VivaTech 2026
Paris.

What VivaTech is, in two lines

VivaTech (Viva Technology) is Europe’s largest show dedicated to technological innovation, startups and digital transformation: since 2016 it has brought together startups, large groups, venture capital funds and public decision-makers in the same space in Paris. It runs annually and the 2025 edition (the 9th) posted record numbers: 180,000 visitors, more than 14,000 startups and over 3,600 investors from 171 nationalities. The 2026 edition celebrates a decade with a focus on AI, cybersecurity and deeptech, and Germany as Country of the Year.

It is not a runway showcase: it is the point where investors, corporate innovation managers and tech buyers choose who to talk to about the deals and projects of the coming months. A conversation at the booth or a match set up in the app rarely closes at the show, but it feeds the term sheets, POCs and contracts signed in the weeks after the event. That is why, at a show this dense and international, lead management matters as much as physical presence.

What to exhibit, where to exhibit

VivaTech takes place entirely in Hall 7 of Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, spread across three levels, with exhibition space growing by over 30% for 2026 (more than 20,000 sqm added). The layout is not organized by classic product sector, but by innovation-ecosystem logic:

• National pavilions (more than 50 in 2025, with Germany Country of the Year in 2026), where a country’s startup and institutional delegations exhibit together
• Labs and booths of large corporate groups, presenting open challenges, open innovation programs and partner searches
• Startup and scale-up areas, where founders look for customers, investors and visibility
• Thematic spaces on AI, deeptech, cybersecurity and venture capital

Practical positioning tip: at VivaTech the winner is not the one with the biggest booth, but the one who is legible in ten seconds. The typical visitor walks past hundreds of booths in a few hours. Put up a single huge sentence stating what you do and for whom (not the slogan, the use case), and arrange the space so people immediately understand whether you are a startup looking for customers, a scale-up looking for capital, or a corporate looking for partners. Confusion on this point loses you the right contacts.

Visitor profile

VivaTech’s audience is the most heterogeneous among Europe’s big tech shows, and that is precisely the point: in the same aisle you find people who buy, people who invest and people looking for customers. The mix is markedly international (171 nationalities in 2025) and strongly senior in the decision-making tiers. In practice you can expect:

• Investors and venture capital funds (~10-15%, over 3,600 in 2025), looking for startups to write checks for
• Executives and innovation managers from large companies (~20-25%), mapping suppliers and open innovation partners
• Founders and startup / scale-up teams (~25-30%), the largest component, in search of customers, capital and visibility
• Public decision-makers and institutions (~5-10%), often traveling with the national pavilions
• Tech/digital buyers and procurement leads (~10-15%), evaluating concrete solutions to adopt
• Media, analysts and ecosystem partners (~10%), who amplify but rarely buy

The decision-making profile is high but fragmented: the senior visitor who matters is often surrounded by curious onlookers, students and gadget hunters. The challenge is not collecting lots of contacts (at VivaTech it is very easy to fill your phone with scans), but telling at a glance the founder-customer, the investor and the mere spectator apart. Be equipped to work in English and to qualify quickly, because the background noise here is extremely high.

How to prepare in the 4 weeks before the event

Week -4 → Messaging audit

Make sure your value proposition answers the three questions every VivaTech visitor asks in the first ten seconds in front of the booth:

1. What you do, in one sharp sentence (e.g. “payments infrastructure for B2B marketplaces”)
2. For whom, the precise profile (e.g. “European fintechs and scale-ups in their scaling phase”)
3. What you are looking for here, because at VivaTech it pays to state it: customers? capital? corporate partners?

No endless slides, no jargon from a pitch deck recited by heart. One clear sentence, in English, repeated by everyone on the team. At a show with 180,000 visitors and thousands of startups, attention is the scarce resource: anyone who is not legible in ten seconds gets skipped.

Week -3 → Stand operation playbook

Define who does what across the four days. VivaTech is dense and chaotic: traffic comes in waves and mixes very different profiles.

