Call for papers topic choice: how to spot in-demand themes early

EXPO REAL, described by Messe München as Europe's largest trade fair for real estate and investment, closed in Munich on 7 October 2026 with 1,777 exhibitors from 37 countries and 42,000 participants from 74 countries. For the first time it had a dedicated focus on investable infrastructure, called InfrastructureNow, which the organiser had announced on 20 April 2026, 24 weeks before the fair opened. For speakers, a new theme area like this shows which expertise programme organisers are looking for right now, and because it becomes public months before the fair, there is time to align your talk topic and abstract with it. If you read the announcements of trade fairs and conferences as a list of demand, you can tailor your submissions for next year's editions to exactly these themes.

EXPO REAL 2026 in figures: more exhibitors and infrastructure for the first time

On its facts and figures page, the organiser lists 1,777 exhibitors from 37 countries, 42,000 participants from 74 countries and a total area of 76,000 square metres in seven halls for the edition held in Munich from 5 to 7 October. The final report for EXPO REAL 2025 gave 1,742 exhibitors from 34 countries, so the number of exhibitors grew slightly. In its report of 7 October, the trade magazine Logistik Heute quotes Stefan Rummel, CEO of Messe München, as saying that in an ambivalent market environment slight growth meets hard reality.

According to the organiser, the most strongly represented exhibitors were real estate service providers as well as investors and project developers, explicitly including developers of infrastructure. For speakers with experience in this field, that is a first sign that an audience is forming there in the very first year.

InfrastructureNow: why EXPO REAL opened a new theme area

Messe München explained the expansion in its press release of 20 April 2026. The need for investment in infrastructure is growing, the release says, because in many places the public sector can no longer cover the spending alone, while the new business field is attracting great attention from investors as well as financiers.

In the German original of the release, Claudia Boymanns, Exhibition Director of EXPO REAL, says the fair decided on the expansion because of the growing interest of investors and project developers in infrastructure. The new focus, she explains, is on energy as well as digital and social infrastructure, and the release names data centres and wind farms as examples, along with schools and nurseries. Investable infrastructure was also to feature strongly in the conference programme, complemented by a special show on investment strategies and suitable projects that looks at operation as well as construction. On the programme page the area appears under the name InfrastructureNow, and according to the Logistik Heute report the new area also covered defence.

New theme areas show which expertise programmes are looking for

An organiser that opens a new theme area has to fill it in its first year with exhibitors and formats, and above all with people on stage. EXPO REAL gave a reason for doing so that goes to the heart of the matter for speakers: if investors and project developers are interested in the subject, they are also the people sitting in the audience. Anyone with expertise in data centres, energy projects or the financing of school buildings will find in such an announcement a public description of demand, months before next year's programmes are planned.

A new theme area promises no speaker a slot, and at large trade fairs in particular many slots go to people whom the organisers or exhibitors already know. But if you pick up the terms of the announcement in your title and abstract and back them with a project of your own, you make it easy for programme organisers to see that your talk belongs in the new area. What a programme team weighs up when selecting talks is described in our article What a programme committee looks for.

Reading programmes for your call for papers topic choice: four signals

For your topic choice, it is worth going through the announcements and programme pages of the events your ideal clients attend once a year, systematically. Four signals are particularly revealing, and EXPO REAL 2026 shows each of them.

1. New areas and new stages: Alongside InfrastructureNow, the EXPO REAL programme page lists a new Urban Future Stage in hall C1. Where a fair sets up a new stage, there is a good chance it will be looking for programme for it the following year as well.
2. The terms of the announcement: The April release explicitly refers to the operation of investable infrastructure, alongside construction. An abstract that picks up such terms shows the programme team at first glance where it belongs.
3. The target groups named: In the summer, the fair named investors, project developers, operators, financiers, municipalities and political decision-makers as the people the new area brings together, in a further release. Your abstract should say which of these groups will do something differently after your talk.
4. Who allocates the programme: Whether an event has an open call for papers, curates its programme itself or allocates slots through exhibitors and partners decides your route onto the stage. At EXPO REAL this is the most important finding, and the next section covers it.

How to develop a topic from your expertise that suits a stage in the first place is explained in Finding your speaking topic.

The EXPO REAL conference programme: stages without an open call for papers

On the EXPO REAL programme pages we found no call for papers, no form and no deadline for applying as a speaker, and the pages refer only to a general contact. According to the organiser, the programme ran on ten stages and in numerous conference rooms, including the Investment Forum, the Asset Class Forum, the Discussion & Networking Forum, an Exhibitor Stage and the stages of the theme areas. For one of the forums, the page states explicitly that it is curated by EXPO REAL. According to its exhibitor brochure, the fair also offers exhibitors forums for thought leadership and conference rooms for workshops and seminars.

For you, this means that the obvious route onto an EXPO REAL stage leads through an exhibiting organisation, for example a client, an economic region, an association or your employer, whose stand comes with programme space. According to the brochure, the exhibitor registration deadline was 19 March 2026, just over four weeks before the fair made the new focus public. We assume that exhibitors plan their presence in the weeks before that deadline, which is why winter is the best time to talk to them about a joint programme slot.

Schedule for EXPO REAL 2027 and the calls for papers that follow, with open assumptions

The following calculation is an example based on assumptions and not information from the fair. According to the organiser, the next EXPO REAL opens on 4 October 2027 and again runs for three days. Assume the fair follows the rhythm of 2026. Then the exhibitor registration deadline will again fall around mid-March, and new focus areas will become public around 24 weeks before the opening, which is around 19 April 2027. Counting back from the fair, your schedule can look like this:

1. October and November 2026: review the announcements and programme pages of the trade fairs and conferences that suit your ideal clients, and note which areas are new. How to find such events is explained in How to find the right conferences.
2. By the end of December 2026: write an abstract for the new theme area that picks up the terms of the announcement and cites a project of your own as evidence.
3. January and February 2027: talk to two or three exhibitors you know about a joint programme slot, before their registration is due.
4. From mid-April 2027: read the announcements for 2027 and adapt the abstract to new or changed focus areas.
5. Throughout the year: submit the same topic in parallel to industry conferences with an open call for papers, whose deadlines you will find in the call for papers deadlines calendar.

How many submissions you need for a new topic depends on your acceptance rate. Our founder Marin Niehues started out below 2 per cent with his own submissions and now reaches around 10 per cent. Assume you want to be on three stages with the new topic in 2027 and reach a rate of 10 per cent. Then you need around 30 submissions, while at 5 per cent it would already be 60. Whether a well-chosen topic raises your rate is best measured against your own replies, and how much lead time a call for papers generally requires is covered in our article on the call for papers timeline.