IMEXscoop · Show review 2026

Four ways to design a better event.

At IMEX Frankfurt 2026, four education tracks asked the same question from four directions: what does design actually mean for the people we plan events for? This is the roundup.

19–21 May 2026 · Messe Frankfurt · 50 sessions across 4 tracks
01
Designing for Human Needs
02
Design Matters
03
Experiential Event Design
04
Regenerative Design
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At a glance

Four tracks, one conversation.

The headline from each track in a single screen. Click in for the long version.

Track 01
Designing for Human Needs
8 sessions
100M
EU citizens have a disability. Half don't attend events.
"Inclusion is no longer a values conversation. It's a business model."
Charlene Liu, EMC Meetings & Events
Anticipatory hospitality is the new baseline.
Read track 01 →
Track 02
Design Matters
10 sessions
80%
of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage.
"Design is not decoration. For us, design is emotional architecture."
David De Bruijn, Wink Agency
Visibility is bankrupt. Resonance is the new asset.
Read track 02 →
Track 03
Experiential Event Design
15 sessions
95%
of human decisions are unconscious and emotional, not rational.
"We're not in the event business. We're in the goosebump business."
David Adler, Gathering Point News
Direct it, don't plan it.
Read track 03 →
Track 04
Regenerative Design
17 sessions
43%
of catering emissions come from red meat alone.
"Sustainability is expense in the present. Regeneration is investment in the future."
Maja Domijan, Eventful
Regenerative is not "sustainability plus".
Read track 04 →
Track 01 · Designing for Human Needs

Inclusion has stopped being a value. It's become a design discipline.

Across eight sessions, planners stopped asking whether to be inclusive and started asking what to actually build: registration questions that surface neurodivergence, Himalayan salt lamps replacing fluorescent buzz, accessibility specs in the event rider, sensory packs sourced for 15 dollars. The load that used to sit on the attendee finding the toilet, finding the quiet, finding themselves in the room gets absorbed by the planner before the attendee arrives.

8 sessions 22+ speakers 100M EU citizens affected
Track signature stat
8×
Inclusive organizations are eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes.
LGBT MPA Education & Advocacy research, cited by Charlene Liu (EMC Meetings & Events)

Sessions in this track

Eight sessions, one shared assumption: people arrive carrying load. The planner's first job is subtracting from it.

A global perspective on inclusion as a core design principle
Manuel Wrobel (visitBerlin) · Loren Christie (BestCities) · Melissa Riley (Destination DC) · Julia Swanson (Melbourne Convention Bureau)
Flow
Beyond good intentions: Why inclusive events deliver better results
Charlene Liu (EMC Meetings & Events) · Rory Archibald (VisitScotland) · Cameron Curtis
Evolve
Designing congresses for five generations without losing anyone
Karin Krogh (Kuoni Tumlare Congress)
Evolve
Designing events for every mind: A case study in neuroinclusive delivery
Paula Rowntree (Australian Psychological Society)
People and Planet
Designing for human capacity: What anticipatory hospitality makes possible
Yush Sztalkoper (NeuroSpark+) · Tanja Bauer (Global Diversity Alliance)
People and Planet
Integrating wellness into your event
Industry panel on pace, capacity and recovery design
People and Planet
Personalizing with intention: Designing attendee-first event experiences
Sofia Eriksson · Pia Leimke (American Express GBT)
Rise
Positive impact through inclusion at corporate events
Mirko Korder (Potenzial Pioniere) · Medina Dzonlic (Fresenius) · Sabine Böhling (sb² concepts)
People and Planet

Stats dashboard

The numbers that turned the inclusion conversation into a finance conversation.

100M
EU citizens have a disability. 50% don't attend events. 93% cite barriers as the reason.
The business case in one number: removing barriers is the most direct route to growing addressable reach.
Manuel Wrobel, visitBerlin · A global perspective on inclusion
2.5×
Diverse companies generate 2.5× higher cash flow than non-diverse peers.
Reframes inclusion as a finance-team metric, in the language Liu argued planners now need to translate into.
LGBT MPA research, cited by Charlene Liu (EMC)
90%
Share of severe disabilities in Germany caused by illness rather than accident.
Dismantles the "this won't affect our audience" objection. Most disability arrives without warning.
Mirko Korder, Potenzial Pioniere
6,100
Delegates from 189 countries at Women Deliver 2025 in Melbourne. Closed with $190M in new commitments.
The cleanest counterargument to the assumption that inclusive design is a cost rather than a multiplier.
Julia Swanson, Melbourne Convention Bureau
1 in 5
Delegates at one recent association event arrived with a specific food-needs requirement (600 of 3,000).
F&B is no longer an edge case. Catering procurement has to be rebuilt around dietary heterogeneity.
Melissa Riley, Destination DC
50%
Share of event content forgotten within days, per Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve.
If half the content evaporates by mid-week, the design problem is the follow-through, not the agenda.
Sofia Eriksson, American Express GBT · Personalizing with intention