• Who staffs the booth and does the fast first qualification
• Who runs the demos (an AI or deeptech product is understood better in action)
• Who is dedicated to the app-scheduled meetings with investors and corporates
• Who is the point of contact for senior decision-makers and the national pavilion delegations

Over four days, avoid shifts that are too long: conversation quality drops after a few hours in such a noisy environment. Use the official app to book appointments with key prospects in advance, and keep the peak slots free for those who truly matter.

Week -2 → Qualification form

Every contact collected must be qualified on the spot, not “later.” At VivaTech, where the visitor profile is ambiguous, there are only 3 critical questions:

1. Role, are you a founder, investor, corporate or buyer? (it changes the whole follow-up)
2. Timing / interest, is there a project, a round or a decision in progress? (now / in the coming months / just looking)
3. Next step, what would make sense to do after the show (call, demo, intro to a fund, term sheet)?

Everything else (company size, sector, funding stage, geography) is found in the public data sources that good automated enrichment covers, without your having to ask at the booth while the queue grows.

Week -1 → CRM integrations

The classic mistake: contacts collected via scans in the fair app, photos of badges, business cards gathered across the three levels of Hall 7, and then nobody puts them in the CRM. Follow-up starts too late, when the investor or the corporate has already talked to fifty other startups and gone back home on another continent.

Set up the system so that every contact collected at the show lands already in the company CRM, with event tag + qualification answers (role / timing / next step) + a voice note from the rep. Not in a proprietary fair app, not in an Excel file, not in a Google Sheet “we’ll sort out on Monday,” because by Monday the moment has already passed.

Is the official VivaTech app worth it?

Yes, there is an official app: VivaTech 2026 (iOS/Android). For the visitor it is a serious tool, in fact it is one of the show’s strengths, because VivaTech lives on matchmaking. It does well what it is designed for:

• Matchmaking and networking among startups, corporates and investors
• Personalized conference agenda and speaker recommendations
• Contact scan and management features (reserved for Attendee, Startup and Investor passes)

It is excellent for getting around and for organizing meetings. But it is important to be honest about what the app does NOT do, which is why it does not replace a lead capture system for exhibitors:

• It does not integrate with your company CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive). Contacts stay inside the app.
• It does not enrich data automatically. If from the scan you only have a name + company, that is all you keep, and on an investor or a buyer without the right context the follow-up is blind.
• It does not qualify. There is no “role / timing / next step” captured on the spot; you are left with a list of undifferentiated scans where the founder-customer and the curious student weigh the same.
• 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 booth performance. At most it gives you a basic export.
• The scan features are tied to the pass type and the platform changes from edition to edition: every year you find yourself with a different app and no workflow continuity.

At a show of 180,000 visitors where a rep talks to dozens of people a day and the real problem is telling the contacts that matter apart from the noise, you need a tool that digitizes and routes the contact into the sales workflow show → CRM → follow-up. This is exactly the pattern Linkly runs with its 6 AI agents (capture, enrichment, qualification, routing, follow-up, report), see how Linkly works.

What to do during the 4 days of the show

Day 1 (Wednesday 17 June) → opening and calibration

• Team briefing in the morning, go over the 3 messages and the roles (booth / demo / scheduled meetings)
• Calibration: the first 10-15 contacts of the day serve to fine-tune the qualification questions (role / timing / next step), then you go full speed
• The opening is often the slot with the most targeted profiles: investors and corporates who plan their visit arrive early, before the crowd
• At the end of the day, a short debrief: what works, what to fix tomorrow, which hot contacts to call back already this evening

Day 2 (Thursday 18 June) → the decision-making core

Typically the day of the most intense and qualified traffic. Senior buyers, venture capital funds and national pavilion delegations concentrate here. Keep a senior person always present at the booth and schedule the most strategic meetings (via the official app) in this slot: it is the day when most of the pipeline and the contacts with investors are played out.

