A Guide to REHACARE for First-Time Exhibitors
REHACARE INTERNATIONAL is the international trade fair for rehabilitation, prevention, inclusion and care, and the 2026 edition runs 23–26 September at Messe Düsseldorf. It is organised by Messe Düsseldorf GmbH, has been held annually since 1977, and occupies halls 1, 4, 5, 6, 7a and 7.0. At the 2024 edition the organiser recorded 948 exhibitors from 40 countries and 44,000 visitors from 88 countries.
The single most important structural fact about this fair is who is allowed through the door. REHACARE is not trade-only. Clinicians, therapists, orthopaedic technicians, dealers and purchasing managers walk the same aisles as disabled visitors, older visitors, people with chronic conditions and the families and carers who support them. That mix drives almost every design decision that follows, and it is why a stand plan that would be entirely adequate at a machinery fair down the road in the same halls will underperform here.
Who Exhibits at REHACARE and Who Actually Walks the Floor
The exhibitor side spans mobility and walking aids, wheelchairs and powered mobility, orthopaedic and prosthetic technology, barrier-free building and bathroom equipment, communication and assistive digital technology, everyday living aids, clothing, care and nursing supplies, therapy and training equipment, and travel, sport and leisure for disabled people. Alongside the manufacturers sit self-help associations, funding and paying authorities, service providers and non-profit organisations, which gives the floor a different texture from a purely commercial fair.
The visitor side splits roughly into two groups with different needs from your stand. Professionals — therapists, technicians, dealers, care-home purchasers — arrive with specification questions, reimbursement questions and service questions, and they want to handle the product. Private visitors arrive to compare things they may end up living with for years, often accompanied, often taking literature away to decide later. Both groups reward a stand they can get into and penalise one they cannot, but the second group does so silently. They simply do not stop.
Designing a Stand Your Visitors Can Actually Enter
Start with the floor. The choice is between building flush to the hall surface or carrying a raised deck, and at REHACARE the flush option should be the default rather than the exception. If a raised deck is unavoidable — because of the volume of cable, or because a demonstration needs a service run — then the ramp is a design object with a footprint, not a detail. A gradient around six percent is comfortable to self-propel; steeper than eight and you are asking for assistance. A 100-millimetre rise at six percent is roughly 1.7 metres of run, and it needs a flat landing at both ends. Budget that area on the drawing.
Then circulation. The number that governs a stand interior is the turning circle, roughly 1,500 millimetres for a manual chair and more for some powered chairs and mobility scooters. Aim for 1,800 millimetres on the main route so two people can pass, keep one continuous spine rather than a loop that dead-ends, and push counters and storage to the perimeter. A central island counter is the most common way a small stand becomes unusable, because the residual gaps around it fall below a turning circle and a visitor who enters has to reverse out.
Then reach. The comfortable reach range from a seated position runs roughly 400 to 1,200 millimetres from the floor. Anything you want touched, tried or picked up belongs in that band. That includes brochures, which are habitually placed on a 1,100-millimetre counter top and are therefore at the very edge of it. Counters need a lowered section at 750 to 800 millimetres with genuinely clear knee space beneath — no plinth, no kick panel to the floor — otherwise a chair pulls up and stops at the footplates.
Then the senses. This audience includes people with low vision, hearing loss, and sensory processing differences, and a stand that ignores that loses conversations quietly. High-contrast type at a generous size does more than a clever layout. Matte surfaces beat gloss, because glare is a genuine obstacle rather than a preference. Any glazed panel needs contrast marking at two heights so it reads from standing and from seated. If you intend to hold real conversations, one lower-stimulus corner away from the aisle — acoustic panelling, softer light, a seat with arms that supports a transfer — is worth more than an extra display position, and an induction loop in that corner is a small order with a disproportionate effect.
Stand Size: Choosing Between 9, 18, 24 and 48 Square Metres
Nine square metres works, but only with discipline. You get a back wall, one counter with a lowered section, and standing-or-seated conversation at the aisle edge. What you cannot do is bring a visitor in and turn them around, so treat the stand as a frontage rather than a room, keep the whole depth clear, and accept that any product you display has to sit within seated reach of the perimeter. It suits accessory suppliers, associations and dealers whose product is small or is essentially information.
Eighteen square metres is where a chair can enter and turn, provided the layout is planned for it. That means the counter to one side rather than the middle, a clear spine, and product on the walls rather than on islands. This is the size most first-time REHACARE exhibitors should be looking at, and it is the point where the difference between a stand designed for this fair and a stand designed generically becomes visible from the aisle.
Twenty-four square metres is the threshold at which demonstration becomes practical. If you want someone to try a chair, test a lift, sit in a seat or use a piece of equipment, you need approach space, transfer space and somewhere for the accompanying person to stand — and that is a genuine floor allocation, not a corner of an existing layout. If a hands-on try-out is central to your plan, treat 24 square metres as the working minimum.
At 48 square metres you can run a demonstration position and still hold a private, low-stimulus conversation elsewhere on the stand, which matters when the discussion turns to funding, fitting or a long-term care plan. From 60 square metres upward a double-decker adds meeting capacity without consuming ground-floor area — and on this floor, ground-floor area is the resource that accessibility spends. That makes the upper deck a more useful purchase here than at most shows, provided the meeting function moves upstairs and everything a visitor needs stays down.
What a REHACARE Stand Costs by Size
Ranges below are all-in for design, fabrication, graphics, domestic freight, install and dismantle. They exclude the floor space rental you pay to Messe Düsseldorf, and the electrical, rigging and waste orders placed with the venue.
- 9 m² modular, flush floor and lowered counter section: €4,100–€8,700
- 18 m² modular with a full turning circle inside: €4,800–€10,100
- 24 m² custom with a demonstration and transfer area: €11,500–€15,000
- 30 m² custom with a lower-stimulus meeting corner: €15,000–€19,000
- 48 m² custom with demonstration plus private discussion 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 the raised deck with no ramp, or a ramp designed after the floor plan was fixed so it eats the display area. The second is a central counter that leaves no turning circle, which makes an otherwise decent 18 square metre stand a dead end. The third is a single counter height with a solid plinth, so the lowered section that was supposed to solve the problem stops a wheelchair at the footplates. The fourth is deep-pile carpet chosen from a swatch book on appearance, which quietly costs you the visitors with the least arm strength. The fifth is placing every product and every brochure above 1,200 millimetres. The sixth is staffing for a three-day trade fair and then discovering Saturday. Every one of them is settled at design stage for nothing, or on site for a great deal.
Getting Started
Send your stand size, your hall and stand number once Messe Düsseldorf has issued it, and a short description of what you intend visitors to do on the stand — look, handle, try, or sit down and discuss funding. That last answer changes the layout more than anything else you can tell us, because trying and transferring need floor area that looking does not. You get a 3D design and an itemised all-in quote, at no charge and with no obligation.
Because REHACARE is annual, the stand you commission is a yearly asset rather than a one-off, and the accessible elements — the flush floor build, the lowered counter with its knee space, the low-pile floor specification — are the parts you least want to redesign each September. A reusable system frame keeps those decisions settled and reduces the next edition to a graphics refresh; our modular exhibition stands are built for exactly that pattern, and we store the structure in Frankfurt between editions.
