A Guide to Tube for First-Time Exhibitors
Tube is the world's leading trade fair for the tube and pipe industry, and the 2028 edition runs 3–7 April at Messe Düsseldorf. It has been held every second year since 1988 and is organised by Messe Düsseldorf GmbH. It shares its week and its halls with wire, the international wire and cable fair, so the two run as one enormous metals event — together they drew more than 2,700 exhibitors across over 119,000 square metres in 2024, with Tube alone taking roughly 50,000 of them.
One thing to understand before you plan: Tube is a machinery floor. The product on show is frequently a working machine — a tube mill, a bending cell, a laser cutter, a welding line, an inspection rig for oil-country tubular goods — and the stand that surrounds it has to be engineered for its weight, its power and its safe operation. That is a different exercise from displaying a product on a shelf, and it starts earlier.
Who Exhibits at Tube and What Visitors Want
The floor covers the whole tube and pipe chain: raw materials, finished tubes and pipes, the machinery and tooling that forms and processes them, process engineering, measurement and control technology, and OCTG for the oil and gas sector. Exhibitors range from steel and alloy producers through to the machine builders whose equipment cuts, bends, welds and finishes tube.
The visitor is a technical buyer — a plant engineer, a production manager, a procurement or inspection specialist. They want to watch a machine run, understand its cycle time and serviceability, and see real tolerances and test data rather than marketing images. In the OCTG space in particular, the conversation is about threading, coatings, coupling integrity and certification. A stand that puts evidence at readable height — the coupon, the cross-section, the certificate — qualifies visitors faster than any render can.
Stand Size: Choosing Between 9, 18, 24 and 48 Square Metres
Nine square metres works for materials, coatings, fittings and fastening suppliers whose product is physically small or is essentially a specification. You get a counter, a back wall, a sample rack and standing conversations. What you cannot do at this size is run a machine with any circulation around it.
Eighteen square metres suits distributors and specialists who need a proper display and a seated conversation, and it is the largest size we would attempt without a dedicated machine position.
Twenty-four is the threshold at which a running machine becomes practical: enough floor for the reinforced plinth, the three-phase supply and a safe route for visitors to walk around the equipment rather than past it. If you intend to demonstrate anything that moves, treat 24 m² as the working minimum.
At 48 m² you can service a second machine or run one machine and still hold a private conversation, which matters when a plant buyer wants to discuss a project rather than a product. From 80 m² upward, a double-decker adds meeting capacity without consuming the ground-floor area that heavy machinery needs — and on this floor that ground-floor area, rated for load, is the scarce resource.
What a Tube 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, the electrical and rigging orders placed with the venue, and the transport and riggers for your own machine.
- 9 m² modular: €4,100–€8,700
- 18 m² modular: €4,800–€10,100
- 24 m² custom with one machine position: €11,500–€15,000
- 30 m² custom with enclosed meeting room: €15,000–€19,000
- 48 m² custom with two machine positions: €19,000–€26,000
- 80 m² premium or double-decker: €34,000–€48,000
Common Mistakes, in Order of Frequency
The most common is treating the machine as a late detail — designing the stand first and discovering the floor-load limit, the three-phase requirement or the lift route afterwards, which forces a redesign on site. The second is filing a power order against a guessed rating rather than the machine's nameplate, so the supply is under-rated when the machine runs. The third is messaging pipe and OCTG capability to the wire audience passing the aisle, wasting the frontage on the wrong buyer. The fourth is leaving test data and certification off the stand entirely, forcing every OCTG conversation to start with a question you could have answered from the aisle. The fifth is underestimating build-up congestion in a week when wire and Tube share the halls. All five are settled at design stage or not at all.
Getting Started
Send your stand size, your hall and stand number if Messe Düsseldorf has issued it, and — this is the one that changes everything — the machine you intend to run: its weight, its footprint and foot positions, its three-phase power draw, and how it will be lifted into place. That detail shapes the design more than any other. You get a 3D design and an itemised all-in quote, at no charge and with no obligation.
Because Tube is biennial, the two-year gap makes a reusable system frame a particularly sensible purchase here — the structure stays in our Frankfurt warehouse between editions and the next show costs a graphics refresh rather than a rebuild. Our modular exhibition stands are built for exactly that pattern, and adapt cleanly around a machine position.
