I am pleased to announce that the Quarter 1 2026 issue for Exhibit City News is officially live. You can access the edition via the link on our homepage or here. For those of you who will receive our physical print magazine, look forward to it in the coming weeks.
I have something to admit: sometimes, I don’t know everything. Or rather, often I don’t know everything. I am constantly listening, absorbing, and asking questions for clarity so that I can grow as a person. Each quarter I feel like I am learning more, not just about the industry but about myself.
I often find that those anecdotes can be used to help explain the issue, but I found myself struggling with this one. After all, how does one conceptualize lessons learned from something seemingly obvious?
When building a house, one must begin with the foundation. When it comes to a business, one must have not only a business plan but a budget. In many ways, dollar signs rule our world. Everyone knows this. From the cost of electricity for air conditioning, to the tires on the vehicle, everything must be paid for. Many of these costs are reflected in the salaries of employees or the invoices that we receive as customers from our providers.
Yet, there is more to money than purchasing and selling. Some purchases, like Private Equity making its stake in the industry (pg. 16), reflect the indication of a maturing industry. Some processes save money without being obvious, like building an organization around processes and not tasks (pg. 20), mentoring the future generation (pg. 80), or, as everyone knows, saving time by knowing what to do before going to other countries (pg. 38).
When we approached the topic of our Quarter 1 issue for 2026, we consistently returned to the question: Where are companies spending their resources? What do current trends in the industry mean for the future of tradeshows? If retirement is more than a paycheck, what do people need to consider?
In this issue, you will find questions being addressed. We look at design and booths, how companies spend their money and how trends are moving to accommodate rising costs (pg. 24). We consult experts for advice (pg. 26) and consider the lessons that can be learned from failure (pg. 76).
Every experience we build as a community and an industry continues to allow it to grow and change. And more importantly, lessons that we believe are obvious, sometimes need to be repeated. People learn at different speeds. Some are coming into our industry with a completely different understanding of the world than we may have. So yes, this issue is about money, but it’s also about more than that: finding the tools to find the path forward.