Voices

The lines from the room.

"Inclusion is no longer a values conversation. It's a business model."
Charlene Liu
EMC Meetings & Events
Beyond good intentions: Why inclusive events deliver better results
"Anticipatory design removes the burden put on the human. The environment absorbs that, and the human can actually enjoy more."
Yush Sztalkoper
NeuroSpark+
Designing for human capacity
"If you can do absolutely nothing else, communicate. We love surprise and delight, but that can actually create a lot of anxiety and stress."
Paula Rowntree
Australian Psychological Society
Designing events for every mind
"Your phone is actually an escape for your nervous system. If your attendee is on the phone, the assumption is the speaker is bad. Actually, that person could be disengaged because they're overwhelmed."
Yush Sztalkoper
NeuroSpark+
Designing for human capacity
"My greatest wish is that I don't have to write an event rider explaining how to set up a stage so it's possible to participate."
Mirko Korder
Potenzial Pioniere GmbH
Positive impact through inclusion at corporate events
"If they catch you in something that is not authentic, you are out. Gen Z will call your BS, because that is really not what they want."
Karin Krogh
Kuoni Tumlare Congress
Designing congresses for five generations

Themes from the track

Five ideas that connect the sessions.

Theme 01
Anticipatory hospitality is the new baseline.
Sztalkoper's tea-ceremony framing: clean toilets, vending machines, silent subways. The environment absorbs load before the human asks. Rowntree's pre-arrival comms naming every loud, sudden or scented moment are the same idea, applied to the agenda.
Theme 02
Inclusion has a P&L now.
Liu's session was structured around translation: take inclusive practices and re-present them as cash flow, retention and addressable-audience metrics. The Texas planner who said "everything we just talked about is illegal in my state" sharpened the point: ROI language survives where values language doesn't.
Theme 03
The invisible needs outrun the visible ones.
Speakers kept pulling the conversation away from ramps and toward neurodivergence, generational difference, language, caregiving, jet lag, nervous-system load. Riley's call-out: destinations default to a wheelchair image when the harder work is invisible.
Theme 04
Pace is a design lever.
Sztalkoper's capacity equation, Eriksson's cognitive-overload research, Krogh's facilitated networking, and the wellness panel's "remove the 10-minute scramble, build a real 20-minute reset" all converged: density is killing comprehension.
Theme 05
Design choices, not averages.
Krogh's five-generation framework, Eriksson's persona pivot away from job-title demographics, and Sztalkoper's "are you offering different ways to participate?" all rejected the composite attendee. Two valid ways to do the same thing is the cheapest version of inclusion.

Tension in the track

Where the inclusion conversation is still unresolved.

Surprise and delight versus pre-announced calm.
Side A · Designing for Human Needs
"The planner reflex to keep the welcome reception a surprise actively harms neurodivergent attendees. Pre-announcing the DJ, the fireworks and the loud moments is the single highest-leverage free fix."
Paula Rowntree, Australian Psychological Society
vs
Side B · The rest of the industry
"The unannounced moment is the memorable one. Surprise is the thing attendees actually remember and post about. Engineered awe is part of the craft."
Sofia Eriksson, American Express GBT and others
The stakesThe unforgettable peak that wins the Net Promoter Score is also the sensory event that pushes a slice of the audience into the lobby. This is a real craft conflict, not a tactical one.
Track 02 · Design Matters

In the year visibility became cheap, design is the only differentiator left.

AI made every brand look interchangeable. Across 10 sessions speakers kept landing on the same idea from different angles: design is no longer decoration applied to a finished product, it is the operating system of differentiation. The test is whether the audience felt something only this brand could have made them feel. If yes, the brand earned a heartbeat. If no, it produced more content for a saturated feed.

