The reference trade fair and conference for electronic components, held biennially at Messe München since 1964; the 2026 edition runs 10 to 13 November across 18 halls, with around 3,500 exhibitors, more than 80,000 expected trade visitors, 15 technical forums, a new edge computing area in Hall C5, and SEMICON Europa co-located on the same site and dates.
electronica is the biennial trade fair and conference for the electronics industry, held at Messe München since 1964 and running in November of even years, alternating with productronica, the sister fair for electronics production, which takes the odd years on the same site. It covers the component end of the industry rather than the finished-product end: semiconductors, passive components, electromechanical devices, embedded systems, power supplies, sensor technology, test and measurement equipment, automotive electronics, power electronics and connectivity. The 2026 edition runs 10 to 13 November 2026. Exhibitors present across 16 product areas spread over 18 exhibition halls, and the organiser groups the 2026 edition's themes under automation with AI, edge AI, smart mobility, electromobility, smart energy, cyber resilience, energy efficiency, and components and modules. SEMICON Europa, the microelectronics and semiconductor manufacturing fair, is co-located at the same venue on the same dates. Source: electronica.de and messe-muenchen.de/en/events/electronica-2026.html, consulted 18 September 2026.
electronica 2026 runs Tuesday 10 to Friday 13 November 2026. The venue is the Trade Fair Center Messe München, Am Messegelände, 81829 Munich, Germany, in the Messestadt Riem district in the east of the city. Halls are open 09:00 to 18:00 from Tuesday to Thursday and 09:00 to 15:00 on the Friday, so the final day is a short one and worth planning around. The electronica Automotive Conference runs the day before the fair opens, on 9 November 2026. On the biennial cycle, the next Munich edition after this one falls in November 2028; no 2028 dates have been published as of 18 September 2026. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/plan-your-visit/opening-hours/ and electronica.de/en/trade-fair/, consulted 18 September 2026.
electronica is organised by Messe München GmbH, the trade fair company owned by the City of Munich, the Free State of Bavaria and Bavarian chambers of industry and commerce, which operates the Messe München site itself. General enquiries go to info@messe-muenchen.de and event enquiries to electronica@messe-muenchen.de. Messe München also runs the rest of the electronics fair network under the same roof: productronica in Munich in odd years, electronica China in Shanghai, and electronica India in Bengaluru. Source: electronica.de and the database record for this event, consulted 18 September 2026.
The organiser expects more than 80,000 trade visitors with purchasing authority at the 2026 edition, a figure stated jointly for electronica and the co-located SEMICON Europa. The 2024 edition drew about 80,000 professional visitors from around 100 countries, 54 percent of them from outside Germany. The audience is a trade audience rather than a public one: electronics and hardware engineers, component buyers and procurement teams, automotive electronics teams, embedded and edge AI practitioners, power electronics specialists, smart energy vendors, and distribution and manufacturing representatives across the supply chain. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/detail/final-report-electronica-2024.html and messe-muenchen.de/en/events/electronica-2026.html, consulted 18 September 2026.
Three changes are documented for 2026. First, edge lab LIVE!, a dedicated exhibition area in Hall C5 built around moving edge computing from concept into working systems, with live demonstrations, hands-on workshops and technical presentations rather than static stands. Second, the co-location with SEMICON Europa on the same dates and site, which broadens the range of exhibitors upstream into semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials and pushes the combined visitor target above 80,000. Third, the thematic weighting of the 2026 edition toward automation with AI and edge AI, which the organiser now names alongside the long-standing electromobility and smart energy themes. For a returning visitor, the practical consequence of the first two is that a plan built on the 2024 hall map will be wrong: the halls have been re-cut to accommodate the co-located fair and the new C5 area. Source: eedesignit.com coverage of the 2026 edition and electronica.de, consulted 18 September 2026.
