After 55 years based in Munich, ISPO, one of the world’s largest sporting goods trade fairs and an annual fixture in the sports-mad German city, is moving out.
The trade fair belongs to major German events company, Messe München, and it has decided to turn the Munich-based iteration of ISPO into a joint venture with British media and event company Raccoon Media Group.
Messe München also runs two other ISPO events in China and these are not part of the new joint venture.
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The new venture “offers the opportunity for a fundamental new beginning for growth and a strong global focus for the event,” a statement by Messe München said.
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That includes new dates and a new location. Next year, ISPO will take place in early November in Amsterdam. Although other numbers were not disclosed, the agreement also reportedly includes a 3 million-euro investment into updating ISPO’s format.
The German company said the new dates — Nov. 4 and 5, 2026 — fit better with the sporting industry’s scheduling but that it’s not ruling out a return to Munich at a later date.
ISPO has seen an ongoing decline in both exhibitor and visitor numbers for some time. ISPO saw a peak of 85,000 visitors come to the huge halls on the outskirts of Munich in 2017 but in 2024, only around 55,000 attended. The number of exhibitors also fell, going from an average of around 2,665 annually between 2014 and 2018 to 2,300 last year.
At ISPO last winter, sales managers from a number of exhibiting brands also told WWD that the event really felt the lack of bigger brands that used to attend including names like Burton and Quiksilver and even Germany’s own Jack Wolfskin.
Industry insiders also told WWD that, although there were plenty of contacts to be made and sporting innovations to be seen, nobody was really writing huge orders at ISPO anymore.
Despite the changes, ISPO Munich will be going ahead in Germany, potentially for the last time ever, between Nov. 30 and Dec. 2.