10 sessions 30+ speakers £48B wasted in unproductive meetings
Track signature stat
80%
of a product's environmental and commercial impact is determined at the design stage.
European Commission, cited by Matthew Burgess (Design Council UK)

Sessions in this track

Ten sessions agreeing on one thing: most event teams are paid to execute design decisions that should have been someone's job two quarters earlier.

Attention-based design
Alexander Bell (Alexander Bell Co) · Stephanie Hall (Trigger Fish Communications, ex Exclusive Collection)
Research Pod
Award-winning creatives reveal their secrets
David De Bruijn (Wink Agency) · Ines Lukasevska (Luka) · Maria Gaillez (IMEX Group) · Martin Osterhus (Experientia)
Flow
Design from the origins: How nature and culture transform organizational purpose
Sofya Abramchuk (Originate Institute)
Flow
Event Culture Analysis: What it is, how it's done and why it matters
Ruud Janssen (Event Design Collective)
Research Pod
Give your brand a heartbeat through experiences that truly matter
Carole Ramuz (Brandsoul AG)
People and Planet
Good design is good business: Lessons learned
Matthew Burgess (Design Council UK) · Anna Gyseman (IMEX) · Stefan Weil (Atelier Markgraph) · Alex McCorkindale (Stitch)
Flow
Ooh la la: Lessons on applying local creativity to deliver global impact
Olivier Peulvast (KENEO) · Christophe Pinguet (Shortcut Events) · Matt Regnier (Pleni)
Flow
There is no box
Simon Morris (1ne Talent Agency) · Sheena Patel (ABBYY)
Flow
Unlocking a new perspective
Joel Walton (Destination Canada)
Rise
What is a good brand communication?
Tobias Geisler (VAVESTUDIO)
Research Pod

Stats dashboard

The numbers that argued the conference hour was designed for an attention budget that no longer exists.

80%
of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage.
Design decisions, not procurement decisions, are the real sustainability lever for events.
European Commission, via Matthew Burgess (Design Council UK)
26/30
Boredom sets in at minute 26 of a 30-minute meeting, or minute 41 of an hour.
The hour-long format was designed for an attention budget that no longer exists.
Research cited by Stephanie Hall, Attention-Based Design
84/100
Delegates at any given meeting who experience some form of distraction.
Distraction is the default state, not the exception. Events must be designed around it, not against it.
Exclusive Collection / Bell white paper
£48B
35% of corporate meetings are deemed unproductive, costing roughly £48 billion.
The productivity argument for redesigning meetings is now a balance-sheet argument.
London School of Economics, via Stephanie Hall
2×
Customers emotionally connected to a brand are 2× as valuable as a merely satisfied returning customer.
Emotion is a measurable commercial asset, not a soft outcome.
Harvard research, via Carole Ramuz (Brandsoul)
71/43
71% of designers say demand for green skills is rising. Only 43% feel prepared.
The design industry has named its own skills gap. Design Council targets 1M designers upskilled by 2030.
Design Council UK report, via Matthew Burgess

Voices

The lines from the room.

"Design is not decoration. For us, design is emotional architecture."
David De Bruijn
Wink Agency
Award-winning creatives reveal their secrets
"Visibility is losing its value, because visibility everyone can reproduce. Tell me the difference between bank A and bank C."
Carole Ramuz
Brandsoul AG
Give your brand a heartbeat
"When design is good, you don't actually notice it because it fits. There is no friction with that language."
Anna Gyseman
IMEX Group
Good design is good business
"Live events don't compete with phones by delivering more information. They succeed by doing what smartphones can't, by creating moments of presence."
Stephanie Hall
Exclusive Collection
Attention-based design
"AI is only a remix of what already existed. So we as human creatives must always be aware to make one step beyond."
Stefan Weil
Atelier Markgraph
Good design is good business
"The real legacy an event leaves is inside you. It's not the context outside of you. Legacy is what you leave inside people."
Ruud Janssen
Event Design Collective
Event Culture Analysis

Themes from the track

Five ideas that connect the sessions.