The programme has two parts that are priced and scheduled differently. The electronica Automotive Conference is a separate full-day conference held on 9 November 2026, the day before the exhibition opens, addressing automotive and electronics industry topics with an invited expert programme; the organiser published the detailed session overview from mid-August 2026. Inside the fair itself, 15 technical forums run across the exhibition halls over the four days, free to any ticket holder, with practice-oriented talks on automotive, cyber security, printed electronics, embedded systems, industrial IoT, connectivity, printed circuit boards, power electronics, components, measurement technology and sensors. The database record puts the combined speaker count across the Automotive Conference and the forums at more than 200. Alongside these sit the electronica Carrier Day and the co-located SEMICON Europa conference programme. A complete named speaker roster for the 2026 edition was not found in indexed sources as of 18 September 2026. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/program/ and electronica.de/en/supporting-program/electronica-conferences/embedded-platforms/program/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Four formats, and the difference between them matters for how a day is planned. The exhibition floor across 18 halls and 16 product areas is the primary format and takes most visitors most of their time. The 15 hall forums are short practice-oriented talks staged inside the halls themselves, open to any ticket holder without separate booking. The electronica Automotive Conference is a conventional single-day conference with its own date, its own room and its own ticket. edge lab LIVE! in Hall C5 is a demonstration and workshop format rather than a lecture one, built around working systems. The database records no B2B matchmaking service, no advance meeting scheduling tool and no awards programme for this event, which is unusual for a fair of this size and means meetings are arranged directly with exhibitors rather than through an organiser-run platform. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/program/ and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
The main parallel event is SEMICON Europa, co-located at Messe München on the same dates, which is a separate fair with its own exhibitor list and conference programme rather than a track of electronica. Registration and access arrangements between the two fairs were not confirmed in the sources checked, so a visitor who needs both should verify before buying (unverifiable information). The electronica Automotive Conference on 9 November and the electronica Carrier Day are organiser-run satellite events rather than third-party fringe. No independent fringe programme, city-wide side-event track or unofficial parallel conference was found in indexed sources for the 2026 edition. Source: messe-muenchen.de/en/events/semicon-europa-2026.html and electronica.de, consulted 18 September 2026.
Visitor tickets bought online cost EUR 48 for one day, EUR 81 for two days and EUR 109 for all four days, all including 19 percent VAT. Bought on site, the same tickets cost EUR 66, EUR 110 and EUR 150, roughly 36 to 38 percent more, so buying ahead is worth about EUR 41 on a four-day pass. A group day ticket for ten or more people is EUR 40 online. A reduced ticket for students, unemployed people, pensioners and visitors with a disability is EUR 37 online on proof of eligibility. Press accreditation is free. Tickets are personalised and non-transferable, tied to a Messe München account; photo ID may be requested at the entrance, and a multi-day ticket may only be used by one person. Note that the print-at-home ticket does not include free travel on MVG, MVV or Deutsche Bahn services, so Munich public transport is a separate purchase in tariff zone M. Exhibitor pricing is quoted separately, see the sponsor and exhibitor entry below. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/tickets/, consulted 18 September 2026.
The documented route is the call for papers for the electronica Automotive Conference, which the organiser publishes at electronica.de/conferences/electronica-conferences/automotive/call-for-papers/index.html. Whether the call was still open for the 9 November 2026 edition could not be confirmed as of 18 September 2026, and the database records the call-for-papers status for this event as closed; given that the conference programme was published from mid-August 2026, the 2026 call has in all likelihood closed (unverifiable information). For the 15 hall forums, no public open submission process was found: forum slots read as curated by the organiser and its media and association partners, and the practical route is an enquiry to electronica@messe-muenchen.de. No speaker fee policy, expenses policy or selection criteria are publicly disclosed for either format. Source: electronica.de and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Exhibitors apply through electronica.de/en/trade-fair/exhibitors/application-prices/. Stand space is charged by configuration: EUR 299 per square metre for a row stand, EUR 339 for a corner, EUR 349 for an end stand and EUR 359 for an island, all net of 19 percent VAT and covering floor space only, with no stand construction, furniture or services included. Four further charges apply on top of the space price: a flat communication fee of EUR 1,150, an AUMA levy of EUR 0.60 per square metre, an advance payment for services of EUR 20 per square metre, and a disposal fee of EUR 8 per square metre. On those figures a modest 20 square metre row stand costs about EUR 6,753 net before any construction spend. No separate conference sponsorship tier structure, of the kind a conference of this size would normally publish, was found in indexed sources: electronica sells exhibition space rather than sponsorship packages. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/exhibitors/application-prices/ and messebudgetplaner.de/en/electronica-2026, consulted 18 September 2026.
