The result of the expansion will be a leading-edge platform providing space for new inspiration and fresh outlooks within the event industry.
Visionary start-ups wishing to present their innovations are invited, as are discerning trade visitors looking to reflect on these innovations – or interested in actively helping to shape them. One of the newcomers is itemdrop, the winner of the 2025 Captain MICE Future Award. With its newly developed cloakroom system, the guest’s bank card becomes a cloakroom token – without any need to download an app or register.
Partnership with the Founders Fight Club
BOE 2026 at Messe Dortmund will host the first-ever Founders Fight Night – an innovative live pitch event drawing start-ups, decision-makers and show-goers straight into the action. The new collaboration between the Founders Fight Club and Messe Dortmund will offer a deliberately wide variety of topics, ranging from experience tech and AR/VR installations to sensor-based touchpoint systems, AI planning tools, and green event solutions, as well as the creator economy for hybrid and youth-oriented aspects.
Founders Fight Night will see start-up founders go head-to-head in exciting live pitches on a specially designed stage in Hall 5 – relying only on rhetoric, personality and vision. They will have just a few minutes to impress the audience and the panel of judges with their business model. An interactive vote and valuable feedback from an expert panel of judges will decide who wins or loses.
The major players in the industry will also be listening closely in their search for new ideas and potential cooperation partners. A networking zone right beside the ring will bring investors, partners and pioneers together after the pitches.
“With Founders Fight Night, we’re creating a platform for courageous start-ups who are rethinking the exhibition and events business in multi-sensory, digital and human ways, adding fresh ideas.” said Sabine Loos, Managing Director of Westfalenhallen Unternehmensgruppe which owns and operates the Messe Dortmund venue.
In tandem with the new exhibitor area, an independent content platform is being created as a media extension to the latest start-up area and to deepen its subject-matter coverage. A central element will be the new FORMAT SHIFT podcast produced by Merchants Bloc in collaboration with BOE INTERNATIONAL. It will take conventional events, such as Oktoberfest, product launches, and city festivals, and view them in the context of current innovations, such as AI automation, the metaverse, or the creator economy. Host Jan C. Küster will talk to imaginative start-ups and experienced industry experts about how concepts, expectations and tools are changing in the event industry.
The new format is another example of how BOE INTERNATIONAL is also making the event industry accessible to young businesses, developers and creative minds. At the same time, show-goers will gain inspiring insights into innovations that have the potential to enrich their event activities.
Jan C. Küster, founder of Founders Fight Club, is also enthusiastic about the collaboration, saying: “We want to show technology as a tool not for replacing things but for enhancing experiences and making certain things more convenient to achieve, taking events to a new level. A perfect interplay of technology, creativity and the human touch creates experiences that can’t simply be scrolled over and ignored.”
