First-Time Exhibitor's Guide to CES 2027: What to Know Before You Go

Every trade show feels overwhelming the first time. CES is different because the scale and structure of the show change decisions that would be relatively simple at a single-hall regional event.

Where your booth is located affects how your team moves around the show. The venue affects logistics. The size of the event changes how much staff you need. Even badge registration has a process that is easy to get wrong if nobody on your team owns it.

CES 2027 runs January 6–9 in Las Vegas. If this is your first time exhibiting, you don't need to know every freight deadline or service order yet. You do need to understand how the show works, which decisions come first, and where the details get more complicated.

That's what this guide is for.

How big is CES 2027, really?

CES 2027 takes place across 12 official venues grouped into three campuses: the LVCC Campus, Venetian Campus and C Space Campus. CES says the 2027 show spans more than 2.5 million net square feet of exhibit space.

That is a very different environment from exhibiting in a single convention center hall.

The latest completed edition, CES 2026, gives you a useful sense of the scale. CES's independently audited figures recorded 148,392 participants, more than 4,100 exhibitors and 2.6 million+ net square feet of exhibit space. The audit also recorded 7,037 media, content creators and industry analysts, and 2,162 investors scouting Eureka Park. Those are CES 2026 figures, not a prediction for CES 2027.

The practical implication for a first-timer is simple: you cannot treat CES like one big room.

Your campus, venue and hall matter. They influence where your team needs to be, how you plan meetings, how your booth is serviced and how much time you should allow to move between appointments.

CES itself provides downloadable campus maps and interactive floor plans for 2027. Looking at those before you finalize your plans is one of the easiest ways to make the show feel less chaotic once you arrive.

What should you decide before choosing a booth builder?

You don't need your entire CES plan finished before talking to builders. But you should have a rough answer to three questions:

Why are you exhibiting?

Are you primarily there to generate leads, launch a product, meet partners, attract media, support existing customers, or establish a presence in a particular technology category?

How much space do you actually need?

A larger footprint isn't automatically more useful. If your team can't staff it properly or your visitors don't have a reason to enter, additional square footage can simply create more space to manage.

What is your approximate budget?

You don't need an exact number at the beginning. You do need a realistic range that accounts for more than the physical booth. Exhibit space, show services, travel, accommodation, freight, labor, technology and marketing can all affect the final CES budget.

Once those basics are clear, you can make the more specific booth decisions.

Should you rent or buy your CES 2027 booth?

This is one of the first major decisions because it affects both your budget and how much responsibility you take on after the show.

A custom booth can be rented or purchased. Rental does not necessarily mean giving up a custom design, and buying does not automatically make sense simply because you're planning a major show.

The right answer depends on how often you expect to exhibit, whether your footprint is likely to change, how much of the physical asset you want to manage, and how long you expect to use the design.

Our deeper guide, CES 2027 booth rental vs. custom: the honest comparison, goes into the cost and ownership decision in detail.

For this orientation guide, the important thing is simply to make the decision deliberately rather than letting the first builder you contact determine it for you.

What can you learn from booths that already worked at CES?

Before you brief a designer, look at what has actually worked on a CES floor.

The objective isn't to copy another company's booth. It's to understand how exhibitors use limited space to demonstrate products, attract attention, control visitor flow and create places for conversations.

That matters particularly for first-time exhibitors because it's easy to over-design a booth before deciding what it actually needs to accomplish.

The CES 2027 booth design guide looks at five named examples from CES 2026 and pulls out the design decisions that are relevant to companies planning their own exhibit.

Read that before you start briefing a designer. It is much easier to decide what your booth needs after you've seen how different exhibitors solved similar problems.

How does CES badge registration work for exhibitors?

This is one of those administrative tasks that seems straightforward until somebody registers using the wrong process.

For confirmed CES 2027 exhibitors, the Primary Contact receives access to the Exhibitor Dashboard and can assign a Registration Coordinator. That coordinator controls the company's exhibitor personnel badge allocation and initiates registration for each member of the team.

The individual team member then completes their own registration using the invitation they receive.