Not publicly disclosed, and for a structural reason rather than an editorial gap: electronica is a rented-space trade fair, not a sponsored conference, so there is no headline sponsor, no tier ladder and no partner page of the kind published by conference organisers. What exists instead is the exhibitor directory at exhibitors.electronica.de, which lists the paying participants, around 3,500 of them for 2026. The database holds no official media partner list for this event either. Searched: the official site, the Messe München event page and the 2026 exhibitor portal. Source: exhibitors.electronica.de/exhibitor-portal/2026/start/ and electronica.de, consulted 18 September 2026.
Component manufacturers and distributors dominate, by country as much as by category. At the 2024 edition, 3,480 exhibitors came from 59 countries and regions, 76 percent of them from outside Germany, and the three largest exhibiting countries were China with 1,059 exhibitors, Germany with 956 and Taiwan with 276. That distribution is the single most useful fact about who is in the halls: a visitor sourcing components is meeting the Asian manufacturing base in Munich, not a mainly European exhibitor list. By category, the exhibitor mix runs across semiconductors, passive components, electromechanical devices, embedded systems, power supplies, sensors, test and measurement, automotive electronics, printed circuit boards and connectivity, with the co-located SEMICON Europa adding semiconductor manufacturing equipment, materials, advanced packaging and MEMS suppliers. Startups and software-only vendors are a small minority of a hardware exhibitor list. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/detail/final-report-electronica-2024.html, consulted 18 September 2026.
Journalists register online in advance through electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/accreditation-press-center/ and receive a free press ticket. Accreditation is granted solely for journalistic reporting, and Messe München reserves the right to require proof of journalistic activity even where a press card is presented. Explicitly not eligible: account managers, sales managers, advertising managers, analysts, PR consultants, company press spokespersons, social media managers and private accompanying persons, along with anyone attending solely to acquire material for their own paid radio, TV, image or online productions. Requests from bloggers, influencers and content creators must be submitted online in advance and are reviewed individually against editorial relevance, reach, content focus and fit with the event's topics. Accredited journalists park free in Parking Lot West, exchanging the entrance ticket for an exit ticket at the Press Center West. No accreditation deadline is published. Press contacts are listed at electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/contacts-for-journalists/. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/accreditation-press-center/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Coverage of the 2026 edition in indexed trade media includes eeDesignIt, which reported the edition's focus on AI and automotive electronics, Electronic Specifier on the Automotive Conference programme, and Elektor Magazine in the wider embedded fair context. The organiser maintains its own press release archive at electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/, which carried the detailed final report for the 2024 edition; that document is the source of the exhibitor and visitor figures used throughout this fiche. Vendor-published event pages, for example Rohde and Schwarz's electronica 2026 page, are exhibitor marketing rather than press coverage. The database holds no official media partner list for this event, so no mention on this page carries a "(media partner)" marker. Source: the press items named above and electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Three qualifications, in descending order of importance. First, the headline attendance and exhibitor figures are organiser figures: the 3,480 exhibitors and roughly 80,000 visitors for 2024 come from Messe München's own final report, not from an independent audit, and the ">80,000" target for 2026 is a forecast made by the organiser about an event it sells tickets to. Second, the electronics trade press that covers electronica, eeDesignIt, Electronic Specifier, Elektor and their peers, depends heavily on the same component manufacturers who exhibit, which makes critical coverage of a fair structurally rare, although none of these outlets is listed as a contracted media partner of the event. Third, a large share of what surfaces in search for "electronica 2026" is exhibitor and stand-builder marketing rather than reporting. Against that, the 2024 final report is unusually specific for a trade fair, breaking exhibitors down by country of origin and giving an international share, which is checkable detail rather than a round number. Source: cross-reading of electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/ against the trade items named above, 18 September 2026.
