A+A 2027
Düsseldorf.

What A+A is, in two lines

A+A is the leading global trade fair for occupational safety and health, paired with the International Congress for Occupational Safety and Health. In a single venue it brings together personal protective equipment (PPE), occupational health, workwear and corporate fashion, fire protection and emergency management. It runs every two years in Düsseldorf (odd years): the 2025 edition counted around 2,340 exhibitors from 70 countries and around 67,000 visitors from 150 countries, across roughly 78,000 net m² and 13 halls (closing figures, preliminary).

It is not a consumer showcase: it is the place where HSE managers and health & safety officers, PPE buyers, occupational physicians and procurement managers evaluate suppliers and technologies that then go into specifications, tenders and corporate prevention plans. Almost no order is closed at the stand; purchasing decisions mature in the following weeks, when safety committees and procurement offices reconvene. That is why lead management matters as much as the presence at the fair: a name without context is an opportunity that fades away.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

In the 2025 edition A+A occupied around 13 halls of the Messe Düsseldorf grounds (halls 1, 4, 5, 7, 9-17), with North, South and East entrances. The fair is organised by thematic strands rather than by generic sector:

• Personal protective equipment (PPE), from head, eye, hearing and respiratory protection through to footwear, gloves and fall arrest
• Workwear and corporate fashion, technical work clothing, uniforms, high-visibility wear and protective fabrics
• Occupational health and medicine, ergonomics, prevention, exoskeletons, occupational wellbeing
• Fire protection and emergency management, firefighting, rescue, civil protection and emergency services
• Corporate safety and digitalisation, digital solutions for HSE, monitoring, training and risk management

A practical positioning tip: choose the hall based on who you want in front of your stand, not on what you do on paper. A safety footwear manufacturer targeting distributors needs to be where PPE buyers walk; an HSE software vendor lives more in the areas dedicated to digitalisation and corporate safety. In a 13-hall layout the visitor walks kilometres of aisle: the winner is whoever makes their offer readable in 5 seconds, with a claim and a regulatory reference (CE marking, PPE category, relevant EN standard) visible from afar.

Visitor profile

A+A has a B2B audience, strongly professional and international: with around 150 countries represented, a significant share of the contacts collected comes from outside Germany and Italy. The typical mix at the stand:

• Safety managers (HSE / health & safety officers) and corporate prevention (roughly 25-35% of useful traffic), they define requirements and select the PPE to adopt
• Buyers and PPE procurement managers (20-30%), those who put supplies out to tender and negotiate volumes and terms
• Occupational physicians and occupational health managers (10-20%), assessment of ergonomics, exposure and device suitability
• Facility and operations managers (10-15%), adoption across production sites, logistics and construction sites
• Firefighters, civil protection and emergency services (~10%), a highly specific and technical profile, concentrated in the fire/emergency areas
• Distributors and resellers of workwear, for a foreign exhibitor often the fastest channel to enter a new market

The average seniority is high and many visitors are actively scouting for suppliers and standards. This makes post-fair follow-up, with proper qualification and enrichment, even more critical: a foreign badge with only a name and a company, without context on the role and the need, is a lead that gets lost.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4 → Messaging audit

Check that your value proposition answers the three questions an HSE manager or a PPE buyer asks themselves within the first 30 seconds:

1. What you do, in one sentence (e.g. “category III fall-arrest gloves”, “exoskeletons for manual handling”, “HSE risk management software”)
2. To what standard, the compliance buyers want to hear immediately (CE marking, PPE category, relevant EN standards, any sector certifications)
3. What changes, a measurable benefit (reduced injuries, comfort/ergonomics, durability, cost per worker, integration with existing HSE systems)

No generic brochures. In a hall packed with PPE, the certified claim and the evidence carry more weight than the logo.

Week -3 → Stand operation playbook

Define who does what during the four days:

• Who is on the front line for first qualification and routing the flows
• Who handles the technical/regulatory dialogue (you need someone who speaks EN standards, PPE categories and prevention requirements)
• Who stays in the back office (HQ) to do live follow-up already during the event, a real accelerator
• Who is the point of contact for foreign distributors and senior buyers who show up

With an audience of around 150 countries, factor in the language barrier: a team with fluent technical English doubles the quality of conversations, and for distributors it counts to be able to move quickly to terms and territories.

Week -2 → 3-question qualification form

Every contact must be qualified on the spot, not “later”. For A+A the critical questions are:

1. Role and spending power, is it an HSE manager / health & safety officer, a buyer, an occupational physician or a distributor? Who signs?
2. Timing, is it needed now (open tender/specification, PPE due for replacement), within 6 months, or is it scouting?
3. Market and channel, for which country/site, and through which channel (direct sales, distributor, corporate supply)?

Everything else, company size, sectors served, corporate structure, is found by a good automatic enrichment in the dozens of public sources, without stealing precious time at the stand.

Week -1 → CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts on paper, photos of the badge, the fair app, and then nobody pours them into the CRM. Follow-up starts on average many days after the event, when the prospect has already spoken with other suppliers, often at A+A itself in the hall next door.

Configure the system so that every scan, at the fair, lands already in the company CRM, with an event tag + qualification answers + a voice note from the salesperson. Not in an Excel file, not in a fair-proprietary app, not in a Google sheet “that we’ll sort out on Monday”. This is where the Linkly pattern comes in: capture → enrichment → qualification → follow-up, run by 6 AI agents that work on the contact while the salesperson is still at the stand.

Is the official A+A app worth it?

