SPS 2026
Nuremberg.

What SPS is, in two lines

SPS - Smart Production Solutions is Europe’s leading trade fair for smart, digital industrial automation: since 1990 it has brought the entire automation supply chain together in Nuremberg, from individual components to complete system solutions. It covers control technology, electric drives, industrial communication, sensors, HMI and IT software for manufacturing. It runs annually, and in the 2025 edition it gathered 1,175 exhibitors and 55,938 visitors across 122,000 sqm spread over 15 halls.

This is not a showcase fair: it is the point where production managers, process engineers, machine builders and system integrators choose the suppliers for the projects and plants of the coming months. The real purchasing decisions close in the weeks after the event, when the prospect sits down to compare the components and systems seen at the fair. That is why lead management matters as much as the stand presence itself.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

The final 2026 layout has not yet been published in its definitive version, but the structure of SPS is well established: 15 exhibition halls at the NürnbergMesse, organized by product category rather than by the customer’s vertical sector. The main themed areas are:

• Control technology (PLCs, controllers, motion control)
• Electric drives and components
• Human-machine interface (HMI)
• Industrial communication (networks, protocols, OT connectivity)
• Software & IT for manufacturing
• Interface technology, mechanical infrastructure, sensors and system solutions

The logic is clear: the technical visitor arrives already knowing which piece of the automation architecture they need and moves from one themed hall to the next. A practical positioning tip: place yourself in the hall that matches your core (a sensor manufacturer near the other sensors, where the buyer goes to compare), but build your message around the end customer’s use case, not just the technical spec. At SPS the winner is whoever can make clear in thirty seconds where their component fits into the prospect’s line.

Visitor profile

The SPS audience is markedly technical and highly professional: they come with a concrete automation problem or a plant project to close, not to browse. The crowd is centred on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) with a significant international component. In practice, expect:

• Production and automation managers (~20-25%), technical and procurement figures looking for technologies for their own lines
• Process engineers and plant designers (~20%), specifiers who validate components and architectures
• Buyers and machine-building technicians / OEMs (~15-20%), who integrate your products into their own machines and think in terms of volumes
• System integrators and manufacturing IT/OT specialists (~15%), looking for products to integrate and resell to end customers
• Industrial managers and decision-makers (~10-15%), senior profiles with spending power
• R&D and maintenance managers (~10%), who assess reliability, lifecycle and spare-parts availability

The decision-making profile is high: many visitors are senior or specifiers, and the German audience rewards technical substance, data and precision over marketing. The foreign component is significant, so be ready to handle conversations and leads in English and to tell apart local DACH buyers from visiting international groups.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4 → Messaging audit

Check that your value proposition answers the three questions every technical SPS visitor asks themselves in the first 30 seconds at the stand:

1. What you do, in one sentence (e.g. “drives for motion control with up to 50 synchronized axes”)
2. For whom, a precise ICP segment (e.g. “machine builders for packaging and handling”)
3. What changes, a measurable benefit (cycle time, downtime, energy consumption, cost per piece, commissioning time)

No endless slides, no brochures. One clear sentence, repeated by every person on the team, in English too, because here a significant share of buyers does not speak Italian. The DACH audience appreciates substance: bring numbers, not adjectives.

Week -3 → Stand operation playbook

Define who does what across the three days. SPS is dense: technical traffic comes in waves and the conversations are demanding.

• Who is on the front line at the stand
• Who runs the technical demos (an automation component is best understood when it is running)
• Who is in the back office (HQ) to run live follow-up already during the event
• Who is the point of contact for senior decision-makers and for foreign delegations

Over three days, avoid shifts that are too long: the quality of technical conversations drops after a few hours. With a team of several people, organize time slots and set appointments in advance with key prospects.

Week -2 → Qualification form

Every contact collected at the fair must be qualified on the spot, not “later”. The critical questions are just 3:

1. Timing, when do you have the project / the investment? (Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4/I don’t know)
2. Budget, is there already a spending line allocated?
3. Decision, who decides and how many people are involved (in OEMs and industrial groups there are often lengthy technical committees)?

Everything else (company size, application sector, volumes, machine fleet) can be found in the public data sources that a good automated enrichment covers, without you having to ask for it at the fair.

Week -1 → CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts collected on paper, photos of badges, scans in the fair app, and then nobody puts them into the CRM. Follow-up starts too late, when the prospect has already spoken to your competitors, who in Nuremberg were in the same themed hall just a few metres away.

Set the system up so that every badge scan, at the fair, lands already in the company CRM, with an event tag + qualification answers + a voice note from the sales rep. Not in an Excel sheet, not in a fair-owned proprietary app, not in a Google sheet “we’ll sort out on Monday”.

Is the official SPS app worth it?

Yes, an official app exists: the SPS App, designed to accompany the visitor before, during and after the fair. It does well what it is designed for, namely navigation and orientation:

• Hall map
• Exhibitor search
• Event programme and highlights
• Networking
• Personal favourites list

It is an excellent tool for the visitor. But it is important to be honest about what the app does NOT do, and that is why it does not replace a lead-capture system for exhibitors:

• It does not integrate with your company CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive). The contacts stay in the app.
• It does not enrich the data automatically. If the badge only gives you a name + company, that is what you keep.
• It does not qualify. There is no “timing/budget/decision” collected on the spot, you are left with a list of indistinct scans.
• It does not send follow-up to the prospect. You have to do that yourself, manually, afterwards.
• It does not generate an executive report on stand performance. At most it gives you a basic export.
• It changes at every fair: you end up with different apps on your phone, one per event, with no continuity of workflow.