Anyone whose work sits above the component layer. electronica sells the inputs to electronics, not finished products or software: a buyer looking for enterprise software, a SaaS founder, a marketing team or an AI application developer with no hardware dependency will spend four days walking past distributors of passives and connectors. The same applies to anyone hoping for a conference experience: outside the separately ticketed Automotive Conference, the content is short hall-forum talks between stands, not a keynote programme. Speakers looking for a stage should note that no open call exists for the forums. And because the fair is biennial, a team that attended the 2025 productronica in the same halls may assume continuity that does not exist: productronica is the production-equipment fair, electronica the component fair, and the exhibitor lists overlap far less than the shared venue suggests. Source: electronica.de and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
It is the November anchor of the European electronics calendar, and its biennial rhythm sets the cycle for everything around it. In even years electronica takes the Munich November slot; in odd years productronica takes the same halls for electronics production. Within 2026, it sits after embedded world in Nuremberg in the spring, which owns the embedded systems and developer audience, and it absorbs SEMICON Europa, which in other years runs as a standalone. Against the AI events that now crowd the autumn, electronica is the hardware counterweight: the silicon, power and sensor supply chain that edge AI deployments actually run on, rather than the model and application layer. For a team that can attend one European electronics event in a two-year cycle, the biennial pace makes this the one with no substitute in 2027. Source: electronica.de/en/electronica-network/ and messe-muenchen.de, consulted 18 September 2026.
Yes, two regional editions run under the same brand, both organised by Messe München. electronica China is held in Shanghai, with the 2026 edition on 1 to 3 July 2026. electronica India is held at BIEC in Bengaluru, with the 2026 edition on 16 to 18 September 2026, running alongside productronica India; productronica India additionally runs a Greater Noida edition in the Delhi NCR region in April, giving India two dates a year. Messe München puts the combined network at more than 7,500 exhibitors and more than 260,000 visitors across its electronics fairs worldwide. The Munich edition remains the largest and is the one this fiche documents. Source: electronica.de/en/electronica-network/ and messe-muenchen.de/en/events/electronica-china-2026.html, consulted 18 September 2026.
English and German. The trade fair operates bilingually: signage, the official site and the exhibitor directory are published in both, and the hall forums and conference sessions run in either language depending on the speaker. No simultaneous interpretation into other languages is documented, and no language guarantee is published for any individual forum session, so a visitor who needs English-only content should check the session listing rather than assume it. Source: electronica.de and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Not publicly disclosed as an organiser-run offer. The database records no digital platform and no replay access for this event, and no livestream, virtual pass or on-demand session archive for the 2026 edition was found in indexed sources. What does exist after the fact is the organiser's own channels: press releases at electronica.de, video content on the @electronicaFair YouTube channel, and post-event reporting in the electronics trade press. A remote follower should treat those as marketing and journalism respectively, not as a substitute for the session content. Searched: the official site, the Messe München event page and the event's social channels. Source: electronica.de and the database record, consulted 18 September 2026.
