About This Show
IDEF is Turkey's largest defence and aerospace exhibition, held every two years in Istanbul with government-level backing. The most recent edition, IDEF 2025 (the 17th), ran across six days and brought together 1,491 participating companies and 231 official delegations from 103 countries - including major primes like BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus alongside national pavilions from Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, the UAE, China, South Africa, and Pakistan.
More than 120,000 visitors attended, and the show produced 270 signing ceremonies totaling roughly $9 billion in contracts, 65% of them export deals. Exhibitors unveiled 26 entirely new defense products and displayed over 1,100 items for the first time. The event has grown large enough to spill across multiple venues in the city - exhibition halls, the airport, hotels, and the marina all hosted programming rather than a single show floor.