By the Exhibition Stall Design editorial team · Updated 1 October 2026 · 13 min read
Short answer
Allow 4–6 weeks for stall fabrication, counted back from the first day of build-up rather than the first show day. Lead time is driven by the stand, not the calendar: a 3-week floor, plus 1 week once the stand passes 24 sq.m, plus 2 once it passes 54, plus 2 for premium finishes and 2 for a double-decker. So a 36 sq.m custom stand at standard finish is a 4-week project, the same stand in premium finishes is 6, and a 72 sq.m double-decker is 7–9. Seven to ten days is the genuine urgent floor, with a simplified scope and no structural or rigging approvals in the path.
Key takeaways
- Submit drawings a week before the organiser's deadline; that week is the only free margin in the whole programme.
- The critical path is brief, layout, specification, organiser approval, production, inspection, dispatch. Everything else can run alongside it.
- A premium finish genuinely adds two weeks, because curing time cannot be shortened by adding crew.
- Lead time: 3 weeks base, +1 from 24 sq.m, +2 from 54 sq.m, +2 premium finish, +2 double-decker.
- Hold one buffer week between completion and dispatch, and refuse to spend it on an early change of mind.
- Count backwards from the first build-up day, not from the opening of the show. Build-up often starts two or three days earlier.
Stall Fabrication: weeks, not guesses
Every stall is built in our own workshops with CNC cutting, spray-paint booths and large-format printing, so quality and timelines stay in our control.
4–6 weeks is the realistic window, and it is worth understanding where it comes from. Rather than quoting an industry average, our planner computes it: a 3-week floor, plus 1 week once the stand passes 24 sq.m, plus 2 once it passes 54, plus 2 for premium finishes and 2 for a double-decker. The output is specific to your stand, which is the only version of the number worth planning against.
The numbers come out as 3 weeks at 12 sq.m, 4 at 36, 6 for a premium 36, 5 at 54 and 7–9 for a 72 sq.m double-decker. Where a permission or a certificate is involved — two storeys, rigging, a pavilion, restricted airspace — plan eight or more, because no amount of production speed shortens an approval.
What these weeks do not include is the time your own organisation takes to choose a show, release a budget and agree who signs. In most companies that is longer than the build, and it is the part nobody schedules. Space at a good show is usually booked three to six months ahead, because corner and island plots sell first and the position you get shapes the design brief that follows.
The countdown: weeks before the show, and what blocks what
Read this as the spine of the plan. Each row names a milestone, the week it has to close in, and the work that is standing still until it does. The weeks assume a standard-finish custom stall at 4–6 weeks, so shift them all earlier if your stand is bigger or more heavily finished.
Most exhibitors read a schedule like this as a list of tasks. Read it instead as a dependency chain. The question for any week is not "are we on track" but "is anything downstream of us already waiting", and the answer is in the third column.
| Weeks before show | Milestone that has to close | What stays stuck if it is late |
|---|---|---|
| 8–6 | Show chosen, space booked, area and open sides confirmed, budget band agreed | Everything. A stand cannot be designed before its footprint exists |
| 6 | Brief issued: goal, products, height limit, references, brand assets at print resolution | Concept work, which otherwise starts on assumptions and is later redone |
| 6 | Internal sign-off chain named: who approves, in what order, by when | Every approval date downstream, because an unnamed reviewer always appears late |
| 5 | Concept and layout approved by everyone who can reverse it, on one version number | 3D visualisation, costing and the technical drawing set |
| 5 | Electrical load calculated circuit by circuit and the services order drafted | The organiser's power order, which is cheaper before its deadline |
| 4 | Structural and fire certification arranged wherever the design needs it | Clearance at the gate, and any two-storey or hanging element |
| 4 | Print-ready artwork released at final size with bleed | Every printed surface, which is most of what a visitor actually sees |
| 3 | Production released to the workshop; long-lead items ordered | Fabrication, finishing and the pre-dispatch date |
| 2 | Staff roster, briefing notes and qualifying questions agreed | Lead quality, which is a training outcome rather than a design one |
| 1–2 | Pre-build or part-assembly in the workshop, snag list raised and closed | Dispatch. Nothing should load with snags still open |
| Build-up | Flooring, structure, electrical, graphics, cleaning, handover inspection | The handover, which then happens after doors have opened |
| Show day −1 | Staff briefed, stock placed, lead capture tested, snag list signed off | Day-one lead quality, which you do not get a second attempt at |
These columns describe the 4–6 week case. Every increment the formula adds moves each row earlier by the same amount, which is why a 9-week project has an entirely different shape rather than simply a longer version of this one.
