IMTS 2026 runs 14-19 September at McCormick Place, Chicago. Your complete guide to registration costs and free international entry, hours by building, the reshuffled floor plan, the new Industrial AI Arena, and what a booth actually costs.
| Detail | Info | Detail | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📅 Dates | 14-19 September 2026 | 🏛️ Location | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| ⚙️ Focus | Manufacturing technology - machining, automation, additive, metrology, software | 🏢 Venue | McCormick Place |
| 🔁 Frequency | Biennial (even years) | 🌍 2026 exhibitors | 1,800+ expected across 1.2M+ sq ft |
| 👥 Last attendance | 89,020 registrants from 110 countries (2024) | 🎟️ Access | Paid US badge; free for international visitors, students and educators |
Quick Answer: When is IMTS 2026 and what is it? IMTS 2026 - the International Manufacturing Technology Show - runs at . It is the largest trade show in the Western Hemisphere, held every two years, covering machining and metal removal, automation and robotics, additive manufacturing, fabricating and lasers, tooling and workholding, quality assurance and metrology, and manufacturing software. : East and West are open 09:00-17:00, North and South 10:00-18:00, all Central Time. and rises after that; , and active-duty and retired military get 50% off. AMT expects . For scale, the 2024 edition finished with 1,737 exhibitors, 1,226,523 square feet and 89,020 registrants from 110 countries.
If you searched "IMTS 2026," you are probably one of two people: a shop owner, engineer or buyer trying to work out how to cover 1.2 million square feet in the days you can spare, or a supplier weighing whether a booth in Chicago is the best money you will spend this year. Both questions have concrete answers, and most of them come down to knowing the floor plan before you arrive - because the 2026 plan is not the one you memorised in 2024.
This guide covers the schedule and the building-by-building hours, what registration actually costs and who gets in free, how the show floor has been reorganised, the new Industrial AI Arena and the Main Stage AI programme, the rest of the 2026 attractions, the nine-conference education programme, what a booth costs, and how to get to McCormick Place. For the structured event listing - dates, venue, official site and exhibitor platform - see our IMTS 2026 show page.
IMTS - the International Manufacturing Technology Show - is owned and produced by AMT, The Association For Manufacturing Technology, and has run biennially in Chicago for decades. It is the largest manufacturing technology trade show in the Western Hemisphere and the anchor event for the US market: if a machine tool, control, robot, cutting tool or metrology system is being sold into American factories, it is almost certainly on this floor.
The show is organised into sectors rather than a single undifferentiated hall. There are 10 established technology sectors, plus the new Industrial AI Arena for 2026 - eleven distinct areas to navigate:
Plus one more area, which IMTS lists separately rather than as one of the ten:
Two of those sector names carry partner branding worth understanding. Additive Manufacturing is "accelerated by Formnext" and Automation is "accelerated by SPS" - both are collaborations with the European flagship events in those categories, which is how IMTS has been importing depth in its two fastest-moving sectors rather than growing them from scratch.
The scale is the point. The 2024 edition put 1,226,523 square feet of manufacturing technology on the floor from 1,737 exhibitors, drew 89,020 registrants from 110 countries, and displayed over 40 million pounds of machinery - a record. For 2026, AMT expects over 1,800 exhibitors across more than 1.2 million square feet, plus over 3,000 conference registrants.
AMT's own 2026 attendance projections have varied across its pages, so the 2024 registrant actual is the firmer number to plan against.
IMTS 2026 runs Monday 14 to Saturday 19 September 2026 - six days.
The single most important operational detail, and the one most first-time attendees get wrong: hours are not the same across the campus. McCormick Place buildings open and close on two different clocks.
| Building | Exhibit hall hours (CT) | Registration opens |
|---|---|---|
| East Building, Level 3 | 09:00-17:00 | 08:00 |
| West Building | 09:00-17:00 | 08:00 |
| North Building | 10:00-18:00 | 08:00 |
| South Building | 10:00-18:00 | 08:00 |
| Smartforce Student Summit (North, Level 2) | 09:00-15:00 Mon-Fri; 09:00-13:00 Sat | 08:00 |
What this means in practice: the first hour of every day (09:00-10:00) only East and West are trading - Tooling & Workholding, Fabricating & Lasers, Quality Assurance, Software, and Components/Cleaning/Environmental. The last hour (17:00-18:00) only North and South are - Metal Removal, Additive, Automation, Gear Generation, Abrasive Machining, and the Industrial AI Arena.
Build your days around that. If your priority list is machine tools and robots, arriving at 09:00 buys you nothing in the South Building; use that hour for tooling and metrology in West and East, then move. If you are chasing software and inspection vendors, do them early and keep your evenings free.