Day 3 (Friday 19 June) → professional, high intensity

Still a strongly B2B day, often the best moment for in-depth conversations and for closing the appointments opened in the previous two days. It is the ideal slot to:

• Pick up Thursday’s hot contacts and set a concrete next step
• Quieter demos for the most strategic prospects
• A walk through the national pavilions and corporate booths to spot partners and ideas

Day 4 (Saturday 20 June) → opening to the public, different traffic

On Saturday VivaTech also opens to the public and hosts the VivaTech Festival for the 18-35s: traffic is higher in volume but changes in nature, with many students, talents and curious onlookers. For B2B exhibitors it is the day with the lowest signal-to-noise ratio. Use it to:

• Recruiting and employer branding (here there are talents, not customers)
• Close the last appointments set with the remaining professional profiles
• Pack up in an orderly way, but above all knowing that the follow-up starts already this evening, not Monday

What to do in the 7 days after the show

Response speed (speed-to-lead) is the factor that separates those who monetize VivaTech 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 VivaTech the point is even sharper: the visitor who matters is international, has talked to dozens of other players and has already left. Recovering even just a few days, and arriving with a message that recalls exactly what you talked about, is worth a great deal.

The winning follow-up playbook:

1. Within 24h, a personalized email to every qualified contact, differentiated by role (you don’t write to an investor the way you write to a corporate buyer). No generic template, reference one specific thing said at the booth.
2. Within 7 days, assign an owner to every qualified contact and a precise touchpoint scheduled (call, on-site demo, intro to a fund), not a mass email.
3. Within 14 days, deliver on the promises made at the booth (deck, data, access to a POC, intro). Automatically extractable from the rep’s voice notes if the system recorded them.
4. Within 30 days, an executive report on performance vs. target, distribution by role (investors / corporates / customers), country and estimated pipeline. To use to justify the VivaTech investment to management and decide whether and how to return for the next annual edition.

Practical FAQ

How much does it cost to exhibit at VivaTech 2026?

Costs vary a lot depending on the format: there is a huge difference between the startup pass with a small shared booth (the formula most startups exhibit with, at a relatively contained cost, often in the four figures) and the custom stand of a corporate or a scale-up, which with floor space, fit-out and services easily reaches five-figure sums or more. Many startups also exhibit for free or at reduced cost inside the national pavilions or through corporate programs. Paris in mid-June is also high season: budget early for hotels and travel. The real numbers and the up-to-date formulas should be requested directly on the official website.

Which is the best day for the most important contacts?

The second day (Thursday 18) is typically the peak of qualified traffic and concentrates investors, senior buyers and international delegations: that is where the heaviest pipeline is played out. The first day (Wednesday) is excellent for targeted conversations with less crowded booths; Friday remains strongly B2B. Saturday opens to the public and is the least suited to B2B (useful instead for recruiting and talents). Concentrate the key appointments between Thursday and Friday.

When does visitor registration open?

Generally in the months before the event, with the various passes (Attendee, Startup, Investor) available to buy or register online on the official website. Note: the official app’s contact scan features are tied to the pass type, so check in good time which level you need. Early registration is the fastest way to get the badge and avoid the queues. Dates and procedures may change from edition to edition.

VivaTech is annual: are the 2026 dates certain?

Yes, VivaTech runs annually and the decade edition is confirmed by the organizer: from 17 to 20 June 2026 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Also worth noting are the collateral events: the free immersive day on the Champs-Élysées (14 June) and the VivaTech Festival for the 18-35s (20 June). It is still worth re-checking the dates on the official website close to the event and booking travel and lodging early.

What alternative to paper is there for collecting contacts?

The pile of photographed badges and cards gathered across the three levels of Hall 7 is the worst option: digitization time, transcription errors, leads lost precisely when the international visitor has already left. Three practical alternatives:

1. Official fair app (VivaTech 2026), excellent for matchmaking and networking, but disconnected from your CRM and tied to the pass type (see the section above).
2. CRM with native mobile scanning (HubSpot, Salesforce have dedicated features), works if the team knows how to use them consistently, which is rare with hands full and a packed booth.
3. Dedicated lead capture system + AI agents for enrichment, qualification and follow-up, this is the pattern Linkly runs: scan at the booth → contact straight into your CRM with event tag, qualification answers (role / timing / next step) and a voice note from the rep → AI agents that enrich, qualify and trigger the follow-up. See how Linkly works.

Page updated ahead of the 2026 edition (the decade). The quantitative figures cited refer to the 2025 edition. For official information and exhibitor/visitor registration please refer to the vivatechnology.com website.