What size does to the schedule
The relationship between area and weeks is not linear, and the table shows why. Storage is 10% of the plot to 18 sq.m and 15% beyond it, a meeting corner takes 5% unless you are genuinely hosting meetings, display is whatever is left, and staffing is area ÷ 9 with two as the floor.
Lead time is not only a production measure. A 9 sq.m stand needs 2 people and 3 weeks; a 100 sq.m stand needs 5 weeks and a team large enough to need a rota, breaks and a briefing. The second of those is a scheduling problem that no workshop can solve for you.
| Stall size | Storage | Staff | Visitors at once | Standard lead | Premium lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 sq.m | 1.2 sq.m | 2 | 4 | 3 weeks | 5 weeks |
| 24 sq.m | 3.6 sq.m | 3 | 7 | 4 weeks | 6 weeks |
| 36 sq.m | 5.4 sq.m | 4 | 11 | 4 weeks | 6 weeks |
| 54 sq.m | 8.1 sq.m | 6 | 17 | 5 weeks | 7 weeks |
| 72 sq.m | 10.8 sq.m | 8 | 23 | 5 weeks | 7 weeks |
| 100 sq.m | 15 sq.m | 12 | 32 | 5 weeks | 7 weeks |
Size alone gives the standard column. Finish and structure are separate increments — 2 weeks for premium, 2 for a double-decker — and they are additive, which is how a 5-week 72 sq.m stand becomes a 9-week one.
What has to be sequential, and what does not
A project this length is mostly waiting, and waiting can be used. Hire items, graphics, flooring, giveaways, travel and lead capture are all independent of the build. The sequence that genuinely cannot be compressed is short: brief, layout, specification, approval, release, fabrication, inspection, dispatch.
One task reliably drags everything else with it: final artwork. The printing is a matter of hours; the approval is a matter of weeks, because it sits with a team that does not know the fascia, the brand wall, the backlit panels and the counter graphics are all waiting for them. Organiser approval is the only close competitor.
Manage the chain, not the task list. Pull approval and artwork forward, let furniture, giveaways and travel drift, and accept that a slip on the spine is a slip of the whole project — because nothing sits between dispatch and the first build-up hour.
01
Strictly in order
This is the part of the project with no slack in it. Each step consumes the output of the one before, so an early start is not progress — it is a guess that will be corrected later with material already cut.
02
Parallel — run these alongside
Work out which tasks nothing else depends on, and let them float. Furniture selection, giveaway ordering, hotel bookings and staff briefing material all fall here — useful, necessary, and completely harmless if they slip by a few days.
03
Order these before the design settles
Identify the two or three items that cannot be bought locally at short notice and commit to them first. In practice that means screens and LED, anything imported, and the steel behind a raised or two-storey structure.
04
The immovable column
Organiser submission deadlines, the return of stamped approvals, power and services orders, build-up access hours, night-work permission and the dismantle window. These dates are handed to you. The only lever you hold is submitting earlier than required.
05
The single compressor
Everything printed — and most of what a visitor looks at is printed — is downstream of one approval. Give that approval its own date, ahead of production release, and the rest of the critical path stops being fragile.
Printing a brand wall takes hours. Getting final artwork signed off takes weeks.
A 9 sq.m stand and a 100 sq.m double-decker are not the same project
At 9 sq.m the project is small enough to be mostly administration: 7.6 sq.m of display, 2 people, one van, 3 weeks — and the weeks are spent queueing for approval and artwork rather than for fabrication. The failure mode here is a careless brief rather than a tight timeline.
At 100 sq.m with a second storey the project changes category. 80 sq.m downstairs, meetings upstairs, a certified staircase, a separate structural submission, floor-loading calculations and 12 people to roster. 7 weeks standard and 9 premium by the formula, and eight or more in practice because the engineer and the organiser both sit outside your schedule.
