With more than 200 sessions across 11 tracks, IMEX Frankfurt’s education programme is generous — and easy to feel lost in. Here’s how to plan your learning around your meetings, not the other way around.
IMEX Frankfurt opens 19–21 May. For hosted buyers, exhibitors, and independent planners, the trade show floor is the obvious anchor. The IMEX Frankfurt education programme is the part most people underuse.
Tahira Endean, Head of Programme at IMEX, walked us through this year’s programme on the webinar How to Plan Your IMEX Education (200+ Sessions Without the FOMO) — how it’s built, how to filter it, and how to fit it around a full meeting schedule. Here’s the practical version.
This year’s Talking Point: Design Matters
Every couple of years, IMEX adopts a unifying talking point. For 2026, it’s Design Matters.
The trigger: Frankfurt and the wider Frankfurt Rhine-Main region was named the World Design Council’s Design City of the Year, with a brief built around designing cities for dialogue. That sits naturally next to a lot of what our industry is already wrestling with — how spaces shape conversation, how good design is good business, and how design isn’t a finish, it’s a starting point.
You’ll see it in the rebranded education space, in the seating, and in how the theatres are laid out. You’ll also see it in the programming itself.
The 11 IMEX education tracks (and how to pick yours)
Every session sits inside a track. Tracks are the fastest filter on the IMEX website — pick one or two and the 200+ sessions become a manageable shortlist.
The headline tracks include:
- Advanced event logistics — contracting, budgeting, F&B, the operational core
- Designing for human needs — physical, mental, emotional; equity and inclusion
- Design matters — Tuesday is the design-heavy day on one of the theatres
- Experiential event design — Wednesday is the experience design day, with members of the World Experience Organization
- Health and well-being — New methods and practices for reducing stress, embedding health habits, and protecting against burnout.
- Impact — Real-world examples of events delivering measurable positive change, plus the partnerships behind them.
- Leadership and culture — What strong organisational culture actually is (and isn’t), and why it’s a competitive advantage when done well.
- Marketing and engagement — How to convert audience reach into event registrations, build community, and tell stories that actually land.
- Regenerative design — circularity in event design, including speakers from the UK Design Council
- Tech-enabled futures — AI and event technology
- Trends and research — The signals, the data, and the underlying shifts. Useful insights, sometimes uncomfortable ones, from speakers who work with the numbers.
On top of tracks, there are tags. Tags drill in further — sustainability, new-to-the-industry, and so on. Use the tag filter once you’ve picked your track and you’ll usually land on three or four sessions worth your time.
Three ways to search the IMEX education programme
On imex-frankfurt.com, under What’s On, you can navigate by:
- Day — useful if you already know which day your meetings are lighter.
- Track — useful if you know what you want to learn.
- Speaker — useful if there’s someone you’ve been wanting to hear in person.
Sessions are listed in time order and visually colour-coded by track, so once you’ve filtered, the schedule reads cleanly.
The maths: can you actually fit IMEX education in?
Short answer: yes.
IMEX recommends hosted buyers aim for 6–8 meetings a day. That’s roughly four hours of a seven-and-a-half-hour show day. The remainder, minus eating and getting between halls, leaves room for two or three sessions.
Most sessions are deliberately short:
- Solo talks and small duos: 25 minutes
- Panel sessions: 45 minutes
- One longer AI and tech super session
The 25-minute format is intentional. Most buyer meetings run on 30-minute slots, so 25 keeps the timing sane and lets you move between halls without missing your next appointment.
Three highlights from this year’s IMEX programme
Dr. Ferron Gray on a mental health ISO standard
Dr. Ferron Gray of the Grae Matta Foundation is working towards a British ISO standard for mental health in events and academia. He needs industry input, and these sessions are working conversations. If you have a view on what mental health support in our industry should look like, this is where to bring it. One of his sessions runs as a Brave Talk (more on those below).
Pamella Onoriode on cyclical leadership
Pamella explores leadership rhythms — specifically the cyclical rhythms of women in leadership, and the practical implications for anyone leading women. It’s a session that takes biology seriously as a leadership variable. Pamella has two sessions in the programme — one runs as a Brave Talk.
