Journées IHF · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated October 2026

Key points

• The IHF Study and Training Days (Journées d'études et de formation IHF) are the annual congress of the Ingénieurs Hospitaliers de France: two and a half days of talks for the engineers, architects, technicians and directors who design, build, renovate and operate healthcare facilities, with a professional exhibition running alongside the sessions.
• Next edition: the 67th, from Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 June 2027, at Lille Grand Palais. According to the 2027 FAQ, the event opens on Wednesday 23 June from 2pm to 6.15pm; the detailed schedule will be published with the programme.
• Organiser: the association Ingénieurs Hospitaliers de France (IHF), a French non-profit association (loi 1901) founded in 1956 and a Qualiopi-certified training body. Logistics, registrations and the sale of exhibition space are entrusted to Europa Organisation, a subsidiary of Europa Group based in Toulouse.
• Annual frequency, with a location that changes from one year to the next: Lyon in 2025, Nantes in 2026, Lille in 2027.
• Latest published attendance figure: 636 participants (delegates, speakers and visitors) in Lyon in 2025, the highest level in the series shown by the organiser since 2017.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The organiser describes an exhibitors' show bringing together suppliers, manufacturers, designers and consultants. The 2027 call for speakers sets out the scope: manufacturers, suppliers, service providers and consultants in hospital engineering presenting their products, services and innovations in the construction, renovation and upkeep of hospital estates.

In practice, the logos on the 2026 Partners page cover these trades, which work for hospital technical departments: general building contractors, design offices and engineering firms, specialist architects, heating, ventilation and energy operators, manufacturers of flooring, ceilings, taps and lighting, maintenance software publishers, and suppliers of safety and air-treatment equipment.

Notable exhibitors

The Partners page of the official website still carries the 2026 heading: it presents the partners of the Nantes edition, not those of Lille. Saint-Gobain Ecophon appears at the Bronze level. Among the other logos are Bouygues Construction, Eiffage Construction, Vinci Construction, Fayat Bâtiment, Léon Grosse, Dalkia, Engie Solutions, Idex, Egis, WSP, Groupe 6, Getinge, Dräger, Tarkett, Gerflor, Geberit, Signify, Socomec, Resah and ANAP.

The 2026 partnership brochure also thanks 74 companies that were partners of the 2025 edition, from Schneider Electric and Siemens to Carrier, Trane, Hilti and Autodesk. No exhibitor list has been published for 2027 at this stage.

Visitor quality

The audience is highly targeted. The organiser describes it as heads of technical departments and engineers specialising in the construction and maintenance of public and private healthcare facilities. The Training page details the rest of the intended audience: technical, maintenance and operations managers, facility managers, public and private project owners, project managers and architects, project owner's assistants, design offices, construction cost consultants and programme managers.

What sets it apart is the status of the event: it is a continuing-education programme, eligible for funding under a training agreement. Hospital participants can therefore attend with funding from their institution, and their presence in the sessions is checked by badge scan.

The attendance shown by the organiser adds together delegates, speakers and visitors: 419 participants in Paris in 2022, 516 in 2023, 479 in Tours in 2024 and 636 in Lyon in 2025. The participant count for the 2026 edition has not been published. The Training page does show the number of training beneficiaries: 137 in 2024, 144 in 2025 and 151 in 2026, with 96% of feedback rated very favourable or favourable in 2025 and in 2026. That figure does not measure the same thing as the 636 participants of 2025, which include speakers and visitors. No third-party audit of attendance is shown.

Activities and community

Conference programme

The programme is set by a scientific committee of eight members, coordinated by Alain Benini, head of the Architecture and Project Management department at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, on the basis of a call for speakers. For 2027, the organiser announces 30 talks of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of discussion, split between two plenary sessions on Wednesday afternoon and eight workshops in two parallel sessions on Thursday and Friday morning, interspersed with innovation forums.

The themes open to proposals cover CSR and resilience to climate change, energy transition and decarbonisation, hospital estate management, technical maintenance and operations, hospital digital (CMMS, BMS, BIM, artificial intelligence), architectural and technical design, project management, public procurement, hospital hygiene and flow management.

Commercial presentations are systematically rejected from the talks: they may find a place in the innovation forums. 2027 timetable: proposals close on Friday 16 October 2026, and selected speakers are notified at the end of November 2026. Each talk leads to an article published in the Proceedings (Livre des actes), a volume of 150 to 200 pages given to participants.

Forums and visibility for manufacturers

For companies, speaking opportunities come through paid formats separate from the scientific programme. The 2026 partnership brochure offered a one-hour exclusive symposium at the end of the Wednesday plenary sessions, 40-minute forums reserved for industry on Thursday (morning and afternoon) or Friday morning, and a pre-recorded e-forum scheduled during the year. In the first two cases, booking was subject to renting a stand of at least 6 m², and the title and speakers were subject to the scientific committee.

