A Guide to CIRSE for First-Time Exhibitors
CIRSE is the annual congress of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe. The 2027 edition runs from 25 to 29 September in Milan, Italy, and the organiser is the society itself rather than an exhibition company — which is worth knowing, because a society-run congress treats the exhibition as part of an educational event rather than as the main product.
The scale is substantial: the society reports more than 7,000 onsite and online participants and over 400 lectures, alongside hands-on device training, a simulation programme, the IDEAS aortic programme and a radiation protection pavilion. The technical exhibition is described by CIRSE as the largest interventional radiology exhibition in the world.
Where Is CIRSE Held? The Rotation, and Why It Matters to Your Budget
CIRSE has no permanent venue. Reading the society's own record of past congresses, the last fifteen years have effectively cycled between three cities — Barcelona in 2025, 2022, 2019, 2016 and 2013; Lisbon in 2024, 2018, 2015 and 2012; Copenhagen in 2026, 2023 and 2017 — with Glasgow in 2014 and Munich in 2011 as the exceptions, and 2027 steps outside the pattern again with Milan. Before that the congress ranged much more widely, from Vienna and Berlin in the 1980s through Prague, Maastricht, Gothenburg, Antalya and Athens.
For an exhibitor commissioning a stand in Europe, that rotation is the whole planning problem. The stand you buy is the same object wherever the congress lands. What changes is how far it travels, how many driving days that takes, whether a border or a currency comes into it, and what your crew's accommodation costs in that city that week. A quote you accepted for last year's congress does not transfer intact to this year's, and any builder who tells you it does is quietly averaging.
Our approach is to price the structure once and the delivery per edition. Milan, the 2027 host, is a similar road distance from our Frankfurt workshop to Copenhagen, the shortest of the three regular hosts, although the direct route crosses Switzerland; Lisbon is by a wide margin the longest. Once CIRSE announces the following year's host, the delivery line is the only part of your quote that needs revisiting.
Who Exhibits at CIRSE and What Delegates Are Looking For
The exhibition is dominated by interventional device manufacturers — catheters, guidewires, stents and stent grafts, embolic agents, ablation systems, biopsy and drainage devices, vascular closure — together with imaging manufacturers, contrast media suppliers, radiation protection specialists and, increasingly, image-analysis and AI software vendors.
The delegate is a practising interventional radiologist or a trainee, and the questions are clinical rather than commercial. They will ask about trafficability, deliverability, sizing ranges, what the device does in a tortuous anatomy, and what the evidence base looks like. That is a different conversation from a trade fair, and it changes the stand: clinical clarity beats brand volume, a physician wants to handle the device rather than watch a video about it, and the person standing on your stand needs to be someone who can answer a procedural question.
Stand Size: Choosing Between 9, 18, 24 and 48 Square Metres
Nine square metres works for a single-product device company, a distributor covering a region, or a software vendor whose product is a screen. You get a counter, a back wall, one or two vitrines and standing conversations. What you cannot do at this size is run a hands-on station with anyone watching.
Eighteen square metres is the practical minimum for a portfolio rather than a product, and it is the largest size we would attempt without dedicated demonstration space.
Twenty-four square metres is the threshold at which a phantom or simulator station becomes workable: enough floor for a real workbench, room for two people either side and an observer, and circulation that does not force the queue into the aisle. If hands-on training is part of your plan at CIRSE, treat 24 m² as the working minimum.
At 48 m² you can run a hands-on station and still hold a scheduled clinical meeting in a semi-private space at the same time, which is what most mid-size device companies actually need here. From 80 m² upward, a double-decker adds meeting capacity without eating the ground floor — and on a congress floor where the surges are short and intense, ground-floor circulation is worth protecting.
What a CIRSE Stand Costs by Size
The ranges below are for design, fabrication, graphics, installation and dismantling, and they hold wherever the congress is. They exclude the floor space rental you pay to CIRSE, the electrical and rigging orders placed with the venue, and the road freight, which we quote against the announced host city rather than averaging across the rotation.
- 9 m² modular: €4,100–€8,700
- 18 m² modular: €4,800–€10,100
- 24 m² custom with a hands-on station: €11,500–€15,000
- 30 m² custom with enclosed meeting room: €15,000–€19,000
- 48 m² custom, hands-on station plus meeting space: €19,000–€26,000
- 80 m² premium or double-decker: €34,000–€48,000
Common Mistakes, in Order of Frequency
The most common is designing for steady traffic. The congress floor is empty during sessions and overwhelmed at the breaks, and a layout built for a constant trickle jams at exactly the moment it matters. The second is building the hands-on station as display furniture, at display height, lit from the ceiling — it photographs well and nobody can work at it. The third is treating last year's quote as this year's, when the host city has moved 1,500 kilometres. The fourth is leaving sample security to chance on an open floor where the highest-value item on the stand fits in a pocket. The fifth is designing a hospitality area that the compliance team then has to dismantle. All five are settled at design stage or not at all.
Getting Started
Send your stand size, your stand number if CIRSE has issued it, and three things about the product: the sample list with real dimensions, whether you intend to run a hands-on or simulator station, and whether any imaging equipment is coming and at what crated weight. Those three answers determine the design more than any styling preference. You get a 3D design and an itemised all-in quote, at no charge and with no obligation.
Because CIRSE moves host city every year, a reusable system frame is a more sensible purchase here than at a show with a fixed home — the structure comes back to our Frankfurt warehouse after each edition, and the next congress costs a graphics refresh and a new freight leg rather than a rebuild. Our modular exhibition stands are built for exactly that pattern.
