Trade Shows Now Feature DJs, Dancing and Confetti Cannons: Welcome to Festivalization

When the light starts to drop, the Night Show begins. Join us inside for live DJ’s, lots of dancing, and memories to last a lifetime. You might find the odd confetti cannon or two…

You’d be forgiven for mistaking the above promotion for a hot new London club. In fact, it comes from the website of the Digital Accountancy Show, held in said city in April. And the accountants in attendance will be excited to learn that next year’s show is likely to be even livelier than this year’s.

European events group Easyfairs bought the show this year and has big plans ahead.

“Digital Accountancy Show has developed a ‘festival feel’ for accountants and we are excited to help the team further build on that,” Alison Willis, chief executive officer of UK & global at Easyfairs, told AMO. “It already has a very unique ‘look and feel’ and experience. The 2026 show is going to look amazing!  We do all of this in collaboration with the community to develop a must attend experience for them.”

Events have become ever more festivalized over the past decade or so as organizers seek to up the ante on the return on investment for both attendees and vendors. With more and more events being planned across industries, organizers are trying to create unparalleled experiences—and with tariffs bouncing around the world and economists and banks forecasting a recession in the U.S., it’s going to get even more difficult to stand out as the must-have show for different industries.

“I do feel like people started looking at that and saying, oh, there is such a strong desire for people to be together that if we could extend the day,” Vincent Polito, chief executive officer at the Society for Independent Show Organizers, told AMO. “The really big premier shows in a market have the opportunity to try to do it.”

Informa, in fact, has a whole division dedicated to festivals that it launched this year. They declined to provide comment for this story.

Polito said attendees are demanding it, but he’s not sure it will take over and dominate the show scene: “Not to be cynical or negative, I’m not really sure it’ll take over, just because it requires so many resources.”

Amanda Smith, a philanthropy operations professional based in Allentown, Penn. compared data from 25 nonprofit fundraising events—a little outside the scope of traditional shows, but illuminating nonetheless. She found that experiential events have 68% higher attendee satisfaction than traditional galas.

“The future of event fundraising isn’t in ballrooms—it’s in authentic experiences,” Smith wrote on LinkedIn.

Douglas Emslie, who sold his Tarsus Group to Informa for nearly $1 billion in 2023, and has since invested $20 million in events and media companies, said the industry has to do even more in terms of the experiential component of events.

“People are coming to the events to be, I mean, entertained is maybe the wrong word, but actually, they want to come along and actually enjoy themselves. They don’t want to be sitting in a boring environment,” Emslie told AMO. “It’s important that we try and in a proper, professional way, put on good events that people feel they’ve had a good experience, but they’ve learned things, and they’ve transacted, and they’ve met new people, all the things you want to do when you come to that, but actually it’s been a fun environment.”

Emslie pointed out that events are competing not just for people’s money but also their time.

“The biggest challenge we’ve got is actually justifying people spending the time with us, not their return on investment,” Emslie said.

One of the best examples of festivalization is Future Proof, an outdoors wealth and investment management show held in Huntington Beach, Calif., starting insince 2022. They feature live music, yoga, a class on how to make fish tacos, virtual surfing, liquid nitrogen popcorn and even candle crafting. That’s pretty outside the box, especially for such a staid industrystaidso staid an industry as wealth and investment management.

According to Future Proof founder Matt Middleton, location is a key factor to the fun—the main festival is held outdoors near the beach. He also suggests providing insufficient seating to encourage movement and participation.

Future Proof also focuses on practical insights and candid discussions, avoiding typical corporate PR-driven presentations.

South by Southwest, a tech, music and innovation festival, which recently wrapped up its 2025 edition in Austin, and Cannes Lions, for the advertising and communications industries, have been around for decades festivalizing events. Others include Fanatics for sports fans and Clarion’s Leftfield Media, covering comics, toys, games and more.