Unlike most European trade fairs, IMTS does not gate entry behind trade credentials - anyone who registers and pays can get a badge. But every attendee on the show floor must be badged, and the pricing tiers do a lot of work.
| Category | Price | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | $85 | before 3 September 2026 (higher after) |
| Group (5 or more) | $65 per person | deadline was 1 August 2026 |
| International visitor | Free | - |
| Student / educator | Free | - |
| Media | Free | - |
| Military (active duty and retired) | 50% off | - |
| Exhibitor staff | $60 | before 3 September 2026 |
| Distributor | $60 | before 3 September 2026 |
Three things worth acting on:
International registration is complimentary. IMTS registers international visitors from over 100 countries free of charge. If you are travelling in from outside the US, do not pay the $85 - register through the international pathway.
The group rate has already closed. The 5-or-more $65 tier expired on 1 August. If you are sending a team, the individual $85 rate before 3 September is now the cheapest route, and on-site registration costs more again.
Visas, not registration, are the tight deadline. IMTS's own international guidance warns that a US visitor visa can take as long as three to four months to come through. If you still need one, time is now extremely short - check your local consulate's current appointment availability before you commit to non-refundable flights or hotels.
A standard badge covers the show floor for the full six days. Conference registration is separate and purchased individually, but conference pricing already includes exhibit hall access. If you know you will attend a conference, add it through the registration system rather than paying twice - IMTS credits the exhibit-hall registration you have already bought.
Domestic advance badges are mailed out (shipping starts in August); you can also collect on arrival at badge pick-up points in every building. Backpacks are allowed in McCormick Place and on the show floor, and there is coat and baggage check at two locations.
AMT reorganised the floor for 2026, and the changes are significant enough that a 2024 mental map will actively mislead you.
| Building | What's there in 2026 |
|---|---|
| South, Level 3 | Metal Removal, Additive Manufacturing (accelerated by Formnext) |
| West, Level 3 | Tooling & Workholding Systems - the whole building |
| East, Level 3 | Fabricating & Lasers, Quality Assurance, Software, Components/Cleaning/Environmental |
| North, Level 3 | Automation (accelerated by SPS), Gear Generation, Abrasive Machining/Sawing/Finishing, Industrial AI Arena |
| North, Level 2 | Smartforce Student Summit (Hall C) |
The three moves that matter:
As of AMT's floor plan release, over 1 million square feet was already booked at around 85-90% of capacity, so the plan above is close to final.
The headline addition is the Industrial AI Arena in the North Building, Level 3 - a dedicated area rather than AI scattered across other vendors' booths. It brings together dozens of AI-focused exhibitors, including Sandia National Laboratories, many of them new to IMTS, organised around the problems manufacturers actually bring: quality and inspection, process optimisation, downtime reduction, cybersecurity and safety.
Paired with it is the IMTS Industrial AI Conference, a one-day, practitioner-focused programme on Wednesday 16 September. AMT's framing is explicitly anti-hype - Ryan Kelly, AMT's vice president of technology, has said the conference exists "to help manufacturers move beyond experimentation and understand where AI can deliver measurable business value."
What it costs: the advance rate is $450 through 31 August, rising to the $500 onsite rate from 1 September. That covers all conference sessions, lunch, and exhibit hall access for all six days - so if you were going to buy an $85 badge anyway, the real marginal cost of the conference is $365, and less than that if you would otherwise pay the post-3-September walk-up rate.
The platform vendors took the Main Stage. On 3 September AMT announced that AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Siemens would each present industrial AI sessions on the IMTS+ Main Stage, under the framing "moving from pilot to action." That is a different pitch from the Arena and worth separating in your planning: the Arena is where you meet vendors selling a specific AI capability you can scope and buy, while the Main Stage is where the cloud and control platforms argue about what the layer underneath all of it should look like.
| Company | Speaker | Session |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | Mike Choe, Director, US Automotive & Manufacturing | "Realizing Industrial AI at Scale with AWS" - Wed 16 Sep, 11:30-12:00 |
| Google Cloud | Praveen Rao, Global Head of Manufacturing Industry | "The Agentic Factory: Where Human Ingenuity Meets Industrial AI" |
| Microsoft | Dayan Rodriguez, CVP, Global Manufacturing and Mobility | "Physical AI in Manufacturing: From Insight to Action" |
| Microsoft | Ben Grimes, CVP, US Manufacturing and Mobility | "Industrial Intelligence Unlocked: The Next Frontier of Manufacturing" |
| Siemens | Volker Wolff, Head of SINUMERIK Product Lifecycle Management, with AMT's Ryan Kelly | "AI on the Shop Floor: Beyond Geometry" |
Trade press covering the announcement reports that the AWS session is a panel rather than a solo keynote, with Brandon Hootman of Caterpillar and Rajesh Singh of Amazon Robotics joining Choe. Only the AWS slot carries a published start time as of 8 September; check the Main Stage schedule onsite for the other four.
