Since my first FESPA exhibition (Hamburg, 2017) I’ve been a fairly regular visitor. FESPA 2025 was my fourth FESPA event, personally, and my third at Messe Berlin. The imposing, and very distinctive Messe Berlin entrance façade now feels more familiar to me than almost any exhibition centre anywhere – other, perhaps, than the infamous Messe Düsseldorf!
My fourth FESPA was also the first I’d attended where I wasn’t supporting a specific client. As such, I had the luxury of time to wander the halls and take it all in. And with eight full halls, packed with all the very latest technological advances the industry has to offer, there was certainly a lot to absorb.
It really is all digital now.
Of course, FESPA’s origins are in screen printing, but while screen printing retains an important niche in the industry – particularly when it comes to long run textile printing – it is very much about digital print these days when it comes to the annual FESPA exhibition. A journalist I spoke to on the opening day remarked that old habits die hard – and he still finds himself writing ‘digital’ in his notes when scribbling about the latest digital print solutions. ‘I cross it out when I find myself doing it’ he laughed. ‘It’s no longer a category. It’s everything.’
Covid? What Covid?
In the years immediately following the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent travel bans and lockdowns much was made of the ‘post-Covid’ exhibition and much ink was spilled examining how and why the post-Covid exhibition differed from what had gone before. At FESPA 2025, I felt for the first time since 2022, that the very term ‘post-Covid’ seems unnecessary and irrelevant. There is much of course in how we live and how we work that remains different, but when it comes to major exhibitions such as this – though the technology on display has moved on – the energy and vibe of them is just as it was before.
Automation and personalisation
Automation was everywhere – from pre-press, to print, to finishing – and with an entire hall devoted to ‘Personalisation Experience’ – there was a huge emphasis on what’s possible now when it comes to bespoke printed products, from photobooks, to posters, and from T-shirts to badges. There was a range of personalisation and customisation software and hardware on display – including interactive demonstrations and personalised samples you could take away there and then. To a large extent, the two very much go hand-in-hand, with automated solutions providing the delivery mechanism for an ever more imaginative array of highly personalised products.
Messaging and stand design
Amid the cacophony of colour and noise that is a FESPA show, standing out is hard to do. The major players went large, as always, with branding and core messaging, ensuring they were visible even at a distance across a crowded hall. Smaller exhibitors – for whom this was not an option – needed to work harder to draw people in. The best stand designs (large or small) were open and welcoming, with their key products and service offerings clearly signposted and displayed. And the best-run stands combined this with welcoming and friendly staff to draw people in and explain and demonstrate their technology offering.
Location, Location, Location
The best designed booth at the show will fail to draw the crowds if it’s tucked away at the far end of a far hall. If you’re booking a stand at an exhibition, book early and choose your spot carefully! In two days at the show there were stands I walked past dozens of times. And others I had to work hard to even find.
The sustainability of sustainability messaging
Ever present but rarely the overarching focus of a stand – sustainability messaging remains prominent and important but, unlike in some previous years, it was more of a underlying message for most exhibitors rather than what they were leading with.
The power of partnership
At every stand there were reminders about how much collaboration and cooperation drives the industry forward just as much as competition. Behind every finished print product on display there is an array of cooperating partners – from media manufacturers, to ink chemists and print head designers, to software, automation and finishing specialists. Each of their contributions is a piece of the puzzle and, exploring the halls, it was fascinating to see and learn about both the individual pieces and the intricate jigsaws that are created when they are all assembled together.
In the news
Shortly before FESPA 2025, AD Communications produced and shared a guide: ‘How to engage with the media at events’. In it we looked at everything from media stand tours, to one-to-one interviews, to press conferences. All were very much in evidence at FESPA 2025 – with a large number of media (including many from outside Europe) attending the show and looking for the big stories. As we stressed in our guide,recent decades have seen huge changes, both to the media landscape and to the nature of exhibitions themselves. News is much more immediate now with many journalists breaking news stories in real time online and on social media. Video was also very much in evidence, with some journalists interviewing on camera for their websites as a matter of course.
For many of the media attending this year it was back-to-back press conferences for much of the first day, followed by a busy schedule of media stand tours and pre-booked and spontaneous on stand interviews. The media stories have been dropping almost from the moment the exhibition doors opened – and they’ll continue for a week or two yet.
Print for good
Last, but certainly not least, a very noticeable, and welcome, feature of FESPA 2025 was the work of FESPA Foundation, which AD Communications is happy to be supporting on a ‘pro bono’ basis. Offering support to sub-Saharan African schools in tremendous need of basic resources, the Foundation secured the commitment of multiple FESPA exhibitors to produce educational resources, signage and school uniforms during the show. Thesevibrant, colourful print samples that might typically go to waste after a trade show went straight from the show floor to meet real needs in some of the most deprived communities imaginable. Truly ‘print for good’.
Summing up
All in all, it was a welcome and worthwhile trip back to Berlin, with lots to learn and lots to ponder. Bring on FESPA 2026 in Barcelona!