Theme 01
Visibility is bankrupt. Resonance is the new asset.
AI made content infinite and identical. De Bruijn called the response "emotional architecture", Morris called it "emotional connection", Abramchuk called it "origination" rather than innovation. Same conclusion in different vocabularies: visibility is a commodity, resonance is the moat.
Theme 02
Design begins at the brief, not the build.
Burgess' 80% rule is the headline. Ramuz called it "the backward movie", starting with the outcome and the emotion, then working back to message and expression. Janssen called it event canvas. Most teams are paid to execute design decisions that should have happened two quarters earlier.
Theme 03
The 60-minute conference session is over.
Cognitive energy collapses past 30 minutes. 84 of 100 delegates are distracted at any moment. Hall and Bell prescribe shorter sessions with deliberate transitions every three to five minutes. Walton's Houston "walk and talk" is the canonical example: take the audience out of the breakout room entirely.
Theme 04
Craft is now the counter-positioning to AI.
De Bruijn's Beach 100 sand art went viral on the behind-the-scenes footage of artists working tides at sunset, not the polished asset. Lukasevska's 100 dancers, 480 self-warming dishes, hand-drawn neurons projected at 360 degrees. In a world where anyone can ship the obvious, the differentiator is the visible cost of doing the non-obvious.
Theme 05
Brand as ecosystem, not asset library.
Ramuz' heartbeat methodology and Walton's "acts not ads" framing converge: a brand is no longer a logo and a tone-of-voice deployed across surfaces. It is a coherent experiential system. Destination Canada wrapping its escalators in organic plant-based material that saved money and held the brand promise is the small-detail proof.

Tension in the track

Where the design-versus-AI conversation is still being fought.

AI as creative tool versus AI as creative ceiling.
Side A · The accelerators
"AI accelerates pre-visualization, character writing, scripting and ideation. It frees senior creatives to do better work, faster, at lower cost."
Simon Morris (1ne Talent Agency) · Stefan Weil (Atelier Markgraph)
vs
Side B · The differentiators
"Visible human craft is now the differentiator. Using AI to generate the work itself produces forgettable content in a saturated feed."
David De Bruijn (Wink) · Ines Lukasevska (Luka)
The stakesAgencies are betting their cost structures on one side of this call. The wrong bet leaves you either too slow to compete or indistinguishable from the AI noise floor.
Track 03 · Experiential Event Design

Stop designing for what people will think. Start designing for what they will feel.

Across 15 sessions: theater directors treating a corporate offsite as a five-act play, immersive producers measuring the moment an audience stops being polite and starts dancing, neuroscience-literate facilitators routing information through the amygdala before the prefrontal cortex. The shared assumption: the era of well-organized events is over. The next era is directed events, with a clear emotional arc and a participant cast as the protagonist.

15 sessions 40+ speakers 2 of 3 attendees say events are a waste of time
Track signature stat
95%
of human decisions are unconscious, emotional and intuitive, not rational.
Daniel Kahneman, cited by Pigalle Tavakkoli (School of Experience Design)

Sessions in this track

Fifteen sessions converging on one job title: the senior craft to commission for is directorial, not logistical.

A Direct approach: Bringing a directorial lens to experience design
Donnacadh O'Briain (Experience)
Flow
A new perspective on experience curation
Olivia Breene (Lateralus B Creative Consulting)
Evolve
Beyond the buzzword: Designing immersive experiences that shift perspective
Sheena Patel (ABBYY)
Flow
Design for achievers: Become a legacy leaver
Amanda Lampe (Business Events Sydney) · Kristina Henschel (Impactful Healthcare)
People and Planet
Erfolgreich fühlen. Emotionen verstehen. Erlebnisse gestalten.
Nadja Kahn (KahnEvents)
Impact Zone
From emotion to impact: The art and science of designing transformative experiences
Pigalle Tavakkoli (School of Experience Design) · Christopher Cuhls
Research Pod
From hype to impact: Designing connected event experiences that last
Christophe Pinguet (Shortcut Events) · industry panel
Rise
IMEX designed for joy: Measuring joy, proving it matters
David Adler (Gathering Point) · Mark Maydon (Crowd Connected) · Panos Moutafis (Zenus) · Frances Vieras Blanc
Rise
Moments of impact: Turn events into experiences that last
Kristina Henschel (Impactful Healthcare Consulting & Events)
Evolve
People, planet, presence: Die Stille als live-performance
Hanno Rödger (Hanno Rödger Performance Art)
Impact Zone
The making of the world's first secret business trip
Nicole Osibodu · Liz Lathan (The Community Factory)
Evolve
The power of shiny eyes
Gerd de Bruycker (NimbleX)
Flow
The power of transformational events: The CEO strategy guide
Sasha Frieze (The Business Narrative)
Evolve
The science of influence: How to change behavior and build enduring relationships
Pigalle Tavakkoli (School of Experience Design)
Flow
Trust by design: A framework for better event outcomes
Felicia Asiedu · Nabil Parkar (Cvent)
Research Pod

Stats dashboard

The numbers retiring the 1990s metric stack.

