REAS 2026
Montichiari.

What REAS is, in two lines

REAS is the Italian benchmark trade fair for fire fighting, rescue, civil protection, first aid, and emergency management. Held annually at Centro Fiera Montichiari (Brescia) and organised by Centro Fiera S.p.A., it gathers manufacturers, distributors, institutions, and volunteer organizations around vehicles, equipment, and services for emergency response. Recent editions counted 311 exhibitors from Italy and 24 other countries and over 30,000 visitors (2025 figure cited by the organizer).

It is not a generalist showcase: it is an event where the buyer is often a public body, a procurement office, or an association with constrained budget. Decisions mature slowly but carry high value, and the tender cycle can open months after the handshake at the fair. That is why lead management and traceability matter as much as the presence in the halls.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

The 2026 hall layout has not yet been published by the organizer (the edition historically spreads across 8 exhibition halls), but the product segmentation at REAS is clear and should drive your booth positioning:

• Fire fighting and urgent technical rescue: vehicles, PPE, extinguishing equipment, water rescue and SAR
• Civil protection and disaster relief: field deployment kit, emergency logistics, communications, drones, hydrogeological response
• First aid, healthcare, and workplace safety: ambulances and fit-outs, medical supplies, occupational safety

If your offering touches multiple areas (e.g. a vehicle manufacturer selling both to fire brigades and to volunteer associations), consider a booth with space to display vehicles and run live demos: at REAS the physical product sells by being shown in action, not on a brochure. Technical foot traffic peaks in the first two days.

Visitor profile, who actually enters the booth

The REAS visitor is not a casual browser: they are an industry professional who often decides or influences purchases for their own body or association. The typical breakdown:

• Public bodies and institutions: civil protection, municipalities, regions, procurement offices, fire brigade commands — profiles with tender or specification authority
• Distributors and dealers: looking for product lines to add to their catalogue for their territory
• Volunteer associations and organizations: real decision-makers for vehicle and equipment purchases, often with public grants to spend within the year
• Ambulance, EMS, and first-aid operators: technical evaluation of supplies and fit-outs
• Fire fighting and technical rescue professionals: technical buyers of PPE and equipment

The decision-making profile is high but fragmented: those who visit the booth often report to a collegial body (board, committee, purchasing office). Understanding who actually decides and on what timeline is the first thing to qualify at the booth.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4, messaging audit

Verify that your value proposition answers the three questions every REAS visitor asks within the first 30 seconds at the booth:

1. What you do, in one sentence
2. Who it is for, precise segment (e.g. “fire-fighting vehicles for fire brigade commands and wildfire volunteer associations”)
3. What changes, concrete benefit (response time, operator safety, durability, compliance with standard/specification)

No slides. In the emergency sector, compliance matters (homologations, regulations, certifications): keep them ready, it is the first objection from a public body.

Week -3, booth operations playbook

Define who does what across the three days:

• Who is on the front line at the booth
• Who handles technical demos on vehicles and equipment
• Who is in the back office (HQ) running live follow-up during the event (yes, this is a game changer, see below)
• Who is the point of contact for public officials and association heads who show up

If the team is larger than 4 people, set up shift rotations by time slot. Being at the booth for 9 hours straight degrades conversation quality after mid-afternoon.

Week -2, qualification form

Every contact collected at the fair must be qualified on the spot, not “later”. For the emergency sector the critical questions are:

1. Type of buyer: public body (tender/specification), distributor, association, private?
2. Timing: when does the purchase or tender open? Is there a public grant to spend within the year?
3. Decision: who deliberates (manager, board, purchasing office) and how many people are involved?

Everything else (size of the body, existing fleet, regional context) can be found in the 30+ public data sources that good automated enrichment covers without you needing to ask in person.

Week -1, CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts collected on paper, photos of badges, and then no one moves them into the CRM. Follow-up starts 9 days after the event (industry average), by which time the prospect has already spoken with your competitors or, worse, has already set the specification on other parameters.

Configure the system so that every badge or business-card scan, at the fair, lands directly in the company CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), with event tag, qualification answers, and a voice note from the sales rep. Not in an Excel, not in a Google sheet “we’ll tidy up on Monday”.

Is there an official REAS app?

Unlike the major international fairs, REAS has no official app for an interactive map, agenda, and badge scanning. Visitor access goes through free online registration and ticketing (biglietti.centrofiera.it), selecting an entry day.