Yes, as a tool for navigation and orientation the official app is solid. The A+A App (available on the App Store and Google Play) offers exhibitor search, hall floor plans and the full programme of the fair and the Congress. In a venue of 13 halls with three entrances it really helps you not to waste time looking for a stand or a congress session: to find your way around, use it.

What it does NOT do, and the reason why it is not enough as a commercial lead-capture tool:

• It does not integrate with your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive). Contacts stay inside the event platform.
• It does not enrich the data automatically. If from the badge you only have name + company + country, that is all you keep.
• It does not send follow-ups to the prospect. You have to do the follow-up yourself, manually, afterwards.
• It does not generate executive reports on the stand’s commercial performance. At most it gives you an export.
• It changes interface and logic at every edition, and lives in the event silo: once the fair is over, the data does not flow into your sales process.

The official app is excellent for moving between halls and planning your visits (use it for that). As a lead capture → CRM → follow-up tool it is insufficient. For that you need systems built for the commercial workflow fair → CRM → enrichment → follow-up: here is how Linkly works.

What to do during the 4 days of the fair

Day 1 (Tuesday), opening and calibration

• Team briefing before the doors open, review the 3 messages, the roles and the agenda of the congress sessions to follow
• Calibration: the first leads of the day serve to tune the qualification questions and to route the flows well
• At the end of the day, first debrief: what works, what to fix tomorrow

Day 2 (Wednesday), traffic building up

• This is the day the halls hit full stride and the first top buyers and congress delegates arrive
• Keep a senior person present with technical/regulatory expertise: questions on PPE categories, EN standards and prevention requirements come point blank
• Update the pipeline at midday: today’s hot leads are the ones to invest in on Thursday

Day 3 (Thursday), the decision day

• Historically the peak of qualified traffic: HSE managers, procurement directors and international distributors who have done their scouting and return to decide
• Concentrate the most strategic meetings and in-depth demos here
• It is the day the most important prospects of your event walk by: maximum stand coverage, no gaps in presence

Day 4 (Friday), closing

• Physiological drop in traffic, but high average quality: the decision-makers and the technical people who want to dig deeper remain
• Close appointments and conversations with the hot leads from the previous days (quieter stands, ideal for long technical discussions)
• A tour of the competitors’ halls and the special shows (exoskeletons, fire protection, fashion): see who came, gather ideas for the next edition

What to do in the 7 days after the fair

Speed of response is the factor that separates the leads that stay on the shortlist from those that evaporate. For A+A, with buyers and distributors who once the fair closes return to around 150 countries, every day of delay drastically lowers the probability of remaining among the candidate suppliers.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h, a personalised email to every qualified lead with role/timing/market. No templates: reference one specific thing said at the stand (the PPE asked about, the standard cited, the distributor’s market).
2. Within 7 days, 1 dedicated salesperson for each qualified lead, with a scheduled touchpoint (technical call, sending of data sheets/certifications, sample or demo). No batch email.
3. Within 14 days, deliver on the promises made at the stand (technical documentation, quotation, distribution agreement, sample). Extractable from the salesperson’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days, an executive report on performance vs target, breakdown by salesperson, country and thematic area, estimated pipeline. To be used to justify the event budget to management.

This is exactly the work that Linkly’s AI agents run automatically on the contact: enrichment right after the scan, structured qualification, timely follow-up and a final report, so the sales team works the hot leads instead of typing in badges.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at A+A 2027?

Costs vary a lot depending on hall, square footage and stand build, and A+A is the largest sector fair in the world, so price lists are higher than for a national fair. As an indicative order of magnitude for an entry-level stand of 12-20 m² with a build: €18,000 - €35,000 for space + basic build, to which you add €10,000 - €25,000 across services, staff, travel and materials. Realistic overall range: €30,000 - €70,000+ for a decent four-day presence in Düsseldorf. For official figures refer to the Messe Düsseldorf commercial team on the official site.

Which is the best day for the hottest contacts?

The third day (Thursday) is historically the peak of qualified traffic, with top buyers and distributors returning to decide. The second day (Wednesday) is great for those who want to get strategic conversations going ahead of the peak. The last day drops in volume but stays high on quality: keep a senior person until closing.

When does visitor registration open?

Typically in the months leading up to the fair (summer/early autumn for an October event). Early registration on the official A+A site and a digital ticket are worth it: registering early lets you plan your visits and the Congress sessions before the event.

What is the Congress held alongside the fair?

A+A is not just an exhibition: in parallel runs the International Congress for Occupational Safety and Health (organised by BASI, in its 38th edition in 2025). It is the reason why many high-profile occupational physicians, HSE managers and researchers come to A+A: between sessions they stop by the stands. For an exhibitor it means that part of the qualified traffic is driven by the congress agenda, it is worth knowing its programme and positioning yourself near the hot topics (ergonomics, exoskeletons, occupational health, fire protection).

What is the alternative to paper for collecting contacts?

Paper is a poor option: time to digitise, errors, lost leads and, in a context of 150 countries, handwriting and company names to decipher too. Three practical alternatives:

1. Official A+A app, great for finding your way around and following the programme, but disconnected from your CRM (see section above).
2. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot, Salesforce have dedicated features), it works if the team knows how to use them; in a crowded fair they often don’t.
3. Dedicated lead capture + AI agents system for enrichment, qualification and follow-up, this is the pattern Linkly runs. See how it works.

Page updated ahead of the 2027 edition. For official information, price lists and exhibitor/visitor registration refer to the site aplusa-online.com.