95%
of decisions are unconscious and emotional, not rational.
The empirical floor under every "design for emotion first" argument in the track.
Daniel Kahneman, via Pigalle Tavakkoli
~66%
of business event attendees say events are a waste of their time.
The hard number that makes "transformational" not aspirational but commercial survival.
Kristina Henschel, Moments of impact
80%+
of attendees forget event content within 48 hours.
Validates the track's argument: emotion-encoded memory, not content delivery, is the actual product.
Kristina Henschel, Moments of impact
$45M
in business written between 80 attendees of one 2019 Club Ichi secret trip, traced through a WhatsApp group.
A hard ROI number for the "design for trust and belonging" school.
Nicole Osibodu, The Community Factory
90 / 28
90% of event programs face higher scrutiny than ever. Only 28% have a robust framework to measure impact.
A 62-point gap naming the track's central operational problem.
Cvent research, Felicia Asiedu
14.7%
increase in event spend reported in Q1 2026, driven by activity not cost.
Budgets are growing while scrutiny tightens. Measurement frameworks are now the bottleneck, not money.
IPA Bellwether Report, via Cvent

Voices

The lines from the room.

"We're not in the event business. We're in the goosebump business."
David Adler
Gathering Point News
IMEX designed for joy
"The only thing that matters is if your audience have shiny eyes when they are in the room. It cannot be faked. Not any AI agent can generate that."
Gerd de Bruycker
NimbleX
The power of shiny eyes
"Whilst we believe ourselves to be thinking creatures who feel, biologically we're feeling creatures who think. To change what people think and do, first shift how they feel."
Sheena Patel
ABBYY
Beyond the buzzword
"Don't try and change behavior. Put all your time, effort and resources into first changing the way people feel. Feel, think, do. In that order, please."
Pigalle Tavakkoli
School of Experience Design
From emotion to impact
"Event organizers have been trading on all the wrong metrics for far too long. They've been obsessed with registration numbers and badge prints and scans. None of this measures joy."
Mark Maydon
Crowd Connected
IMEX designed for joy
"Basically nobody gets promoted for knowing how many croissants to order. We need to learn the language of the boardroom."
Sasha Frieze
The Business Narrative
The power of transformational events

Themes from the track

Five ideas that connect the sessions.

Theme 01
Direct it, don't plan it.
O'Briain's DIRECT model (define, input, resource, evolve, consolidate, time/space) borrowed from 20 years staging plays. Tavakkoli's five-act narrative arc. Frieze's "participant hero's journey". The senior craft to commission for is directorial, with a clear point of view, a chosen form and an emotional through-line.
Theme 02
The amygdala is in the brief now.
Three speakers walked audiences through brain anatomy: rational information lands in the prefrontal cortex; emotional information bypasses it and goes directly to the amygdala, which writes the memory next door in the hippocampus. The standard "tell them, sell them, ask them to act" running order is biologically backwards.
Theme 03
Wrong metrics, finally being replaced.
Adler, Maydon, Moutafis, Henschel, Asiedu all attack the same target: registration counts, badge scans, post-event NPS. The replacements being proposed are concrete: real-time sentiment, dwell-time, planned emotional curves, conversations curated. None alone is perfect; triangulating beats a survey.
Theme 04
Designed for the in-between.
Tavakkoli intentionally designs gaps because "our brains don't like gaps, so we jump in to fill them" with conversation. Adler counts curated conversations as his metric. Frieze talks about the "third space" reflection that produced a Lancet commission. The discipline being argued for is restraint.
Theme 05
Secret-keeping and the new luxury.
In an over-stimulated AI-saturated market, the rarest and most valuable thing an event can offer is genuine surprise and a strong sense of belonging. Osibodu's two-year secret reveal worked because almost nothing else in modern life stays secret for two years. The currency is no longer information access; it is curated unknowing.

Tension in the track

Where the measurement conversation collides with the craft.

