ILA Berlin 2026 closed with around 110,000 attendees and 765 exhibitors from 37 countries, continuing a recovery from 72,000 in 2022 and 95,000 in 2024. Two days after work on the New Generation Fighter ended, Airbus unveiled Team Gen 6 on the show floor, an eight-company German grouping with a parallel Spanish initiative alongside it. Uncrewed and autonomous systems dominated the exhibition, and ILA Berlin 2028 is already set for May 17-21, 2028.
June 10-14, 2026 | Berlin ExpoCenter Airport, Schönefeld | 765 exhibitors from 37 countries | ~110,000 attendees
ILA Berlin 2026 closed on June 14 with around 110,000 attendees at the Berlin ExpoCenter Airport grounds beside BER, up from 95,000 in 2024. Alongside them came 765 exhibitors from 37 countries, roughly 100 aircraft across the static and flying displays, and more than 400 speakers across some 300 sessions. Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened the show in person, and 330 delegations from 60 countries used it as a political meeting point as much as a commercial one.
Read the attendance across editions and the shape is a recovery, not a peak: roughly 72,000 in 2022, 95,000 in 2024, around 110,000 now. ILA's own framing is careful about this, describing increased attendance alongside record international participation rather than a record crowd. The show drew a quarter of a million visitors in its mid-2000s form, so the honest read is a trade-focused ILA rebuilding steadily rather than one breaking its own ceiling.
Those numbers alone would make 2026 a solid edition. But the reason this ILA will be remembered is what happened to Europe's most ambitious fighter programme in the 24 hours before the doors opened, and how industry positioned itself on the floor for what comes next.
ILA opened against a rupture. On June 9, the day before the show, work on the New Generation Fighter (NGF) came to an end after irreconcilable differences between Airbus Defence and Space, representing Germany and Spain, and Dassault, representing France. The NGF was the crewed fighter at the heart of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the programme meant to anchor European air power into mid-century. Its collapse landed squarely in the middle of Germany's flagship aerospace show.
The response came two days later. On June 11, Airbus Defence and Space unveiled Team Gen 6, an eight-company German industrial grouping formed around the next-generation fighter effort: Airbus Defence and Space, Autoflug, Diehl Defence, Hensoldt, Liebherr, MBDA Germany, MTU Aero Engines and Rohde & Schwarz. In parallel, Spanish industry stood up a similar initiative of six companies, again led through Airbus Defence and Space and joined by Indra, GMV, Grupo Oesía, Sener and ITP Aero. Between them the two groupings represent 13 unique companies, with Airbus sitting across both.
That Spanish half matters more than the early coverage suggested. Airbus DS spoke for both Germany and Spain inside NGF, so this is not a German national fallback. It is the surviving two-thirds of the original partnership organising to continue without the third, which is a materially different proposition when it comes to industrial capacity and political cover.
It is also worth being precise about what Team Gen 6 currently is. It is an industrial coalition positioning for work, not an awarded successor programme. Its position paper went to Chancellor Merz's office and to Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, urging Berlin to award contracts in full and on schedule by the second half of 2026 - an ask, which is not the same as a contract. Airbus framed the signing as a step for European sovereignty, while Airbus Defence chief Michael Schöllhorn was careful to say that FCAS as a wider system of systems remains strategically important. The fighter inside it, in Airbus's telling, simply needs a new industrial setup.
For anyone watching European defence exhibitions this year, the pattern is familiar: when a multinational programme stalls, national and bilateral coalitions move to fill the vacuum rather than wait for a procurement cycle. Eurosatory 2026 showed the same dynamic on the land side a week later. What made ILA distinct was the compression. A programme ended on Tuesday and a new industrial coalition was signed on Thursday, in front of the industry it needed to convince.
If the fighter reset was the headline, uncrewed and autonomous systems were the volume. Drones, counter-drone systems, autonomous platforms and the sensors that tie them together dominated both the exhibition halls and the conversation around them, to the point where the traditional split between "aircraft" and "systems" stopped being a useful way to walk the floor.
Quantum Systems used the show to unveil the Pulse P19, an aircraft built to operate autonomously and to carry interceptor drones for counter-drone missions. Boeing and Rheinmetall showed the MQ-28 Ghost Bat collaborative combat aircraft. Helsing and Rheinmetall were among the most visible exhibitors, and the Bundeswehr's German Heron TP flew in the display programme with live aerial imagery relayed to screens on the grounds. Hensoldt announced a spatial-AI partnership with SE3 Labs, one of several deals aimed at making sensor data machine-readable rather than merely available.
The more telling shift was in who was exhibiting. Alongside the established primes, the floor carried a visibly larger contingent of Ukrainian companies and younger technology firms, whose products are shaped by frontline iteration cycles measured in weeks. That mix is now a standing feature of European defence shows rather than a novelty, and it is changing what a competitive stand looks like for incumbents.