Community and networks

The IHF association, created in 1956, organised its first national study days in 1966. It opened up to engineers from private institutions, then to all players in hospital engineering: architects, project owner's assistants, design offices, consultants and manufacturers. It is affiliated to the International Federation of Hospital Engineering (IFHE) and a founding member of its European group, IFHE Europe. It also organises regional days.

The IHF Days differ from SantExpo in their nature: where SantExpo brings together, according to its website, the whole health and social care ecosystem, the IHF Days remain a training congress among peers, centred on buildings and hospital technical departments, with an exhibition whose number of exhibitors and floor area have not been published.

On site: what you need to know

The 2027 edition takes place at Lille Grand Palais, 1 boulevard des Cités Unies, about five minutes' walk from Lille Flandres and Lille Europe stations according to the official website. By metro, the Mairie de Lille and Lille Grand Palais stations on line 2 are 400 metres away. Bus line 18 serves the Grand Palais stop, and three V'Lille bike-share stations are nearby. By car from Paris on the A1, take exit 2 then lane 2A.

Accommodation is handled by Insight Outside by Europa, the congress's official provider, which deals with groups of more than 5 rooms; for smaller bookings, a dedicated booking site is offered with MisterFly.com. A platform for booking train and plane tickets is also offered on the Practical information page.

2027 registration terms have not yet been published. As a guide, in 2026 registration for the congress cost €950 to €1,100 incl. VAT for a hospital participant and €1,100 to €1,350 incl. VAT for a non-hospital participant depending on the date, with access to all sessions, the exhibition, the breaks and the Proceedings. Lunches and the official evening are extra, with a preferential rate for IHF members.

How much does it cost to exhibit

Planning your visit

For exhibitors

• Book early: in 2026, space was allocated on the floor plan in the order purchase orders arrived.
• If the aim is to speak, target an innovation forum rather than the call for speakers: the latter systematically rejects commercial presentations, which may find a place in the forums. In 2026, the title and speakers of forums and symposiums were subject to the scientific committee.
• In 2026, exhibitors could invite service providers and preferred clients free of charge to visit the exhibition only, excluding hospital engineers, competitors and employees of exhibiting companies. Hospital engineers were excluded from these invitations: they went through congress registration, often via their institution's training department (see the visitor section).
• Time your presence around the highlights: in 2026, the opening cocktail was planned on the exhibition floor at the end of the Wednesday plenaries, and the breaks between workshops bring participants back into the aisles.

For decision-maker visitors

• Go through your institution's training department: registration under a training agreement allows funding as continuing education.
• Choose your route through the eight workshops as soon as they are published: according to the Training page, their content will be specified by early December at the latest, once the scientific committee has finished its work.
• Keep your badge on you: the attendance certificate depends on the scan at the room entrance and on the evaluation questionnaire completed after the event.
• Make the most of the compact format, a few hundred participants, to meet peers from other university hospitals directly about their current projects.

CSR policy and initiatives

Sustainability is first of all a programme topic: CSR, resilience to climate change, energy transition and decarbonisation come first among the themes of the 2027 call for speakers. This is training content, not a commitment by the organiser.

On the organisation side, the 2026 partnership brochure lists concrete on-site measures: recyclable notepads and pens, reusable eco-cups and water fountains replacing plastic bottles and disposable cups. Neither the IHF association nor Europa Organisation publishes a carbon footprint for the event or ISO 20121 certification. Europa Organisation publishes a CSR page on its website that sets out four areas (carbon footprint, responsible purchasing, low-impact mobility, responsible consumption) without tying them to a specific edition of the IHF Days, and its group, Europa Group, states that it has been working since early 2025 towards becoming a mission-driven company (société à mission). IHF also publishes a disability charter for welcoming participants with disabilities.

The venue provides a documented guarantee: Lille Grand Palais displays a management system certified ISO 20121 and ISO 9001, and notes that the Métropole Européenne de Lille has held the Destination Innovante Durable label since January 2024.

How the show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The series published by the organiser stays within a narrow range, between 350 and 636 participants since 2017. This is the profile of a training congress aimed at an audience of specialists, not a mass-market show. The 2025 record in Lyon, 636 participants, nonetheless marks a clear rise after 479 in Tours in 2024, and the participant count for Nantes in 2026 has not been published, so it is not possible to say whether that level held, even though the number of training beneficiaries rose from 144 to 151.

The health crisis left a visible mark: the 2021 edition was held in digital format because of the health situation, according to the press release of the time, and the Marseille edition in 2020 is shown as postponed, before a return to in-person events in Paris in 2022. Since then, the location has changed with every known edition: Tours in 2024, Lyon in 2025, Nantes in 2026, and the theme can echo the host city: the management of major hospital projects in Nantes in 2026, a city that is rebuilding its university hospital.

For a manufacturer, the appeal lies less in the volume than in the make-up of the room: heads of technical departments and engineers who specify or manage works, energy and maintenance contracts, brought together for two and a half days in a setting where training takes precedence over commercial demonstration.

The dates of the 2028 edition had not been announced at the time of writing.

All data without a stated source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (journees-ihf.com).