The State of the Industry panel
Moderated by Kai Hattendorf from jwc, with IMEX CEO Carina Bauer, Kevin Hinton from the US Travel Association, Huey Hong Ong from the Singapore Exhibition & Convention Bureau and H.E Juma Al Kait, Advisor to Minister of Tourism and Economy, UAE. A diverse line-up that knows hard questions are coming and is ready for them.
Brave Talks: IMEX education behind closed doors
A few sessions each year are designated Brave Talks. They happen upstairs from Hall 9, past the Well-Being Lounge. No headsets, doors closed, intentionally smaller rooms.
These exist because some conversations just don’t work on a busy trade show floor. Past years have covered grief, suicide, and mental health.
If a topic on the programme makes you hesitate before clicking, that’s often the one to go to.
The Experience Design Pitch Competition
New this year and worth knowing about even if you’re not pitching.
Up to eight people will pitch an immersive experience or event idea on the Encore Theatre stage on Wednesday afternoon. Three minutes to pitch, two minutes for questions, voted on by a panel of three evaluators and the audience. The audience gets a real session of unfiltered new ideas — and you never know who’s in the room ready to back one.
Where the IMEX sessions actually happen
Trade show floors come with design constraints. IMEX has built around them with multiple session formats and locations:
- The show floor theatres — same booth-based format as previous years, with a refreshed design, new seating, and new layout for 2026
- Booth-based sessions in Hall 8 — MPI, EIC, and partner sessions are still listed in the main programme
- Upstairs rooms for Brave Talks
- A fully redesigned Inspiration Hub
If you can’t make a session: Snapsight
IMEX is working with Snapsight to push key takeaways into the app the moment a session ends. Full transcripts follow. New this year: live captioning in the room. If your meetings clash with a session you wanted, you’re no longer fully locked out.
Who should attend which IMEX sessions
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday sessions are open to everyone.
Monday is different:
- Exclusively Corporate — invitation-only, corporate planners only, moderated sessions and discussion.
- Association Forum — invitation-only, for association planners. Sessions blended with peer-to-peer time.
If you fit either, you can apply through the IMEX website.
A practical IMEX education move for exhibitors
Exhibitors usually skip education because they can’t leave the booth. Here’s a different play: pick one session and bring a client to it.
Thirty minutes. Pick something connected to a real conversation you’ve been having — F&B if you’ve been negotiating menus, leadership if you’ve been discussing team structure. You walk out with shared language, a fresh reference point, and something to talk about over dinner. Last year a hotel global event team brought six people just for sessions and got real value out of it.
Education isn’t time away from selling. It’s a setting where selling stops feeling like selling.
The Well-Being Lounge
If you haven’t used it: do this year.
Between Hall 8 and Hall 9, up the stairs from Hall 9. Twenty-minute guided meditations, stretching, sound sessions, and a new quiet room with hammocks. Open from before the show starts on Tuesday until the end of Thursday.
Wednesday afternoon is when most people hit the wall — the headache, the not-enough-water, the late night. A 20-minute reset upstairs and you’re a different person for the rest of the show.
Continuing education credits at IMEX
Many of us plan meetings for clients with Continuing Education credit requirements: CMP, CSP and ICCA Skills credits are available across a wide selection of IMEX sessions. If you’re working towards a certification or maintaining one, build the credit-bearing sessions into your schedule first and slot meetings around them.
How to actually plan your IMEX education week
If you take one thing from this:
- Start with what you want to learn — not what’s trending.
- Use tracks and tags to cut 200+ sessions to a shortlist of 6–10.
- Block two or three sessions a day before booking your meetings, not after.
- Keep one Well-Being Lounge slot in your calendar like it’s a meeting. Because it is.
- If a session looks uncomfortable, that’s probably the one.
Every session on the IMEX programme exists because someone thought it mattered. The hard part isn’t the navigation — it’s deciding what you came to Frankfurt to think about.
Which sessions made your shortlist? Which track is pulling you in? Tell me below.
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