The difference that matters is not the number of weeks but what each week is for. On a small stand the weeks are a queue. On a large one they are genuine work in sequence — engineering, then approval, then fabrication of load-bearing elements, then a longer build-up that often needs night shifts to finish inside the organiser's window.
| Small: 9 sq.m | Mid: 36 sq.m | Large: 100 sq.m double-decker | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead time, standard finish | 3 weeks | 4 weeks | 7 weeks |
| Storage allowance | 0.9 sq.m | 5.4 sq.m | 15 sq.m |
| Staff on the floor | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| Extra approvals in the path | Fascia name and declared power load | Drawings, load and fire certificates | Structural certificate, staircase and floor loading |
| Where the time actually goes | Artwork and organiser approval | Fabrication and finishing | Engineering, approval and a longer build-up |
| Freight | One vehicle | One or two vehicles | Several vehicles, sequenced into the dock |
Nothing in this table is a penalty for booking late. The premium rows reflect coats of paint that have to dry and veneer that has to press, which is physics rather than scheduling.
Exhibiting soon? Let's build your stall.
Where the weeks actually go missing
Projects rarely slip by a month. They slip by four separate weeks, each of which felt reasonable at the time, and the fourth one arrives during build-up. Every item below has caused a late stand, and every one of them is visible in advance if somebody is reading the dependency chain rather than the task list.
Watch for sub-contracted builds with no quality control and non fire-retardant materials rejected at the venue. Neither shows up in a quote and both show up in a schedule, usually in the last fortnight when there is no time left to respond to them.
- Hidden extras for electrical, carpet or dismantling
- Sub-contracted builds with no quality control
- Non fire-retardant materials rejected at the venue
- Late arrival on site that eats into build-up time
- A show date that moves earlier while the brief, the approvals and the artwork deadline all stay where they were
- A brief that arrives in pieces across a fortnight, so the concept is revised three times before it is ever reviewed
- A resubmission after a rejected organiser drawing, which costs a working week nobody had allowed for
- Site passes applied for after the venue's cut-off, which turns a crew into spectators for half a day
- Long-lead AV or lighting ordered after production release, in the busiest weeks of the show season, when stock is already committed elsewhere
- Payment milestones lagging the production schedule, so finished work waits in a workshop over an invoice
- Internal approval with more reviewers than the schedule assumed — each additional person who can say no is a week, not a day
- No buffer week, or a buffer week spent early on a change that could have waited
The immovable dates in every programme
A workshop can tell you exactly how long the build takes. Nobody can tell you how long an organiser will take to stamp a drawing, when the hall will let your vehicle in, or whether night work is permitted. Those are the variables that decide the date, and all of them are outside the fabricator's control and yours.
Treat this list as the frame of the schedule rather than as paperwork inside it. The one move available to you is submitting ahead of time, which converts a potential resubmission from a crisis into an inconvenience.
- Power, internet, water and compressed air orders — cheaper before the deadline, and occasionally unavailable after it
- Rigging inspection slots, booked across every exhibitor who wants to hang something that week
- The exhibitor badge and pass cut-off, after which your crew is a visitor rather than a contractor
- The venue's own event calendar, which decides how much time there is between the previous show moving out and yours moving in
- The return of the stamped approval, which is a queue shared with every other exhibitor in the hall
- Forklift and dock availability, which is shared and therefore queued rather than scheduled
- Insurance documentation in the name and format the organiser specifies, which takes longer to correct than to produce
- Structural and fire certification, which cannot be produced retrospectively for material already standing in the hall
If your show is in 7 to 10 days
A week to ten days is genuinely workable, provided the project is reshaped rather than rushed. Stock system frames, same-day graphics, finishes that are done when they are assembled, and night shifts where the hall permits them. The stand will be good; it will not be the stand a six-week programme produces.
At the urgent end, the limit is material and finish rather than labour. A workshop can run night shifts; it cannot make veneer or PU paint cure faster, and it cannot conjure a laminate that is out of stock in the city. That is why an urgent build is a system or modular build with fabric graphics — those are the materials that go from order to finished in days rather than weeks.
Below ten days the limiting factor stops being the workshop and becomes the organiser. A stamped drawing approval, a rigging permission, a structural certificate or a services order cannot be accelerated by paying more. If your stand needs any of them, the urgent route is closed regardless of how fast anyone can build — which is why the first question on an urgent enquiry should be about the venue and the date, not about the design.