At a fair with 55,938 visitors and 15 halls, where a sales rep talks to dozens of people a day, you need a tool that digitizes the contact and routes it into the sales workflow: fair → CRM → follow-up. This is exactly the pattern Linkly runs with its 6 AI agents (capture, enrichment, qualification, routing, follow-up, reporting), see how Linkly works.

What to do during the 3 days of the fair

Day 1 (Tuesday 24 November) → opening and calibration

• Team briefing in the morning, run through the 3 messages and the roles (stand / demo / back office)
• Calibration: the first 10-15 leads of the day serve to fine-tune the qualification questions, then you hit your stride
• The opening is more orderly: use it for the more technical conversations and for the decision-makers who plan their visit on the first day
• At the end of the day, a short debrief: what is working, what to fix tomorrow, which hot leads to call back this very evening

Day 2 (Wednesday 25 November) → the decision-making heart

Typically the busiest traffic day. Senior buyers, OEMs and international delegations concentrate here. Keep a senior person always present at the stand and schedule the technical demos: the event’s most strategic prospects pass through in this window. It is the day when most of the pipeline is played out.

Day 3 (Thursday 26 November) → closing, lower traffic but high quality

At a three-day fair, Thursday brings lighter but often more qualified traffic: those who come back on purpose, those who in the first two days only did a scouting round. It is the moment to:

• Close appointments with the hot leads from the previous days
• Have more in-depth technical conversations, with quieter stands and demos without a queue
• Take a tour of the halls and the competitors: see who came, gather ideas, identify possible integration partners for next year
• End the day knowing that follow-up starts tonight, not Monday

What to do in the 7 days after the fair

Response speed (speed-to-lead) is the factor that separates those who monetize the fair from those who file it away. Companies that contact leads within 24-48 hours convert far more than those who start one or two weeks later. At SPS, where the purchasing cycle in automation is long and the amounts substantial, recovering even just a few days is worth a lot, and your competitors were in the same themed hall.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h, a personalized email to every qualified lead with timing/budget/decision. No template, a reference to something specific said at the stand (the component seen, the application mentioned).
2. Within 7 days, assignment of a dedicated sales rep for each qualified lead. One specific touchpoint scheduled (call, on-site demo, bench test), not a mass email.
3. Within 14 days, deliver on the promises made at the stand (technical data sheet, quotation, sample, configuration). Extractable automatically from the sales rep’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days, an executive report on performance vs target, breakdown by sales rep, sector and country, estimated pipeline. To be used to request renewal of the event budget from management and to decide whether and how to return at the next annual edition.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at SPS 2026?

The costs are not published in standard form and vary a lot depending on floor space, position, hall and stand-build formula. As a purely indicative order of magnitude for a three-day presence at a German fair of this scale: the space fee at the NürnbergMesse starts from several tens of euros per sqm, on top of which come stand build, technical services, electricity, staff, travel and logistics. For a medium-sized stand you easily reach five-figure sums. The real numbers should be requested directly from Mesago: they depend too much on the type of stand and the area, and Nuremberg in November is peak season for hotels and travel too.

Which is the best day for the most important contacts?

The second day (Wednesday 25) is typically the traffic peak and concentrates the senior buyers and international delegations: that is where the heaviest pipeline is played out. The first day is ideal for in-depth technical conversations with less crowded stands; the third brings less traffic but often more qualified visitors. Plan your key appointments across the first and second days.

When do visitor registrations open?

Generally in the months before the event, with badges purchasable or registrable online on the official site. Early registration is the fastest way to get your badge and avoid the queues. Check dates and arrangements directly there, as they can vary from edition to edition.

SPS is annual: are the 2026 dates certain?

Yes, SPS runs annually and the 2026 edition is confirmed by the organizer: from 24 to 26 November 2026 at the NürnbergMesse in Nuremberg. It is still worth re-checking the dates on the official site close to the event, and booking travel and accommodation early, because the late-November timing makes Nuremberg highly sought after.

What alternative to paper for collecting contacts?

The pile of photographed badges and business cards collected across the 15 halls is the worst option: digitization time, transcription errors, lost leads. Three practical alternatives:

1. Official fair app (SPS App), excellent for navigation, but disconnected from your CRM (see the section above).
2. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot and Salesforce have dedicated features), it works if the team knows how to use them consistently, which is rare with your hands full at the stand.
3. A dedicated lead-capture system + AI agents for enrichment, qualification and follow-up, this is the pattern Linkly runs: scan at the stand → contact straight into your CRM with an event tag, qualification answers and a voice note from the sales rep → AI agents that enrich, qualify and trigger the follow-up. See how Linkly works.

Page updated ahead of the 2026 edition. The quantitative figures cited refer to the 2025 edition. For official information and exhibitor/visitor registration, refer to the sps.mesago.com website.