There is an important detail here: they need to use the same email address that the Registration Coordinator used to initiate the registration. CES says using another email address can result in the person being registered as an Industry Attendee rather than exhibitor personnel.

CES also says badges are not mailed in advance. Each person must pick up their own badge on-site and present valid government-issued photo identification.

For a first-time exhibitor, the takeaway is straightforward: assign one person to own registration early and don't leave the team's badges until the final week.

What is an EAC, and why does a first-time exhibitor need to know about it?

If you're hiring an independent booth builder rather than using one of CES's official contractors, you'll encounter the term Exhibitor Appointed Contractor, or EAC.

CES defines EACs as independent contractors hired by exhibiting companies. Its current exhibitor materials include a dedicated EAC registration process, with CES 2027 EAC registration scheduled to open in the fall.

This matters because your builder isn't simply showing up with a truck and installing the booth.

Before you sign a contract, ask the builder whether they are handling the required EAC registration and documentation for your CES project and what information they need from you.

CES also publishes a list of official contractors and vendors. That matters because major shows attract third-party companies that may imply an affiliation with CES that they don't actually have. CES specifically warns exhibitors to verify unexpected solicitations and says CTA does not sell or publicly provide its attendee list.

A first-time exhibitor should therefore be cautious about unsolicited “CES” offers for attendee lists, services or registration assistance.

What tends to catch first-time exhibitors off guard?

The biggest problems are often not dramatic. They're planning gaps that become expensive or inconvenient because CES gives you very little room to improvise.

Staffing

A booth has to be staffed for the show you're actually attending, not the show you imagined when you booked the space.

Four days of exhibition can be demanding. If your team is also holding off-floor meetings, attending conferences and visiting customers, your booth may have fewer people available than you expected.

Build the staffing plan around the schedule rather than assuming everyone will be standing at the booth all day.

Accommodation

Las Vegas has a huge hotel inventory, but CES brings an unusually concentrated demand for rooms.

For a first CES, accommodation should be handled early rather than treated as something to finalize after the booth is designed. Your team's hotel location also affects how practical early meetings, late events and daily travel will be.

Trying to do everything at once

A first CES can quickly become a product launch, press event, sales conference, customer meeting program and networking trip all at the same time.

That sounds ambitious. It can also make the show much harder to execute well.

Pick the outcomes that matter most and build the booth, staffing and meeting schedule around them.

Underestimating the distance between things

This is perhaps the most mundane CES lesson, but one of the easiest to overlook.

A meeting at one campus and another appointment elsewhere in Las Vegas are not the same thing as walking from one hall to the next at a regional exhibition.

Use the CES maps when planning your schedule and leave enough time between appointments. CES provides campus maps specifically to help attendees plan routes between venues.

What should you do before you start detailed booth planning?

Think of your first CES in stages.

First, get oriented. Know the dates, campuses, venues and approximate location of your exhibit.

Then define the objective. Decide what a successful CES looks like for your company.

Next, establish the budget range. Include the show and travel costs around the booth, not just the booth itself.

Then make the major booth decisions. Rental or purchase, approximate footprint, design requirements and staffing.

Finally, choose the builder. At that point you can compare builders against an actual brief rather than asking them to tell you what kind of booth you should buy.

The CES 2027 booth builder selection guide goes deeper into that final step, including what to ask prospective builders about CES experience, venue requirements, portfolio and project management.

Where should a first-time CES exhibitor start?

You don't need to become a CES logistics expert before you begin.

You need to understand the shape of the problem.

CES 2027 runs January 6–9 and spans 12 official venues across three campuses. The latest completed show attracted more than 148,000 participants and 4,100+ exhibitors. Registration has its own exhibitor-personnel process, independent builders may need EAC registration, and the sheer geographic scale means that venue, staffing and scheduling decisions have consequences beyond the booth itself.

Once you have that context, the rest of the planning becomes much easier to break down.

When you're ready to compare actual builders rather than researching them one by one, Exhibitorly's CES 2027 comparison page lets you explore builders by CES experience and portfolio.