NAB Show 2027 Floor Plan, Seven Months Out: 650 Stands Booked, the Median Is Twice Last Year's, and 320 Are Open

Seven months before NAB Show 2027 opens at the Las Vegas Convention Center on April 4-7, its floor plan already shows who books first. We measured every stand on it on September 1, 2026: 1,019 floor stands drawn across the Central, North and West Halls, 650 reserved by 625 companies, 337,572 square feet spoken for - with 320 stands still available and 49 on hold. Then we set it beside the final 2026 plan, measured the same way. The early plan is a bigger-stand plan. The median reserved stand is 400 sq ft, double last year’s 200; only 22% of the booked stands are 10x10s against 34% on the final 2026 floor; and 587 of last year’s 978 floor exhibitors are already back, most at exactly the size they had. What has not happened yet is the small-stand wave - and the meeting-suite level.

How we measured this

Every figure below comes from the NAB Show 2027 published floor plan — the same interactive plan any visitor can open on the show’s own site. The plan stores each stand’s polygon, so every booth yields an exact width, depth, square footage and position.

From the geometry we derive what a booth number alone cannot tell you: how many sides of each stand face an aisle. Open sides set the booth class — inline, corner, peninsula, island — and the class sets the standard display rules: an inline or corner stand is typically limited to about an 8 ft back wall with no hanging sign; peninsulas and islands may go overhead. The show’s own exhibitor manual governs if it differs.

One basis note matters here. NAB’s plan draws meeting-room suites (booth numbers ending MR or LMR, and the meeting-room levels of the North and West Halls) alongside floor stands. Both years below count floor stands in the exhibit halls only; the suites are excluded from 2026 and 2027 alike. That makes the 2026 figures here lower than in our NAB 2026 analysis, which counted the suites as stands - the comparison is like for like, the earlier piece is not wrong, they measure different things. The 2027 plan was retrieved on September 1, 2026, seven months before the show, and describes the floor as it stood that day; our plan re-pulls nightly.

Seven months out: who books first

The September plan is 64% reserved by stand count but already carries 73% of last year’s reserved area, because the stands booked so far are big. The median reserved stand is 400 sq ft against 200 on the final 2026 plan; the average is 519 against 461; and the share of the booked floor in 10x10s is 22.2% against 33.7%. The North and Central Halls both have a median of 400; the West Hall, the newest and the last to fill, sits at 200.

The class mix follows: 299 islands (46.0% of booked stands) hold 80.0% of the booked floor, and only 201 stands (30.9%) are inline or corner. On the final 2026 plan those figures were 38.6% islands and 40.6% sign-restricted. The small-stand wave that fills a 10x10 aisle arrives later - on the 2026 plan, 10x10s ended at a third of the floor.

Same show, one year later: who is back, who grew, who shrank

Matching company names across the two plans, 587 of the 978 companies on the final 2026 floor are already on the 2027 plan. Most of them - 425 - took exactly the size they had. 79 grew, 83 shrank, and together the returning companies hold 317,872 sq ft against 329,321 last year, a 3.5% contraction among the exhibitors who have re-booked so far. Thirty-eight names on the 2027 plan were not on the 2026 floor.

Grew: the GREAT Britain & Northern Ireland Pavilion, 525 to 4,500 sq ft across 12 stands; MediaKind 1,500 to 2,500; Avid 3,500 to 4,200; Atomos, Shure, Aputure and OBSBOT each to 1,600 from around 900-1,000. Shrank: Vizrt 4,500 to 1,500; Program Productions 3,200 to 1,600; Telestream and AJA Video Systems 3,500 to 2,000 each; Backblaze 1,500 to 400. Unchanged at the top: Amazon Web Services keeps W1701 at 5,400, Evertz N817 at 5,000, Panasonic C3509 at 3,200, Dell N2629 at 2,000, Blackmagic Design N2530 at 900 (Blackmagic’s larger 2026 presence was in the suite level, outside this comparison). Nikon returns at C5325 at the same 2,400 under its own name rather than the 2026 “Nikon / RED” listing.