Not publicly disclosed in the sources checked. The visitor terms that are published concern transferability rather than refunds: tickets are personalised, tied to a Messe München account and non-transferable, photo ID may be requested at the entrance, and a multi-day ticket may only be used by one person, which effectively rules out passing an unused pass to a colleague. No cancellation window, no refund percentage and no name-change procedure for visitor tickets were found. Exhibitor cancellation terms sit in Messe München's general exhibition conditions rather than on the electronica ticket page and were not retrieved. Searched: the ticket page, the visitor FAQ and the Messe München service pages. Source: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/tickets/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Yes, and the provision is documented at site level by Messe München rather than per event. The Messestadt West and Messestadt Ost U-Bahn stations are both wheelchair accessible, as is access to all site entrances. The halls are step-free, with lifts and accessible toilets throughout. Accessible sanitary facilities are located at the West, East and North entrances, on the south sides of the A and B halls, on the north sides of the C halls, next to the information counter, and in all first-floor hall restaurants. Holders of a disabled person's pass park free of charge in the Parkhaus West multi-storey car park, in the marked spaces at the front of each level, and on the outdoor event parking areas. A reduced EUR 37 online ticket is available to visitors with a disability on proof of eligibility. Companion ticket arrangements were not documented in the sources checked. Source: messe-muenchen.de/en/services/barrier-free-accessibility.html, consulted 18 September 2026.
Messe München is at Am Messegelände, 81829 Munich, in the Messestadt Riem district east of the city centre. The direct route is the U2 underground line to Messestadt West or Messestadt Ost, which takes just under 20 minutes from München Hauptbahnhof with no change; Messestadt West serves the western entrance and Messestadt Ost the eastern one, so the choice depends on which halls you need. By road, the site sits on the A94; parking is available on the site, with Parking Lot West reserved for accredited press and free disabled parking in Parkhaus West. From Munich Airport, the usual route is S-Bahn to the city and then the U2, since there is no direct rail link between airport and fairground. The print-at-home fair ticket does not cover public transport, so an MVV zone M ticket is a separate purchase. Source: messe-muenchen.de/en/services/plan-your-visit/travel-information/messe-muenchen/ and electronica.de/en/trade-fair/plan-your-visit/travel-information/, consulted 18 September 2026.
Eighty thousand visitors is a number electronica shares with several European fairs. The two-year gap is what it does not share. A component maker that misses November 2026 in Munich has no equivalent European floor until November 2028, because the odd-year slot in the same halls belongs to productronica and serves the production-equipment buyer, not the component buyer. That scarcity is visible in the exhibitor economics: at EUR 299 to EUR 359 per square metre plus four mandatory surcharges, a stand is priced as a two-year investment rather than an annual line item. It also explains why the 2024 final report reads as a sales document, breaking exhibitors down by country to demonstrate reach: the organiser is selling the next cycle, not reporting the last one.
Every number on this page above the exhibitor country breakdown comes from Messe München, and the most quoted one is the softest. The "more than 80,000 visitors" attached to 2026 is a forecast for electronica and SEMICON Europa combined, which is not the same claim as the roughly 80,000 that actually walked through electronica alone in 2024, and the two are routinely quoted as if they were one figure. The exhibitor count behaves the same way: 3,480 is the audited-style count in the 2024 final report, while "around 3,500" for 2026 is a projection. The parts of the record that do hold up are the granular ones, because they are falsifiable: 59 countries of origin, 76 percent international exhibitors, China at 1,059 exhibitors ahead of Germany at 956. A buyer deciding whether to fly to Munich should plan against that country split, which describes who is actually in the halls, and ignore the headline totals, which describe a marketing target.
Official site: electronica.de/en/. Trade fair overview: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/. Tickets and prices: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/tickets/. Supporting programme: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/program/. Exhibitor application and prices: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/exhibitors/application-prices/. Exhibitor directory: exhibitors.electronica.de/exhibitor-portal/2026/start/. Press accreditation: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/accreditation-press-center/. Press releases: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/journalists/press-releases/. Travel information: electronica.de/en/trade-fair/plan-your-visit/travel-information/. Accessibility: messe-muenchen.de/en/services/barrier-free-accessibility.html. Global network: electronica.de/en/electronica-network/. General enquiries: info@messe-muenchen.de. Event enquiries: electronica@messe-muenchen.de. Social: linkedin.com/company/electronicafair/, @electronicaFair on X, youtube.com/@electronicaFair, @electronicafair on Instagram, hashtag #electronicafair.