drupa is the world's leading trade fair for printing technologies, held every four years at Messe Düsseldorf. The next edition, drupa 2028, runs 9-17 May 2028 as a nine-day event. Organised by Messe Düsseldorf, drupa is the largest fair in its sector worldwide, gathering print, packaging, industrial and digital-printing technology, with around 1,700 exhibitors and well over 150,000 visitors, and for 2028 a new concept built around experience clusters and end-to-end solutions.
drupa is a working-machinery fair, which places it among the most demanding stand builds anywhere. Exhibitors install and run full production printing lines and industrial machinery on their stands, so booths require very high floor loads, three-phase power at scale, compressed air, water and waste, and reinforced flooring, often with the machine as the centrepiece and meeting and demonstration space built around it. The nine-day duration and the weight of the equipment make structural planning and services central to the design.
Because drupa runs live production equipment across the Düsseldorf halls, hall placement, floor-load ratings and services provisioning are decisive, and the long build-up needed to install heavy machinery is a defining feature of the fair. Messe Düsseldorf's technical requirements for heavy exhibits are strict. Given the four-year cycle and the scale of the installations, exhibitors plan drupa stands one to two years ahead.
For companies exhibiting at drupa, a builder experienced with Messe Düsseldorf and heavy machinery exhibits is close to essential: coordinating power, floor loading, services and the installation of full production lines is specialist work, and local knowledge of the venue's logistics, forwarder and approved contractors materially reduces risk on one of the most complex builds in the industry.