guide covers the hall layout, forwarder arrangements and access in detail.
Hall placement at SPS follows the logic of the automation supply chain. The major control and drive manufacturers anchor the largest halls, and the position of a stand relative to those anchors affects footfall. Because SPS fills the grounds and demonstration-heavy stands need power and services provisioned ahead of build-up, exhibitors confirm hall placement and technical requirements well in advance. Late electrical or rigging requests at a venue of this scale are where budgets slip.
Nuremberg also hosts Embedded World, the leading embedded-systems fair, earlier in the year at the same venue. Exhibitors who attend both can reuse venue knowledge, approved-contractor relationships and even stand components across the two shows, which is a genuine efficiency for companies that sell into both the embedded and automation markets. Our Embedded World fair guide sits alongside this one for that reason.
What an SPS stand costs in 2026
Stand-build cost at SPS follows the same per-square-metre logic as other major German fairs, but the technical nature of automation stands pushes most exhibitors toward the mid and upper tiers rather than the entry level. The figures below reflect the European per-square-metre benchmark we maintain across contractors, expressed as the all-in build cost for the stand itself, before space rental, and are consistent with the ranges in our Europe per-sqm stand cost matrix.
| Stand tier | Typical use at SPS | Indicative build cost (EUR per sqm) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry modular | Small system integrators, first-time exhibitors | 350 to 600 |
| Standard custom | Established component vendors, demo-led stands | 600 to 1,100 |
| Premium custom | Major drive and control manufacturers, multi-storey | 1,100 to 2,000+ |
Those are build figures only. An exhibitor budgeting for SPS needs to layer several further line items on top, and automation stands carry heavier versions of some of them than a typical consumer-facing fair.
| Line item | What drives it at SPS |
|---|---|
| Space rental | Charged per sqm by the organiser; premium hall positions cost more |
| Electrical supply | Higher than average because demonstration equipment runs continuously |
| Rigging and hanging signs | Structural sign-off required above set heights |
| Freight and forwarding | Sensitive automation hardware, often palletised and insured |
| Stand services | Water, compressed air and data where demonstrations require them |
| Staffing and travel | Technical staff who can hold engineering conversations |
The single most common budgeting error at SPS is underestimating power. A stand running multiple live automation demonstrations draws far more than a stand of the same size showing static products, and last-minute electrical upgrades ordered on site are among the most expensive changes an exhibitor can make. The fix is to specify the true electrical load during design, not during build-up.
“The exhibitors who control cost at SPS are the ones who treat the electrical and services plan as part of the stand design from day one. The ones who treat it as an afterthought pay for that decision twice, once in rushed on-site orders and once in downtime when a demo trips the supply.”
For exhibitors weighing whether the return justifies the outlay, the discipline is the same as any major fair: model the cost per qualified conversation, not the headline stand price. A guide to that budgeting method sits in our exhibition budget allocation framework.
Modular, custom, or a hybrid
The stand-type decision at SPS is shaped by how often a company exhibits and how much its demonstration setup changes between shows. A vendor that attends SPS, Hannover Messe and one or two regional automation events every year has a strong case for a reusable modular or hybrid system that can be reconfigured, because the saving compounds across the calendar. A company for which SPS is the one flagship appearance of the year may get more brand value from a custom build.
Automation stands lend themselves to hybrid construction, a reusable structural system carrying custom demonstration areas and branding, because the demonstration benches and technical infrastructure are the expensive, stable elements while the surrounding presentation changes. Our modular versus custom decision guide works through the total-cost comparison across a multi-fair season.
Whichever route an exhibitor takes, the builder’s experience with the Nuremberg venue matters. A contractor who knows the halls, the approved-contractor rules and the load-in schedule reduces on-site risk during one of the busier weeks in the German autumn calendar. Exhibitors sourcing a builder for Nuremberg can start from our directory of European stand builders, several of whom hold documented experience at NürnbergMesse fairs.
The operational timeline
SPS runs in late November, which places stand design and contracting through the summer and early autumn. A realistic countdown for a mid-sized custom stand looks roughly like this.
- Nine to twelve months out: confirm space, agree budget, brief the stand builder.
- Six months out: lock stand design, confirm the true electrical and services load, book freight.
- Three months out: finalise graphics, demonstration content and staffing, confirm hall logistics.
- Build-up week: install to the venue schedule, commission and test all live demonstrations before doors.
