Speaker agency: what Germany's 2025 event market means for experts

A speaker agency for experts works in a market that keeps growing, according to the Meeting & EventBarometer 2025/26 published on 6 May 2026 by EVVC and GCB together with the German National Tourist Board (DZT): 395.1 million people attended an event in Germany in person in 2025, 4.6 per cent more than the 377.6 million in 2024. The number of in-person events stayed constant at 2.02 million, so the growth comes from larger events, and business events with 1,000 or more participants grew in almost every size class by between 0.2 and 4.6 per cent. For experts who want to get on a stage themselves, this means that the number of events is the same while each stage reaches more people, and because the number of events is not growing, a planned submission pays off even more than before. A speaker agency takes over this planning if you do not want to do it yourself.

The Meeting & EventBarometer 2025/26 in figures

The Meeting & EventBarometer was initiated by EVVC, the European Association of Event Centres, the GCB German Convention Bureau and the German National Tourist Board (DZT). The European Institute for Conference Business (EITW) produced the study for the 20th time in 2025 on behalf of the three partners. The press release of 6 May 2026 describes it as the only study that examines the entire event market in Germany, the congress sector as well as the event sector.

The figures therefore cover the whole market, and trade conferences with a call for papers make up a part of it that the press release does not quantify. They still show the direction: in-person attendances rose to 395.1 million with an unchanged 2.02 million events, and according to the release the trend is towards larger business events. Business events in almost all size classes from 1,000 participants upwards grew by between 0.2 and 4.6 per cent in 2025.

There is also a change among the organisers. According to the barometer, 88.3 per cent of all organising bodies come from Germany, and the share of foreign organisers rose to 11.7 per cent in 2025 from 9.9 per cent the year before. Among their countries of origin, Austria leads ahead of the United Kingdom and the USA, and Switzerland and the Netherlands follow in fourth and fifth place respectively. Companies form the most important organiser group at 52.5 per cent. On sentiment, the release states that 87 per cent of organisers rate the event situation as (very) good, while 61 per cent of venue providers rate their bookings over the course of the year the same way.

A speaker agency for experts handles research, abstract and submission

A speaker agency for experts is a service provider that gets specialists onto conference stages by researching suitable conferences and writing abstracts, which it submits to the programme committees in the expert's name. A speaker bureau is different: it places well-known speakers with organisers for a fee and needs a finished profile to do so. Anyone who first wants to reach the stage looks for the first kind, and how the two models differ in daily practice is described in our article Speaker agency or speaker directory.

For this work, the market the barometer describes is the raw material. Each of the 2.02 million events has an organiser who has to fill a programme, and at trade conferences that runs through a call for papers. A call for papers is a conference's public invitation through which speakers apply for a place in the programme with an abstract, and how the process is structured is explained in What is a call for papers. The agency follows these invitations and keeps to the deadlines so that the abstract is ready in time and fits the theme of the conference in question.

More audience per event: what the barometer means for speakers

An average can be calculated from the published figures. The press release does not give it itself. Dividing 395.1 million attendances by 2.02 million events gives around 196 attendances per event, and for 2024 the figure is around 187 with the same number of events. This is an average across all sizes and types of event, from the small seminar to the trade fair, in which the differences between formats even out, and it is therefore a guide to the market that says nothing about individual conferences.

For you as a speaker, this leads to an assumption you can test yourself: if the audience per event grows without new programme slots appearing, a single slot becomes more valuable, and programme committees can choose more selectively among the submissions. The barometer evidences the audience growth and the constant number of events, while the conclusion about selection is our own interpretation, which you can check against your own experience with programme committees. It argues for tailoring every abstract to the programme of the individual conference.

When a speaker agency pays off for conference talks

Whether a speaker agency is worth it depends on how many talks you want to give in a year, and the calculation is simple. Our founder Marin Niehues started out below 2 per cent with his submissions and now reaches around 10 per cent, and Sessionize listed him as Most Active Speaker in 2024 and 2025. Assume you want to give six talks a year and also reach around 10 per cent, then you need around 60 submissions. If you allow two hours per submission for researching the conference and tailoring the abstract, including the form and the follow-up, you arrive at 120 hours, three full working weeks.

For one talk a year the calculation is smaller. Around ten submissions and twenty hours fit into your own calendar, and because you only have to watch a few conferences for a single talk a year, approaching an organiser directly is often sufficient, as long as your topic fits its programme. How the effort of the two routes compares is covered in How to get on a conference stage. The two hours per submission are an assumption, and you can repeat the calculation with your own figure.

How to find a speaker agency that suits experts on trade stages

Five questions help when choosing, and you can put them to any agency:

1. Who does the agency work for: does it submit for you in your name, or does it place well-known speakers with organisers?
2. Which figures does it disclose: an agency that states its acceptance rate can be checked against it, while a plain list of stage names offers no such yardstick.
3. On the abstract: a text written afresh for each conference has better chances than a template sent to every organiser.
4. What you approve: you should see every submission beforehand and confirm every acceptance yourself.
5. Which languages it covers: with 11.7 per cent foreign organisers, the part of the market in which abstracts in English are in demand is growing.

An overview of providers and models is given in the article Speaker agencies in Germany.

International organisers: abstracts in English belong in your planning

The rise in the share of foreign organisers from 9.9 to 11.7 per cent is the barometer figure that bears most directly on the work on your abstract, because it shows that the circle of programme committees you can submit to is widening beyond the national border, even if a share of just over a tenth of the market remains modest. Austria leads the countries of origin of the foreign organisers, and anyone submitting to an organiser outside the German-speaking region will, as a rule, write the abstract in English. If you have already worked out your topic in German, you write an abstract with the same evidence and a title that works in English. What matters here is covered in Writing a conference abstract in English.