RE+ 2026 by the Floor Plan: What 1,424 Booths Reveal About Who Actually Exhibits

Trade show floor plans are the only public document where an entire industry states its marketing budget in a unit anyone can compare: square feet. They are published every year, for every show, and almost nobody reads them as data - because the numbers sit inside a CAD drawing or a map viewer rather than in a table. We measured the whole RE+ 2026 floor: 1,424 booths, 1,056 companies, 664,683 square feet. What follows is what the plan says, not what the industry says about itself. The two are not the same.

How we measured this

Every figure below comes from the RE+ 2026 published floor plan — the same plan any visitor can open on the show’s own site. The plan stores booth polygons in inches (120 = 10 ft), so each stand yields an exact width, depth, square footage and position.

From those coordinates we derived the thing a booth number alone cannot tell you: how many sides of each stand actually face an aisle. That is the real trade show classification, and it is what the build rules key off:

• 1 open side — linear / inline. Roughly an 8 ft back wall, no hanging sign.
• 2 open sides — corner. Same height treatment, better sightlines.
• 3 open sides — peninsula. Usually full height and a sign.
• 4 open sides — island. Full height and a hanging sign.

We publish aggregate findings, not the exhibitor directory — the show’s own planner is the place to look up a company. Counts are as the plan stood when measured; floors move as space is resold.

57% of exhibitors are not allowed a hanging sign

This is the finding that reframes the rest. A hanging sign is how you are seen from across a hall — and most of this floor cannot have one.

Inline and corner together are 807 of 1,424 booths. For 57% of the companies on this floor, overhead is not an option: height has to be built from the ground up, inside an eight-foot back wall, or it does not exist.

That constraint is usually discovered after the space is bought. It is also why floor-standing vertical elements — LED towers, backlit columns, tall lightboxes — do disproportionate work in exactly the booths people assume are too small to bother with.

The floor is not shared anything like equally

Nearly half the exhibitors are in the smallest possible stand, and together they occupy less than a tenth of the hall.

The median booth is 200 sq ft. The mean is 467, and the gap between those two numbers is the whole story — the average is dragged upward by a handful of very large stands, the largest being 29,700 sq ft, equivalent to 297 ten-by-tens.

Almost every article about trade show design is written about the top 7% of this floor. The median exhibitor is a small company in 200 square feet, competing for attention beside neighbours who are not playing the same game.

The halls are effectively three different shows

Which hall you are in changes your competitive set more than your booth size does.

North Hall holds a third of the floor area across 15% of the booths. West Hall has more booths than North and half the space. A 200 sq ft stand sits above the median in West and well below it in North — the identical booth reads as substantial or invisible depending only on which building it is in.

If you are choosing space, that is the decision that matters most, and it is made before any design conversation starts.

Foreign exhibitors are buying more floor than American ones

US companies are the overwhelming majority of exhibitors here. They are not the ones buying the most space per company.

168 Chinese companies average 14% more floor per booth than the 753 American ones at a US renewable energy show. Korea and Turkey sit higher still on much smaller delegations.

Booth size is the closest thing a trade show floor has to a declared budget. Read that way, the plan says overseas manufacturers are committing more per company to being seen in this market than domestic firms are — on a floor where 44% of stands are the minimum size.

What this means if you are the median exhibitor

If you are in 200 square feet with one or two open sides, the plan has already set your constraints. They are not the ones the industry writes about.

• You cannot go overhead, so go vertical from the floor. Inside an 8 ft back wall the win is contrast and light, not size.
• Your hall sets your peer group. Check the median booth in your hall before deciding whether your stand is small.
• Corners are worth paying for. 518 booths here are corners — two open sides for a fraction of island money, and the largest class after islands.
• Your neighbour’s size matters more than yours. A 200 sq ft stand beside another 200 reads fine. The same stand beside a 1,200 does not.

For what the space costs and what the build costs on top, see our Las Vegas booth cost guide. For the labor rules that decide who may install it, the LVCC labor guide.

Frequently asked

What percentage of trade show exhibitors can have a hanging sign?

At RE+ 2026, 43% - the island and peninsula booths. The other 57% are inline or corner stands, typically limited to around an 8 ft back wall with no overhead sign. Eligibility is set by how many sides of your booth face an aisle, so it is decided when you choose your space, not when you design the booth.

What is the average trade show booth size?

The average at RE+ 2026 is 467 sq ft, but the median is 200 - and the median is the more honest number. The average is pulled up by a small number of very large stands, the biggest being 29,700 sq ft. 44% of all booths are 10x10s.

How much of a trade show floor do the biggest exhibitors occupy?

At RE+ 2026 the top 100 booths - 7% of exhibitors - hold 41.4% of the floor. The top 10 alone hold 11.9%. The 627 smallest booths together hold 9.4%.

Does it matter which hall my booth is in?

More than most exhibitors expect. At RE+ the median booth in North Hall is 600 sq ft and in West Hall it is 100. The same 200 sq ft stand is above the median in one building and well below it in the other, which changes how substantial you look to the same attendee.

Where does this data come from?

The show's own published floor plan. Booth polygons are stored in inches, which gives exact dimensions, square footage and position for all 1,424 stands. Open sides - and therefore booth class and build rules - are derived from those coordinates. We publish aggregate findings; the show's planner remains the place to look up an individual exhibitor.