The demonstration-testing step is the one most often compressed, and it is the one that most affects how the stand performs. A live automation demonstration that fails on the first morning is worse than no demonstration, because the audience is precisely the audience that will notice. Building in a full commissioning and test window before the fair opens is not optional at a show like this. Our stand-build timeline guide sets out the countdown in more detail.
Freight, customs and the automation-hardware problem
Automation exhibits raise a freight question that consumer-goods stands rarely face: the equipment is valuable, sometimes delicate, and frequently crosses borders. Exhibitors travelling to Nuremberg from outside the customs union need to plan temporary import correctly, and the choice between an ATA Carnet, DDP shipping and formal temporary import has real cost and risk consequences. Our ATA Carnet cost guide sets out the per-country fees, and our customs decision matrix works through which route fits which shipment.
The practical rule for SPS is to treat freight timing as tightly as demonstration testing. Sensitive automation hardware that arrives late, or clears customs late, leaves no room to commission before doors, and the venue’s dock schedule during a fair of this size does not flex for individual exhibitors.
Staffing a technical stand
The staffing decision at SPS is where many otherwise well-built stands underperform. At a consumer fair, a personable team that can qualify and route visitors is enough. At SPS, the visitor who stops at a drive-systems stand often knows the product category in depth and arrives with a specific technical question. A stand staffed only by sales or marketing people, however capable, cannot hold that conversation, and the visitor moves on to a competitor who can.
The practical answer is to bring genuine technical staff onto the stand, application engineers, product specialists or systems people who can discuss the demonstration at the depth the audience expects, supported by commercial staff who handle qualification and follow-up. This raises the travel and staffing line of the budget, because these are expensive people to take out of the business for a week, but it is the difference between a stand that generates qualified engineering conversations and one that generates business cards.
“You can build the best automation stand at the show, but if the person standing next to the demonstration cannot answer the second technical question, the stand has failed. The staffing plan is part of the stand design, not a separate decision made later.”
Staffing also shapes the stand layout. A stand that expects deep technical conversations needs enough seated meeting space, ideally semi-private, for an engineer and a specialist to sit down with a laptop or a controller. Open display alone does not support the kind of conversation that leads to an automation sale. Our stand staffing guide works through the ratio of technical to commercial staff and how to brief them.
Measuring whether SPS paid back
Because SPS is expensive and technical, the temptation is to measure it by visitor count or badge scans. That is the wrong metric for this audience. A drive manufacturer that has twenty deep conversations with qualified machine builders has had a better fair than one that scanned five hundred badges of students and passers-by. The measurement that matters at SPS is the number and quality of engineering conversations that entered the sales pipeline, and the eventual value of the projects those conversations became.
That argues for capturing not just contact details but the substance of each qualified conversation, which technology the visitor was evaluating, for which application, on what timeline, so the follow-up can be genuinely useful rather than generic. A lead-capture setup that records only names wastes the most valuable thing a technical fair produces. Our lead-capture systems comparison covers the tools that support this, and our wider exhibition strategy guides cover the attribution method.
Sustainability and the reusable-stand question
Industrial exhibitors increasingly face internal sustainability requirements that reach into how they exhibit, and the Nuremberg venue’s own credentials, including the DGNB Platinum halls, reflect where the sector is heading. For an automation company, the most material sustainability lever in exhibiting is usually stand reuse. A custom stand built, shown once and scrapped carries a high embodied-carbon and financial cost; a reusable system amortised across SPS, Hannover Messe and regional shows carries far less of both.
The demonstration infrastructure that makes SPS stands expensive, the benches, the powered display areas, the technical fit-out, is also the part most amenable to reuse, because it changes little between shows even as the surrounding branding is refreshed. Exhibitors with a multi-fair automation calendar therefore have a genuine opportunity to reduce both cost and environmental impact at once by standardising the reusable core and varying only the presentation layer. This is one of the few places in exhibiting where the sustainable choice and the economical choice point the same way, and automation exhibitors who attend several shows a year are well positioned to take it.
The bottom line for SPS exhibitors
SPS rewards exhibitors who plan it as an engineering project rather than a marketing one. The stand is a working demonstration environment, the audience is specialist and decisive, and the cost is driven as much by electrical load, services and freight as by the visible build. The exhibitors who do well specify the true technical requirement early, choose a builder who knows the Nuremberg venue, and protect the commissioning window before doors open. Get those three right and SPS is one of the highest-return weeks on the European automation calendar. Get them wrong and the same week becomes an expensive lesson in why automation stands are different.
Exhibitors planning their wider German-market fair strategy can compare SPS against the other major industrial shows in our fair-participation guides, and companies ready to source a stand can begin with the verified builder directory.