- A proper pre-build. You will inspect photographs, or you will inspect on site, and neither is as good as standing in front of it
- Revision rounds. One concept, one round of changes, then the design is frozen and stays frozen
- A second opinion. Decisions get made once, by one person, and are not revisited
- Custom joinery and bespoke forms — you build from what the system and the available stock can do, not from a blank page
- Premium finishes: veneer, PU paint and anything that needs a spray booth and curing time
- Choice of graphic substrate — whatever prints, dries and mounts inside the window
- Colour accuracy on anything backlit or on fabric, because there is no time to proof on the real substrate
- Rehearsal and test time, which is the first thing a compressed schedule eats and the last thing you should let it
Five dates to fix before anything else
Do this once, on paper, before anybody briefs a designer. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a schedule you are managing and a schedule that is managing you.
The output is five dates: build-up day one, dispatch, production release, organiser submission, and artwork due. Everything else on the project can be arranged around those five, and any conversation about scope that threatens one of them is a conversation about the show date instead.
01
1. Count back from the first build hour
Find the first hour you are allowed into the hall and treat that as the show date for planning purposes. It is usually two or three days before doors open, and planning from the opening day quietly hands you a deadline you have already missed.
02
2. Use the formula, not an average
Count the weeks the formula gives for your area and finish, then count that many back from build-up day one. The date you land on is when the brief has to be issued — not when you start thinking about issuing it.
03
3. Treat the approval queue as fixed
Work back from the date stamped drawings are due, not from the date you would prefer to submit. That deadline usually lands earlier than production needs it to, and when the two disagree the organiser wins every time.
04
4. Put artwork ahead of production release
Artwork should be finished before the workshop needs it, not when the workshop needs it. The gap is your protection, because the one thing you can predict about brand approval is that it will take a round more than expected.
05
5. Do not spend the buffer early
Hold a week between planned completion and dispatch. Do not spend it on a change of mind in week two, because it is the week that absorbs a rejected drawing, a failed delivery or a material that turns out to be out of stock.
Next step: your own dated countdown
Share your show name, city, build-up and show dates, stall area, number of open sides and two or three reference images. We will come back with a concept, an itemised scope and a dated countdown for your show — the table above, filled in with your weeks instead of generic ones — usually within 48 hours.
In-house fabrication, organiser drawings and approvals handled, design free with a confirmed fabrication order, and a single named project manager from the brief through to dismantle — which is what makes a countdown a commitment rather than a document.
Frequently asked questions
Can you work to a date we have already missed?+
Sometimes. The first two questions are whether the organiser still accepts submissions and whether the stock exists in that city, and both can usually be answered within an hour of hearing the venue and the date.
How far in advance should I book stall fabrication?+
4–6 weeks for a typical project, counted back from the first day of build-up. Apply the formula to your own stand rather than to an average: a 3-week floor, plus 1 week once the stand passes 24 sq.m, plus 2 once it passes 54, plus 2 for premium finishes and 2 for a double-decker.
How long does a double-decker take?+
7 weeks at standard finish and 9 at premium by the formula. Plan on eight or more in practice, because a structural engineer's certificate and a separate organiser review of the two-storey drawing both sit on the critical path and neither can be accelerated.
What happens if the organiser rejects our drawing?+
You resubmit, and the round trip typically costs a working week. That is the main argument for submitting early rather than on the deadline, since a week of margin in front of the submission absorbs a rejection without touching production.
Which tasks can slip without damaging the schedule?+
The ones nothing depends on: furniture selection, giveaways, plants, hotels and staff briefing material. Protect the spine instead — brief, layout, specification, approval, production release, inspection, dispatch.
Does the city change the lead time?+
Not the production weeks, but it changes transport time, crew availability in a busy show week and whether night-shift labour is permitted. Those affect the last fortnight rather than the formula.
What is the shortest time you can work with?+
Seven to ten days, with a simplified scope: a system or modular layout from stock, fabric or vinyl graphics, no curing finishes, and no element needing structural or rigging approval. Share the date and venue first, because feasibility depends on the organiser's deadlines as much as on production.
Do I count the weeks from the show date or from build-up?+
From the first hour of build-up. That is often two or three days before doors open, so counting from the opening date quietly gives you a deadline you have already passed.
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