AHR Expo 2027 by the Floor Plan: 1,592 Stands at McCormick Place, Measured

We measured every booth on the AHR Expo 2027 floor plan, the same plan any visitor can open on the show's own site: 1,592 stands across McCormick Place's North and South buildings, 1,272 companies, 555,049 square feet of reserved floor - with 162 stands still available when we measured on August 16, 2026. This is the third show we have measured this way, after RE+ 2026 and SEMA 2026 in Las Vegas. AHR adds something neither of those could: the show rotates cities, and we measured its 2026 Las Vegas edition from the same kind of plan. That makes this the first side-by-side of the same show on two different floors - and the differences are not cosmetic.

How we measured this

Every figure comes from the AHR Expo 2027 published floor plan, the interactive plan the show hosts for attendees. Booth polygons are stored in inches, so each stand gives an exact width, depth, square footage and position on the floor.

From the coordinates we derive the thing a booth number cannot tell you: how many sides of each stand face an aisle. A side is closed if another booth runs along it and open if it faces the aisle. The build rules key off that classification - 1 open side is inline (roughly an 8 ft back wall, no hanging sign), 2 is a corner, 3 is a peninsula, 4 is an island with full height and a hanging sign.

Checks before we trusted any of it: booth dimensions land on clean trade-show sizes (10x10, 20x20, 20x10), which is what a correctly calibrated scale looks like; island classification correlates with stand size exactly as it should; and running the identical pipeline on the 2026 Las Vegas edition yields 1,561 stands - within 2% of the 2027 count, for a show whose organiser reports a stable exhibitor base. Counts are as the plan stood on August 16, 2026; floors move as space is sold and resold.

The floor is still selling - 10% of stands were open when we measured

Of 1,592 stands drawn on the plan, 1,382 were reserved, 162 were still marked available, and 48 were on hold on August 16, 2026 - five months and change before doors open on January 25, 2027.

That is worth knowing for two opposite reasons. If you have not booked, there is real inventory left - including corner positions, which are the value play on this floor (more on that below). If you have booked, your neighbours are not final: an aisle that looks quiet on today's plan can gain an anchor, and the stand backing onto yours can change hands. Check the live plan again before you finalise a design that depends on what surrounds you.

For scale: the 2026 Las Vegas edition's plan shows exactly one available stand - that is what this same show looks like sold out.

56% of exhibitors cannot hang a sign

Classifying every stand by its open sides: 303 inline stands and 582 corners - together 56% of the floor's stands - cannot hang a sign under standard show rules. 253 peninsulas and 454 islands can.

Read the last column again: a quarter of exhibitors occupy two thirds of the hall. If you are one of the 885 stands that cannot go overhead, your visibility budget lives entirely at eye level - an 8 ft back wall competing across an aisle with 20 ft island structures. That is the argument for making the back wall itself the signage: a backlit wall reads from further down an aisle than a printed one, and it is the one upgrade that does not require a different booth contract.

Corners deserve a special note at AHR: at 37% of stands, this floor is unusually corner-rich. A corner costs a premium over inline but doubles your open frontage - on a floor where you cannot hang a sign, the second open side is the cheapest visibility you can buy.

Same show, two cities: what moving to Chicago did to the floor

AHR rotates host cities - Orlando in 2025, Las Vegas in 2026, Chicago in 2027. We measured the 2026 and 2027 editions from their plans with the identical pipeline:

The show's shape survives the move; the small-stand share does not. Median, island dominance and concentration barely move - but the 10x10 share drops from a third of stands to a quarter. Chicago 2027 is, so far, a bigger-average-stand floor than Las Vegas 2026 was.

