You may be familiar with the huge IAAPA Expo show which is held in Orlando, Florida each November, but there is also a European version which was launched in Vienna in 2005 as the Euro Attractions Show.
IAAPA Expo Europe is held in a different European country each year. Recent hosts have included Paris (2019), Barcelona (2021 & 2025), Prague (2023) and Amsterdam (2024), but for 2026 the show returned to the 2022 host city of London and the ExCel London Exhibition Centre.
Usually we only visit ExCel London for the annual EAG Expo amusement trade show at the start of each year. That show will be back in January 2027 – rebranded as EAG 360 – but it has a much narrower focus on coin-op and redemption, with a smattering of gaming through the London Casino & Gaming Show which runs alongside EAG.
IAAPA Expo Europe covers many more areas of the amusements sector and brings in a much larger number of exhibitors and attendees from all around the world, as is obvious from the relative sizes of the two shows.
EAG 2026 occupied three of the halls on the north side at ExCel London – N1, N2 & N3. By contrast, IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 is spread across twenty-eight halls – S1-S23 and N19-N23.
IAAPA Expo Europe isn’t open to the general public in the same way EAG is. Getting into the show required either paid entry – with tickets around the £200 ($260) mark – or a complementary ticket from one of the vendors or show sponsors.
As you may imagine, covering the entirety of the show floor and all the vendors presents something of a challenge. Merely walking up and down all the aisles without stopping, just to see who was exhibiting, takes around three hours. How do we know? Well, we did it, and recorded it all for you. You can save your feet and watch as we walk the entire show floor at the end of this report.
IAAPA Expo Europe includes exhibitors from many different aspects of the amusement and entertainment business.
There are the more obvious ones such as video games distributors, bowling equipment manufacturers, electronic darts systems, VR simulator designers, cashless systems, crowd management systems and catering products. But there are also larger scale projects, such as rollercoaster designers and component suppliers, water park construction companies, giant inflatables, LED lighting manufacturers, animatronic creatures, go-kart cars and track builders, giant rope climbing equipment makers, carousel rides, and even theme park transportation.
Whereas the Orlando show has a large outdoor area where ride manufacturers can exhibit and demonstrate their products, the smaller size of the European show resulted in lots of scale models or photos/videos of their designs in action.
The most common types of equipment were probably photo booths, giant inflatables, ball bowlers, and, for some reason, animatronic dinosaurs.
Here’s a look at some of those from the show floor.
You may have noticed the marked lack of any pinball coverage so far. That’s because pinball was only represented by two companies – Stern Pinball and Bitronic. Stern Pinball had their own stand, while their UK distributor, Electrocoin, had some Stern machines on their stand too.
Here’s their relative locations on the show floor:
Stern had quite a large contingent, with Seth Davis, Gary Stern, John Buscaglia, Doug Skor, Lloyd Dortant plus Stéphane and Joana from High Voltage Pinball.
This was the first time Stern’s new Fallout game had been shown in Europe, so there was extra interest in the Pro and Premium models they had in their line-up of ten machines.
As usual, there were Insider Connected leaderboards for each title and a central monitor displaying the top scores.
Over at the Electrocoin stand, pinball was just one of the coin-op attractions on display, though it was probably the most popular.
Electrocoin also had a Pro and Premium of the Fallout game, as well as Pro models of Transformers and Pokémon.
There was one additional Stern machine on the show floor. This was a rather lonely Transformers Premium on the Funk Bowling stand, for no obvious reason.
The only other pinball was over on the Bitronic stand.
We had dared to hope Bitronic might have brought their Tokyo Perfect Drift machine, or even a newer design, but sadly Super Hoop was the only pinball they had.
The second block of halls – N19-N23 – was across ExCel London’s central corridor.
These north side halls were much quieter than those on the south side, with fewer exhibitors and much of the space dedicated to seminars and presentations.
A chunk of the space was given over to the IAAPA Theater where awards and social gatherings took place. When we were there it was the Women in the Industry Networking Lunch. The space was sponsored by Angry Birds.
Now we bring you the chance to see the whole of the show floor, including both blocks of halls, all in 4K UHD video.
Because it is so large, we have split up the south side halls’ coverage into three videos, while the north halls’ N19-N23 have their own video. You can either watch them all here, or view our IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 playlist over on YouTube.
Either way, we hope you enjoy them.
Main Halls – Part One
Main Halls – Part Two
Main Halls – Part Three
North Halls
That concludes our coverage of IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 in London. We hope you enjoyed our reporting and we’ll be back at the ExCel London in January 2027 for the rebranded EAG 360 show. Free tickets for this are available right now from the show’s website.
Next year, IAAPA Expo Europe 2027 will run from 20th-24th September and will be hosted by the Austrian city of Vienna.