Measuring emotion versus honoring it.
Side A · The instrumentalists
"Quantify it. Facial-expression analytics, dwell-time, sentiment scoring, behavioral metrics. If the CFO can't see it, the budget goes."
Panos Moutafis (Zenus AI) · Mark Maydon (Crowd Connected) · Felicia Asiedu (Cvent)
vs
Side B · The director
"Shiny eyes can't be faked, scripted or generated by an AI agent. The metric is whether the room is alive, and a good director already knows."
Gerd de Bruycker, NimbleX
The stakesOver-measure and you reduce a craft to a dashboard. Under-measure and you lose the budget conversation. The track argues for triangulating both, but the field hasn't picked a side.
Track 04 · Regenerative Design

Sustainability does less harm. Regeneration gives more back.

The track collapsed two words the industry has been using interchangeably. Sustainability does less harm. Regeneration leaves the destination, the supply chain and the audience materially better off than they were on day one. The headline question is no longer "did the event happen on time and on budget" but "12 months after the trucks leave, what remains?"

17 sessions 50+ speakers 2030 IMEX 20% reduction target
Track signature stat
43%
of all catering emissions come from red meat alone. 51% of that is served at buffets, which structurally encourage waste.
Emily Shephard (isla), citing Trace data from 3,000+ measured events

Sessions in this track

Seventeen sessions practicing the same distinction: less harm is not enough; events have to give back.

Beyond sustainability
Mike van der Vijver (Orange Gibbon)
People and Planet
Co-creation workshop: Making events fun, sustainable and meaningful
Alessandro Teichner (Colors for Good)
Impact Zone
Designing events that earn their right to exist
Maja Domijan (Eventful)
Evolve
Embedding sustainability in international events: Lessons from the IUCN Congress 2025
Milda Salciute (GDS Movement)
People and Planet
Embracing the Inner Development Goals
Elinor Arbel (Purpose Forward Consulting) · Florian Minzlaff (Sticky Fig Media)
People and Planet
Green Event Hackathon
Chris Kaiser (Click A Tree)
Impact Zone
Hook, heart, hope: Storytelling for impact and sustainability
Guy Bigwood (GDS-Movement) · Jennifer Jensen
People and Planet
Impact Creators panel: Netzwerk nachhaltiger Eventagenturen
Tobias Weber (format:c) · Alexander Ostermaier (forward live) · Jessica Itterheim (GPJ)
Impact Zone
In the moment: How IMEX built its sustainability strategy
David Harrison (IMEX Group) · Anna Abdelnoor (isla)
People and Planet
KEYNOTE: Wie Events und KI Natur und Biodiversität schützen können
Frauke Fischer (Agentur auf!)
Impact Zone
Regenerative design thinking: Bridging the gaps
Julia Uherek (Messe Frankfurt) · Lefteris Angelidis (Visual Architects) · Matthew Burgess
People and Planet
Global launch of Sustainable Event Goals
Meghan Risch and global SEG coalition
PC – Symmetrie 3
Net Zero Carbon Events Academy launch
Milda Salciute (NZCE Initiative)
PC – Symmetrie 3
JMIC leadership transition and net zero acceleration
Alexander Alles (JMIC)
PC – Symmetrie 3
Skills for planet training: Empowering the design sector for the green transition
Alexie Sommer (URGE Collective)
Flow
The truth about event sustainability progress
Emily Shephard (isla)
Research Pod
Workshop: LEGO SERIOUS PLAY for green events
Matthias Renner (Brickolution)
Impact Zone

Stats dashboard

The numbers shifting the lever from optics to data.

90%
of IMEX Frankfurt's carbon footprint comes from participant air travel.
Audience travel and rail substitution sit at the top of the IMEX 20% reduction target by 2030, ahead of exhibitor materials.
David Harrison, IMEX Group · In the moment
43%
of catering emissions come from red meat alone. 51% of that is served buffet-style.
The single highest-leverage swap in the industry. No new infrastructure required.
Emily Shephard, isla · Trace data
84%
of materials measured at events come from virgin sources. 42% are virgin and go straight to waste after one use.
The infrastructure for reuse exists. The procurement habit does not.
Emily Shephard, isla
5→40%
Share of IMEX UK team taking the train (not flying) to Frankfurt, in one year.
Travel behavior shifts when communication and rail partnerships shift, before any policy mandate.
David Harrison, IMEX Group
80 / 70%
of insects and 70% of vertebrates lost in the last 50 years. 2–3% of land remains true wilderness.
Reframes biodiversity, not just carbon, as the existential business risk.
Frauke Fischer, Agentur auf!
2 m³
of residual waste from a 400 m² Spielwarenmesse stand: five days live, reusable framing, 99% wood reuse.
Reusable carpet tiles also cost the client 50% less than fresh carpet.
Tobias Weber, format:c · Impact Creators panel

Voices

The lines from the room.

