The stand split in two.

IFA runs at the Berlin exhibition grounds from 4 to 8 September, its 102nd edition. The interesting thing about this one is a company that will not be in the halls. Samsung has left the Messe Berlin site, ending a twelve year residency in the City Cube, and will run product presentations and meetings for retailers, trade visitors and media at Humboldt Carre in central Berlin from 2 September. It is the first time the company has exhibited outside Messe Berlin since it first took part in 1991 (ERT, 2026).

It has not left the show, though. It is the main sponsor of the IFA Creator Hub at the Palais am Funkturm, a set of streaming studios, podcast rooms and creator spaces built for live production, and it is programming that space itself (IFA Berlin, 2026).

One brand, one week, two venues, two completely different rooms. That is the whole story, and it is worth more than the usual is-the-trade-show-dying argument.

Two briefs wearing one costume.

For about thirty years the big stand did four jobs at once. It closed retail buyers, it briefed press, it entertained the public, and it produced the photography everyone used for the next twelve months. One structure, one budget line, four audiences walking the same carpet.

Those jobs have pulled apart. A buyer wants a quiet table, a price list and forty uninterrupted minutes. A creator wants clean light, a locked-off camera, a working unit they can hold, and to be out in twenty. Build one room for both and the buyer cannot hear and the creator cannot shoot. Build two and each one gets what it came for.

The public numbers explain why the split makes sense financially. IFA 2025 drew around 220,000 visitors from 140 countries across more than 1,900 exhibitors, and the show reported global media reach of over 301 billion (IFA Berlin, 2025). Footfall on that scale is real, but it is not the same asset as reach on that scale, and only one of them needs a hall.

What this changes in a scope document.

We build the interactive parts of these rooms, so this is not theory for us. When a stand brief lands, the first thing we now ask is which of the two rooms it is, and the answer changes almost every technical decision.

• 01The buyer room is a meeting space with product in it. Priorities: quiet, seating, a screen that shows the right thing on demand, a demo that can be reset in ten seconds between appointments, and a way to record what was discussed.
• 02The camera room is a small studio. Priorities: light you control, surfaces that do not blow out or reflect the crew, audio isolation, mains and charging everywhere, and a unit that is genuinely handleable rather than glued down.
• 03Throughput is the real metric in the camera room. Sessions per hour, not dwell time. Design the reset, not the reveal.
• 04The output has to leave the building. If a visitor or a creator makes something on your stand, the file needs to be in their hand before they walk away, which means capture, storage and a share route decided at design stage.
• 05Instrument both rooms. Sessions, completions, drop-off point, per-hour load. Otherwise the post-show report is a photograph and a feeling.

We built a travelling video and photo booth for a globally touring creator on exactly that basis. Visitor steps in, records to music, walks out with a QR code that unlocks the media, and the operator gets a per-stop dashboard showing engagement, completion and download rates city by city. The booth was never the deliverable. The measurable output was.

Do not let the venue WiFi decide.

One hard-won rule, and it applies to both rooms. Anything interactive on a show floor should run on its own local server, on site, with the venue network treated as a nice-to-have. We ran a four game activation for a global tech event in Las Vegas off a single Mac with iPads over local WiFi, and the reason was not elegance. It was that a hall full of 200,000 phones will take your connection away at exactly the wrong moment.

The honest read.

Nobody has abandoned the trade show. The city showcase is still part of the official programme and open to trade pass holders, other big names are launching in Berlin the same week, and the halls are full. What has happened is quieter and more useful: the stand has stopped being one thing.

If you are commissioning one this season, split the brief before you split the budget. Write down who each room is for, what leaves it, and how you will count it. You will spend less than you did on the single big build, and for the first time you will be able to say what it did.