For the exhibitor this means one precise thing: there is no official lead-capture tool provided by the fair. Contact collection is entirely on you, and the default option — pen and paper, or a phone photo of the badge — is the worst possible:

• Data never reaches the company CRM: it stays on a notepad or in the phone’s photo gallery.
• No automatic enrichment: if the ticket only has name, surname, and body, that is all you keep.
• No automatic follow-up to the prospect: you have to do it manually, afterwards.
• No executive report: at best, someone retypes everything into an Excel the following week.

To turn REAS into a real pipeline you need a system built for the fair to CRM to follow-up workflow. See how Linkly works. You scan the badge or business card at the booth, the contact lands directly in the CRM with event tag, qualification answers, and a sales-rep voice note; AI agents enrich it from 30+ public sources, qualify it, and trigger personalised follow-up; and after the event you get an executive report on performance.

What to do during the 3 days of the fair

Day 1 (Thursday), opening

• Team briefing at 8:15 am: review the 3 messages and the roles
• Calibration: the first 10 leads of the day are for fine-tuning the qualification questions
• At the end of the day, first debrief: what works, what to fix tomorrow

Day 2 (Friday), the technical day

Historically the day with the heaviest professional traffic. Expect public officials, association heads, distributors who want to “see who supplies what” and compare products. Keep a senior person always on the floor: the most strategic prospects (bodies with open tenders, major distributors) pass through in this window.

Day 3 (Saturday), closing

A day more oriented to the technical volunteer and training audience (the Saturday close is new to the 2026 edition compared with previous years). It is the moment for:

• Closing meetings with hot leads from the first two days
• Deeper conversations with the volunteer sector (less rush, calmer booths)
• Competitor visits: walk the other halls, see who came, take notes for next year

What to do in the 7 days after the fair

The average time between fair and first post-event contact, in Italy, is 9 days. In the emergency sector, where purchases often run through resolutions and tenders, being first on the decision-maker’s desk is worth far more than in classic B2B: whoever sets a specification’s parameters first starts with an advantage.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h: personalised email to every qualified lead with buyer type, timing, decision. No templates: reference one specific thing said at the booth.
2. Within 7 days: assign 1 sales contact per qualified lead. Schedule a specific touchpoint (call, demo, visit to the body), no batch email.
3. Within 14 days: deliver on promises made at the booth (datasheet, homologations, quote, site visit). Automatically extractable from the sales rep’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days: executive report on performance vs target, distribution by sales rep, buyer type, estimated pipeline. Use it to request next year’s event budget renewal from management.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at REAS 2026?

Costs vary by position, square footage, and build-out, and a booth that displays vehicles needs more space. As an indicative order of magnitude (not an official price list): an entry-level 16-25 sqm booth, standard position, typically falls around €4,000 to €9,000 bare space + €3,000 to €8,000 build-out and services + €2,000 to €5,000 staff, travel, and materials. Realistic total range: €10,000 to €25,000 for a respectable three-day presence. For real quotes, refer to the organizer Centro Fiera S.p.A..

Small booth or a space with vehicle display?

Depends on the goal. A compact booth = brand awareness, presence, and volume lead capture toward distributors and the volunteer sector. A vehicle space = operational demonstration for public bodies and technical buyers, who at REAS buy by seeing the product in action. If you sell vehicles or bulky equipment, below a certain size the risk is not being able to show the product, which is the real reason a body comes to your booth.

When does visitor registration open?

Online registration and ticketing (free) open in the months ahead of the event on the official circuit (reasonline.it and biglietti.centrofiera.it). Entry is selected per single day.

Why does 2026 close on a Saturday?

The 2026 edition runs from Thursday 8 to Saturday 10 October, a change from previous years flagged by the organizer. Plan the Saturday knowing the audience mix tends to shift toward the volunteer and training segment compared with the technical Friday.

What alternative is there to paper for collecting contacts?

Paper is a poor option (digitisation time, errors, lost leads) and a phone photo of the badge is even worse. Since REAS offers no official lead-capture app, the practical alternatives are two:

1. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot and Salesforce have dedicated features): works if the team knows how to use them. Often they don’t, in a fair context, between vehicles and demos.
2. Dedicated lead capture system + AI agents for enrichment, qualification, follow-up: the pattern Linkly executes. See how it works.

Page updated ahead of the 2026 edition. For official information and exhibitor/visitor registration please refer to reasonline.it and centrofiera.it.