AWS is also running two sessions away from the Main Stage on the same day: "From Automation to Autonomy: The Next Era of Manufacturing with Physical AI" (Joseph Rosing, 14:15-15:10, Room W192-B) and, inside the Industrial AI Conference, "Bringing Industrial AI to the Machine Shop Floor with AWS and MachineMetrics" (Steve Blackwell with MachineMetrics' Rutherford Wilson, 15:45-16:15, South Building Room S401-ABC).
Which makes Wednesday 16 September the AI day, and forces a choice. The Industrial AI Conference, the AWS Main Stage session and both AWS breakouts all land on it, in three different buildings. If the AI programme is why you are coming, Wednesday is the day to be there - but you cannot see all of it, so decide in advance whether you are there to evaluate platforms (Main Stage), to hear practitioners (the Conference), or to work the Arena floor.
If you have sat through two years of AI keynotes with nothing shippable at the end, this is the part of IMTS 2026 built for you. For context on how the industrial AI pitch has shifted between cycles, see our breakdown of what changed in industrial AI booths between 2024 and 2026 and the five deployment patterns actually running in production.
IMTS runs an unusually heavy programme of non-booth attractions. The ones worth routing to:
IMTS 2026 runs nine conferences and more than 90 sessions. Conference registration is separate from the show badge but includes floor access.
| Conference | Date | Format |
|---|---|---|
| The IMTS 2026 Conference | 14-17 Sep, 10:00-16:00 | 70+ sessions - automation, AI, systems integration, machining, materials, tooling, workholding, metrology, software, cost justification. $295 one-day / $495 four-day |
| Job Shops Workshop | 15 Sep, 13:00-16:30 | Economic outlook, automation integration, AI, future of manufacturing |
| IMTS Conferencias Técnicas | 15 Sep | Half-day, Spanish - transformative technologies, sustainable manufacturing, regional trends |
| AM+ Workshop - Aerospace & Defense | 15 Sep | Half-day - additive for lead-time and cost reduction |
| IMTS Investor Summit | 15 Sep | All-day - investors and advanced manufacturing operators |
| IMTS Elevate powered by WiM | 16 Sep | Afternoon - women in manufacturing |
| Industrial Laser Conference | 16 Sep | All-day - marking, cutting, welding, heat treating, cleaning, AM |
| IMTS Industrial AI Conference | 16 Sep | All-day - new. $450 advance / $500 from 1 Sep, includes lunch and all six days of hall access |
| Mission-Ready Manufacturing: How to Win Work in DoD, Space & Aerospace | 16 Sep | 09:00-11:00 - defense, space and aerospace contracts, supply chain entry |
Note the pile-up: Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September are the two conference-heavy days, with five programmes running on each once you count the four-day IMTS 2026 Conference, which spans both. If two of them matter to you on the same day, you are choosing, not attending both. Plan those two days first and fit floor time around them.
The 2026 exhibitor list is the usual roll-call of the global machine tool and automation industry. Confirmed and locatable so far:
On the buying side, AMT's own exhibitor data puts 81% of visitors in a buying role - 46% with direct decision power and a further 35% gathering information, identifying needs or justifying purchases. The top product interests visitors report, in order, are machining centres; tools and tooling; turning and lathes; milling, drilling and boring; CAD/CAM/CIM and software; automation; additive manufacturing; quality, testing, measuring and vision; workholding; and grinding and finishing machinery.
Space is tight - AMT reported roughly 85-90% of the floor booked well ahead of the show - but the pricing is public and straightforward, which is more than can be said for most shows this size.
| 2025 rate | 2026 rate | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $36 / sq ft | $37 / sq ft |
| AMT member | $28 / sq ft | $29 / sq ft |
For smaller stands, IMTS offers two turnkey packages:
| Package A (10' x 10') | Package B (10' x 20') | |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 price | $7,000 | $13,000 |
| 2026 AMT member price | $6,000 | $11,000 |
Both packages include a custom block package (material handling, carpet, cleaning, visqueen covering, standard furniture), a 120V 500-watt outlet (one for A, two for B), and a lead retrieval device.
Every booth option also includes a curtain-type backdrop and side rails, the IMTS Exhibitor Education programme, a listing on IMTS.com, promotional materials and a standard company name sign.
The member discount is $8 per square foot. On a modest 400 sq ft stand that is $3,200 saved; on 1,000 sq ft it is $8,000. Membership also discounts the IMTS Exhibitor Passport - the only tool that reaches the full verified IMTS registrant audience, with targeted email campaigns across the show cycle and daily on-site lead uploads. For any exhibitor above the turnkey-package tier, run the membership maths before you sign the space contract.
Space applications go through imts.com/exhibitor/space.cfm, and exhibitor staff register through the e-Kit on Map Your Show.