ILA's distinguishing feature among aerospace events is that it runs civil aviation, space and defence under one roof, and 2026 did not let the defence story crowd out the commercial one.
Airbus anchored the flight line with the A350, the A400M, the Beluga and the Racer high-speed helicopter demonstrator. Lufthansa put an A320neo in its 100 Years livery on static display for the trade days, and Emirates parked an A380 on the grounds for the full run. General Atomics AeroTec Systems brought the Do228 NXT for its trade show debut, following a maiden flight on May 2, 2026. The DLR flew its A310 ZeroG parabolic research aircraft. Leonardo gave the AW249 combat helicopter its global debut, and NATO's E-3A Sentry AWACS and the Bundeswehr's P-8A Poseidon filled out the static line.
On the sustainability side, the substance was narrower than the marketing but real. Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking partnerships and a Lufthansa-Airbus collaboration on lower-emission technologies were among the announcements, GE Aerospace presented hybrid-electric propulsion work reported at 9,200 metres, and Project LEIA addressed hybrid-electric onboard networks. Hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel were present in the conversation, but the concrete news at this edition sat with hybrid-electric propulsion and systems integration rather than with hydrogen airframes.
Space rounded out the third pillar, with European independent launch access, in-orbit servicing and Earth-observation capability all on the agenda. The ILA Talent Hub drew 3,500 participants, a recruiting signal worth noting in a sector competing hard for engineers.
The attendance curve makes ILA a strong branding stage again. But the delegation count is the number exhibitors should weigh: 330 official delegations from 60 countries is a procurement audience, not a footfall audience, and it is the reason a European industrial realignment got announced here rather than in a press release.
Three things carry forward from this edition.
First, the fighter question is now a contracting question. Whether Team Gen 6 secures the full, on-schedule awards it has asked for, and how the parallel Spanish initiative fits into whatever follows, will determine which suppliers end up inside a next-generation programme and which do not. That decision reshapes the tier-one and tier-two supply chain well beyond the 13 companies that have declared.
Second, uncrewed and counter-uncrewed capability is no longer a category on the floor plan. It is an expectation applied to every platform, sensor and communications system on display. Stands that treated it as a side exhibit read as dated next to those that built the whole pitch around it, a pattern also visible at Farnborough and DSEI.
Third, ILA's dual civil-defence character is an advantage in this market, not a dilution. The same suppliers now sell into both columns, and a show that puts a Lufthansa livery and a next-generation fighter coalition on the same grounds is where that overlap gets negotiated.
ILA Berlin runs on a biennial cycle, and the next edition is already scheduled: May 17-21, 2028 at Berlin ExpoCenter Airport. That is a May slot rather than June, which is worth flagging early for anyone building a 2028 European show calendar alongside Farnborough and the other major airshows.
Planning for it? Follow the ILA Berlin series page for dates, venue information and exhibitor updates as the 2028 edition fills out.
If the 2026 edition signalled anything, it is that European aerospace is being redrawn in real time. The attendance recovery was the headline. The reset underneath it was the story.
ILA Berlin 2026 ran from June 10 to 14, 2026 at Berlin ExpoCenter Airport in Schönefeld, next to Berlin Brandenburg (BER) Airport.
The 2026 edition drew around 110,000 attendees, up from 95,000 in 2024, alongside 765 exhibitors from 37 countries and 330 delegations from 60 countries. ILA describes the edition as having increased attendance and record international participation; it is not an all-time attendance record, as editions in the mid-2000s drew well over 200,000.
Work on the New Generation Fighter ended on June 9, 2026 after Airbus Defence and Space and Dassault failed to resolve their differences. Two days later, Airbus unveiled Team Gen 6, an eight-company German industrial grouping, with a parallel six-company Spanish initiative alongside it, positioning to carry a next-generation fighter forward without France.
Airbus defines Team Gen 6 as eight German companies: Airbus Defence and Space, Autoflug, Diehl Defence, Hensoldt, Liebherr, MBDA Germany, MTU Aero Engines and Rohde & Schwarz. Spanish industry is running a separate but closely aligned initiative of six companies: Airbus Defence and Space, Indra, GMV, Grupo Oesía, Sener and ITP Aero. Counting across both, 13 unique companies are involved.
ILA Berlin 2028 takes place May 17 to 21, 2028 at Berlin ExpoCenter Airport in Schönefeld, Germany.
ILA Berlin 2026 ran June 10-14 at Berlin ExpoCenter Airport in Schönefeld. The next edition is ILA Berlin 2028, May 17-21, 2028. See the full ILA Berlin 2026 show profile for dates, venue and exhibitor details, or browse the full trade show calendar.