"Sustainability is expense in the present. Regeneration is investment in the future. One is a moral obligation. The other is a superior business model."
Maja Domijan
Eventful
Designing events that earn their right to exist
"If your event is just a series of slideshows, coffee breaks, and basically could have been an email, you haven't planned an event. You planned an environmental liability."
Maja Domijan
Eventful
Designing events that earn their right to exist
"The uncomfortable truth is that there is no away. Away doesn't exist. Away is just another place where this stuff will end up."
Mike van der Vijver
Orange Gibbon
Beyond sustainability
"If you organize conferences, don't put red meat on the buffet table. If you don't organize conferences, don't put red meat on the buffet table."
Emily Shephard
isla
The truth about event sustainability progress
"We're acting on optics, not on outcomes. Catering has 98% of its emissions in the food itself, and we're still polishing the compostable cup."
Emily Shephard
isla
The truth about event sustainability progress
"Try and get away from the word sustainability. It's vague, it's overused, and under EU regulation, vague sustainability claims will be unlawful. Be specific: carbon, waste, human rights. Or don't say it."
Guy Bigwood
GDS-Movement
Hook, heart, hope

Themes from the track

Five ideas that connect the sessions.

Theme 01
Regenerative is not sustainability plus.
Domijan called sustainability "an apology for something we already did". Van der Vijver said sustainability "reduces the harm. That's not good enough in the long run". Uherek said "reducing damage is the sustainability part; regenerative design thinking is creating impact". A regenerative event is judged by what is materially better in the destination a year later.
Theme 02
Design the afterlife on day one.
80% of environmental impact is locked in at concept stage. Angelidis took one stage structure from nightclub to festival to hotel activation to expo to a council Christmas show. format:c built a 400 m² Spielwarenmesse stand that left two cubic meters of waste because every screw, every textile, every tile was designed to come back.
Theme 03
Stop putting red meat on the buffet.
The most under-used lever in the industry, according to isla's Trace data. 43% of catering emissions come from red meat. 51% of red meat at events is served buffet-style, which structurally encourages over-consumption. Shephard's call was deliberately blunt: the industry has spent three years optimizing compostable cups while the food has barely moved.
Theme 04
Closed data, not open data, will save species.
Fischer's keynote inverted the usual AI-for-good narrative. 60% of information online is already false. Wildlife coordinates leak to poachers. ChatGPT generates citations to papers that don't exist. The future of AI for biodiversity is closed, scientist-curated data rooms where models can find patterns we cannot see, but where the answers cannot be weaponized by the wrong audience.
Theme 05
Cross-competitor cooperation is the only path.
The German Netzwerk Nachhaltiger Eventagenturen started in 2022 with three competing agencies sharing what they would normally keep private. Grew to 41 signatories of a joint sustainability manifesto. Merged into the Forward industry association in May 2026. The climate problem is too complex for any one agency to solve alone.

Tension in the track

Where the regenerative debate is still being fought.

Carbon offsets versus carbon reductions.
Side A · The optimists
"Carbon removals are a developing area. The events industry, where 90% of emissions come from travel, could be a global leader in scaling carbon removal."
Audience contributor · In the moment
vs
Side B · The reformers
"When we pay for carbon offsets we are just apologizing for something we did wrong. We need to fix something locally."
Maja Domijan, Eventful
The stakesWhether the next decade of climate budget gets spent on credits that compensate for emitted carbon, or on supply-chain redesign that prevents the emissions in the first place. IMEX itself has retired its previous offset partnership and is now considering "insetting" through Net Zero Carbon Events.

The through-line

Four tracks. One job change.

Across every design-led track at IMEX 2026, the same shift kept surfacing: the event professional's craft has migrated from execution to authorship. The decisions that determine whether an event will land, who it will land for, what it will leave behind, and what only it could have produced are now being made at brief stage, not build stage. Three of the four headline stats point at the same lever.