McCormick Place sits on the lakefront just south of downtown Chicago, and the transit options are genuinely good - driving is the worst of them.
By train (best option). The Cermak-McCormick Place Green Line station is two blocks (0.15 mile) from the northwest corner of the West Building. A standard one-way CTA fare is $2.25, and trains run roughly every 11 minutes from 05:00 to midnight.
From O'Hare, take the Blue Line and transfer to a southbound Green Line train at Clark and Lake - note that CTA charges an additional fare for journeys starting directly at O'Hare, so budget more than $2.25 for that leg. From Midway, ride to Roosevelt and transfer to the elevated Green Line, then one stop south to Cermak-McCormick Place.
Metra Electric has a station on Level 2.5 of the Grand Concourse in the South Building, with direct service to and from downtown Chicago in about seven minutes. The wider Metra network reaches well beyond the city, but those lines run into the downtown terminals rather than to McCormick Place - you connect from there.
Show shuttles. Complimentary shuttle buses run 14-19 September between most official show hotels and the McCormick Place buildings. If you book through the official housing block, this is the path of least resistance.
Airport shuttle. Go Airport Express runs a shared-ride fixed rate from O'Hare and Midway at $39 for a single passenger or $33 per person for groups, plus direct service from South Gate 3 every 30 minutes, 12:00-18:00, on 16-19 September.
Other options. Divvy bike share has a station at McCormick Square with 24-hour passes. Parking is reservable through the McCormick Place website. Scootaround provides on-site mobility scooter and wheelchair rentals.
Why Chicago, incidentally: within a 300-mile radius, eight key manufacturing sectors account for 15,949 establishments - 23% of US-based manufacturing companies - and 755,966 employees, 27% of US manufacturing employment. The show is where the customers are.
When is IMTS 2026? IMTS 2026 runs from Monday 14 to Saturday 19 September 2026 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.
What are the IMTS 2026 show hours? Hours differ by building, all Central Time. The East Building (Level 3) and West Building are open 09:00-17:00. The North and South Buildings are open 10:00-18:00. The Smartforce Student Summit in the North Building, Level 2, runs 09:00-15:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00-13:00 on Saturday. Registration opens at 08:00 in every building.
How much does IMTS 2026 registration cost? Individual registration is $85 before 3 September 2026 and increases after that, including on-site. The $65 group rate for five or more people closed on 1 August 2026. International visitors, students, educators and media register free; active-duty and retired military get 50% off; exhibitor staff and distributors pay $60 before 3 September. Conference registration is purchased separately and includes exhibit hall access.
Is IMTS open to the public? IMTS does not require trade credentials the way many European fairs do - anyone who registers and pays can attend - but it is built for manufacturing professionals, and every attendee on the show floor must be badged. Young children and infants can be registered free by contacting the registration team.
How big is IMTS? AMT expects over 1,800 exhibitors across more than 1.2 million square feet for 2026, plus over 3,000 conference registrants. The 2024 edition drew 89,020 registrants from 110 countries and 1,737 exhibitors filling 1,226,523 square feet, with over 40 million pounds of machinery on display - a record. AMT's published 2026 attendance projections have varied across its own pages, so the 2024 registrant figure is the firmer scale reference.
What is new at IMTS 2026? The Industrial AI Arena is a new area in the North Building, Level 3, bringing together dozens of AI-focused exhibitors including Sandia National Laboratories, paired with a new one-day IMTS Industrial AI Conference on 16 September. AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Siemens are each presenting industrial AI sessions on the IMTS+ Main Stage, announced on 3 September. The floor plan has also been reorganised: Additive Manufacturing moved from the West Building to the South Building alongside Metal Removal, the West Building is now entirely Tooling & Workholding, and the Smartforce Student Summit moved to Hall C on Level 2 of the North Building.
How often is IMTS held? IMTS runs biennially, in even years, at McCormick Place in Chicago. The next edition after 2026 is IMTS 2028.
How much does it cost to exhibit at IMTS 2026? Raw floor space is $37 per square foot in 2026, or $29 per square foot for AMT members. All-inclusive turnkey packages are $7,000 for a 10' x 10' booth and $13,000 for a 10' x 20' booth, dropping to $6,000 and $11,000 respectively for AMT members. Packages include material handling, carpet, cleaning, standard furniture, a 120V outlet and a lead retrieval device.
How do I get to McCormick Place for IMTS? The Cermak-McCormick Place Green Line station is two blocks from the West Building, with a standard $2.25 one-way CTA fare and trains roughly every 11 minutes from 05:00 to midnight. Take the Blue Line from O'Hare or the Orange Line from Midway and transfer to the Green Line; CTA charges an additional fare for journeys starting directly at O'Hare. Metra Electric stops on Level 2.5 of the South Building, seven minutes from downtown. Complimentary shuttle buses run 14-19 September between official show hotels and the venue.