The rebooking behaviour of the 1,108 companies that appear on both plans says why: 385 took more space in Chicago, 498 took the same, and 225 took less. Growth beat shrinkage among returners by 1.7 to 1. The anchors show it plainly - LG Electronics U.S.A. went from 4,800 to 5,850 sq ft, Rinnai from 5,100 to 5,400, Bradford White from 4,900 to 5,400, Daikin Applied from 4,000 to 5,000, while Navien (5,600) and GE Appliances Air & Water Solutions (5,400) rebooked identical footprints. The floor's single biggest stand belongs to Patterson-Kelley: 9,250 sq ft in Chicago against 2,000 in Las Vegas - 4.6 times larger, and bigger than anything on either edition's plan.

Two Las Vegas anchors - Carrier (5,400 sq ft in 2026) and Bosch Home Comfort Group (4,000) - were not on the Chicago plan when we measured. That is a statement about the plan on August 16, 2026, not about the show: with 162 stands open, late bookings land all the time.

We measured RE+ 2026 and SEMA 2026 the same way - see the RE+ floor-plan analysis and the SEMA floor-plan analysis for how two Las Vegas floors in the same building differ from each other as much as AHR's two cities do.

What this means if you are exhibiting at AHR 2027

Know your stand class before you design. With 56% of stands unable to hang a sign, the first question is not what the booth should look like but how many sides you have and what you are allowed to build. Inline and corner stands should put their budget into the back wall - backlit if possible - because that wall IS the booth from ten feet away. Islands compete overhead; if you have sign rights, use them, because 454 other stands will.

McCormick Place is not Las Vegas on labor - in your favour. McCormick's Exhibitor Bill of Rights lets your own full-time employees set up a booth of any size with their own hand, cordless and power tools - the opposite of the LVCC's tighter self-install limits. Electrical past a standard outlet stays with IBEW, and overhead rigging stays with the riggers, but a modular SEG or lightbox booth your own team can assemble is meaningfully cheaper to install in Chicago than the same booth in Las Vegas. Our McCormick Place union labor and drayage guide has the specifics.

A January show runs on a November clock. Doors open January 25, 2027; freight and graphics deadlines land inside the holiday season, when carriers black out and print queues stack. Treat artwork as due in November, and ship to the advance warehouse rather than gambling on direct-to-site in the week after New Year.

If you have not booked: the corner math. 162 stands were open when we measured. On a floor this corner-heavy, a corner's second open side is the cheapest visibility upgrade available to any exhibitor who cannot afford an island - and unlike a bigger booth, it does not raise your drayage, carpet or labor bill.

For stand-level ideas sized to what you have booked, see booth design ideas for AHR Expo, or send us your booth size and we will tell you what actually fits it.

Frequently asked

How many exhibitors are at AHR Expo 2027?

We measured 1,592 stands belonging to 1,272 companies on the published floor plan as of August 16, 2026, with 162 stands still available - so the final count will be higher. The organiser markets the show at 1,800+ exhibitors, which is consistent with a floor that is still selling plus companies sharing stands.

What is the average booth size at AHR Expo?

The median stand on the 2027 plan is 200 sq ft - a 10x20 - and the mean is 401 sq ft, pulled up by 454 islands that hold 68% of the floor between them. A quarter of stands are 10x10s.

Can I hang a sign over my AHR Expo booth?

Only if you have a peninsula or island: 56% of stands on the 2027 plan are inline or corner positions, which under standard show rules cannot hang overhead signage. That is why back-wall treatment matters more at AHR than at island-heavy shows - for most exhibitors, eye level is the only level.

Is the AHR Expo 2027 floor sold out?

No. As of August 16, 2026, 162 of 1,592 stands (10.2%) were still marked available and 48 more were on hold. By comparison, the 2026 Las Vegas edition's plan shows a single available stand.

Where is AHR Expo in 2027, and where does it go next?

AHR Expo 2027 runs January 25-27, 2027 at McCormick Place, Chicago. The show rotates host cities: it was in Las Vegas in February 2026, moves to Orlando on February 7-9, 2028, and returns to Chicago on January 22-24, 2029 (dates from the organiser's site, checked August 2026).