90%
of severe disability in Germany arrives through illness, not accident. Mostly unannounced.
Track 01 · Mirko Korder
80%
of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage.
Track 02 · Matthew Burgess
95%
of human decisions are unconscious and emotional, made before conscious thought.
Track 03 · Kahneman via Tavakkoli
80%
of environmental impact is determined at the design stage.
Track 04 · Alexie Sommer

At-a-glance comparison

The four tracks on the same metrics.

The same questions across every track. Different answers in every column.

Metric
Human Needs
Design Matters
Experiential
Regenerative
Sessions
8
10
15
17
Anchor stat
100MEU citizens with a disability; 50% don't attend events
80%environmental impact set at the design stage
95%decisions are unconscious, emotional
43%of catering emissions come from red meat
Anchor quote
"Inclusion is no longer a values conversation. It's a business model."
Charlene Liu, EMC
"Design is not decoration. For us, design is emotional architecture."
David De Bruijn, Wink
"We're not in the event business. We're in the goosebump business."
David Adler, Gathering Point
"Sustainability is expense in the present. Regeneration is investment in the future."
Maja Domijan, Eventful
Top theme
Anticipatory hospitality is the new baseline.
Visibility is bankrupt. Resonance is the new asset.
Direct it, don't plan it.
Regenerative is not "sustainability plus".
The job change
Absorb the attendee's load before they arrive.
Make the brand feel like itself in an AI-saturated market.
Direct the audience's emotional arc, not their schedule.
Leave the destination materially better than day one.

Cross-track tensions

Where the four design philosophies pull against each other.

These were not resolved on the IMEX stage. The work of the industry over the next 12 months is to choose where it lands.

The unforgettable peak versus the inclusive room.
Experiential × Human Needs
Experiential
Engineer awe. Surprise. Secret reveals. Sensory worlds. The peak emotional moment is what writes the memory and changes behavior.
Human Needs
Pre-announce every loud, sudden or scented moment. Surprise actively harms the slice of the audience whose nervous system can't recalibrate fast.
The stakesThe unforgettable peak that wins the Net Promoter Score is the sensory event that pushes a slice of the audience into the lobby.
The immersive escape versus the 90% travel footprint.
Experiential × Regenerative
Experiential
Chartered private jets, secret destinations, full immersive worlds. The most memorable formats are often the most logistically extravagant.
Regenerative
90% of IMEX's footprint is participant travel. 84% of materials are virgin. This is an industry that builds and discards by design.
The stakesThe formats with the highest emotional return are often the formats with the highest carbon return. The industry is quietly choosing one without admitting it.
Design for everyone versus design for someone.
Human Needs × Design Matters
Human Needs
Inclusion as the design baseline. One networking format, one room setup, one content channel loses a quantifiable slice of the audience.
Design Matters
Precision is the entire job. "What kind of dance, what kind of jazz" is what makes the brand feel like itself.
The stakesUniversal design risks producing universally bland experiences. Tightly targeted design risks excluding stakeholders the brand needs.
Speak the boardroom language versus drop the language altogether.
Human Needs × Regenerative
Human Needs
Translate every inclusion practice into a number the CFO already tracks. The work survives because the vocabulary is ROI, not values.
Regenerative
Get away from the word sustainable. The EU Green Claims Directive will make vague sustainability claims unlawful. Be specific or don't say it.
The stakesThe same instinct, translate the work into terms power respects, lands as opposite advice. The industry will need both kinds of literacy.
Measure the immeasurable versus honor it.
Experiential × Design Matters. Every track has skin in this.
Quantify it
Facial-expression sentiment, dwell-time, retention curves, design maturity scores, regenerative indices, Trace carbon dashboards, attention-budget telemetry.
Don't reduce it
Shiny eyes can't be faked, scripted or generated by an AI agent. The metric is whether the room is alive. A good director already knows.
The stakesOver-measure and you reduce a craft to a dashboard. Under-measure and you lose the budget conversation. None of the four tracks resolved this; they all argued for triangulating instinct and instrumentation.

Closing

What will you design differently?

Each of the four tracks asked the field the same question from a different angle. These pages only matter if they change what happens between IMEX Frankfurt 2026 and the next one.

Read the full IMEXscoop Browse all 11 tracks

Or jump back to any track: Human Needs · Design Matters · Experiential · Regenerative