New to the floor: a Korea Pavilion (1,800), BRAHMA AI Services, Libec and Antigravity (1,200 each), Riverside.fm and Quortex (900), Leica Geosystems and AV Stumpfl PIXERA (800).

Not yet on the plan

391 companies on the final 2026 floor had not appeared on the 2027 plan by September 1. That is a September fact, not a prediction: most will book, some will move to the suite level, some will not return, and the plan will say which. The largest 2026 floor stands not yet re-booked:

The suite level is the other blank. In 2026 the North and West Hall meeting suites carried 92,082 sq ft of reserved space - NEP Group, IABM, Amazon Web Services’ second space, Microsoft, Eluvio and Sony Electronics among them. On the September 2027 plan, 18 suites were reserved. That is where several of the names above are likely to reappear, and it is why a September plan under-counts the show’s biggest brands more than its smallest.

Where the open stands are

320 floor stands were available on September 1: 111 corners, 82 islands, 71 peninsulas and 56 inline, 79,994 sq ft in total. The islands are the story. The four front-of-hall islands in the West Hall - W103 and W104 at 3,351 sq ft, W102 and W105 at 3,191 - were all open, as was a 50x40 at C4148 in the Central Hall. Those are the largest available stands on any upcoming Las Vegas plan we have measured. By hall: Central 150 open of 481 drawn, West 138 of 340, North 32 of 198.

Our sightline model over the plan - a relative model of where people can walk, not a headcount - puts the median inline or corner stand at about 5.8 times the aisle visibility with a 16 ft in-booth tower than with an 8 ft back wall. On a floor where four in five square feet belong to islands that can hang a sign, that is what a small stand is competing against.

What this means if you are exhibiting at NAB 2027

• If you want an island, the West Hall front is open now. W102-W105 are 3,000+ sq ft, at the hall entrance, and available in September; on the final 2026 plan the West Hall had 24 open stands in total. Those will not be there in January.
• If you are booking a 10x10 or 10x20, you are joining the wave that has not arrived yet - 22% of the booked floor is 10x10 today; a third of it will be by April. You cannot hang a sign, and 80% of the floor around you can. An LED tower, a backlit SEG lightbox or an LED poster is the compliant way to add height inside your own footprint.
• If you are on an island, NAB is a video show: an LED video wall running your own content is the medium the audience came to evaluate, and it is what the 5,000 sq ft neighbours will be running.

Tell us your stand number and we will quote from the plan: LED video walls, SEG lightboxes, booth rentals, or a free quote. Every measured show sits side by side in the Floor-Plan Almanac; the 2026 floor is in our NAB 2026 analysis.

Frequently asked

How many exhibitors are booked for NAB Show 2027?

On September 1, 2026 - seven months out - the published floor plan showed 650 reserved floor stands from 625 companies across 337,572 sq ft of the Las Vegas Convention Center's Central, North and West Halls, with 320 stands available and 49 on hold. The final 2026 plan on the same basis had 1,001 reserved stands from 978 companies.

Are booths still available for NAB Show 2027?

Yes - 320 floor stands were available on September 1, 2026, including 82 islands. The largest open stands were the West Hall front islands W103 and W104 (3,351 sq ft) and W102 and W105 (3,191 sq ft), and a 50x40 at C4148 in the Central Hall. Our plan re-pulls nightly; the Booth Reality Check reads the current one.

Which NAB 2026 exhibitors have not re-booked for 2027?

As of September 1, 2026, 391 companies from the final 2026 floor had not yet appeared on the 2027 plan, including Adobe, Canon U.S.A., LTN, Google Cloud, Microsoft and DJI. That is a snapshot seven months out, not a claim that any of them are skipping the show; the meeting-suite level that held Sony, NEP and others in 2026 was also largely unallocated.

How big is the typical NAB Show booth?

On the final 2026 plan the median floor stand was 200 sq ft and a third of stands were 10x10s. On the September 2027 plan the median is 400 sq ft because early bookers are larger; the small-stand share rises as the show approaches. The largest stands are 5,000-5,400 sq ft (Amazon Web Services at W1701, Evertz at N817).