Salon SBE Lyon · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated November 2026

Key takeaways

• The SBE Lyon trade show, short for Salon Séminaires Business Events, is the annual meeting point for business tourism and corporate events in Lyon: hotels, venues with or without accommodation, event agencies, incentive and team-building agencies, caterers and technical suppliers meet the people who organise seminars, conventions and team outings.
• Next edition: the 24th, on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 February 2027, at the Matmut Stadium Gerland. Open from 9:00am to 7:00pm on Thursday and from 9:00am to 5:00pm on Friday.
• Organiser: Séminaires Business Events (SBE), a Lyon-based company that also publishes an annual guide to venues and suppliers and runs other meetings in Marseille, Paris and Montpellier. No co-organiser.
• Annual frequency, in February. For 2027, the official page shows more than 180 exhibitors and more than 1,300 event organisers.
• Free entry on registration, reserved for people with an event project: companies, agencies, associations and federations. The trade show describes itself as reserved for event organisers: the visitor types shown are companies, event agencies and associations, and sometimes suppliers.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The exhibitors cover the whole chain of a corporate event. The website sorts them into four families: reception (venues with or without accommodation, boats, châteaux, estates, houses, restaurants), travel (destinations, convention centres, tourist offices), organisation (entertainment, artists, promotional items, sound, lighting and decoration, transport, caterers) and activities (incentive, team-building and event agencies).

The focus is regional without being exclusive: the trade show promotes addresses in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, with 4 and 5-star hotels and hotel groups near Geneva and in the Swiss and French Alps, but it also welcomes exhibitors from the rest of France. The format is compact: stands of 2, 4, 6 or 8 m².

Notable exhibitors

The website does not publish a public list of 2027 exhibitors: it is provided to visitors after they register, from the visitor registration page.

Visitor quality

This is the organiser's central argument: every participant is qualified in advance, and the trade show is reserved for people with an event project. The job functions targeted are events, communication and marketing, sales and human resources managers, managing directors, project managers and executive assistants, from companies, event agencies and associations.

The exhibitors page mentions 1,300 to 1,500 people with event projects, but it still carries the date of February 2026: it cannot be tied with certainty to the 2027 edition. The 2027 homepage shows more than 1,300 event organisers, with no reference year. These are announced figures, not results: no audited results or OJS certification are published. The organiser also states that more than 80% of exhibitors return from one year to the next.

Activities & community

Format of the meeting

The trade show works as a business meeting more than an exhibition circuit: visitors can drop in at any time while it is open, can come with colleagues, and a buffet-style cocktail reception punctuates the day. After the event, exhibitors collect the details of the visitors they scanned in CSV format.

Top Buyer programme and educational tour

The organiser offers a Top Buyer programme, with transport, accommodation and meals fully covered, for event organisers who want to discover the destination: scheduled meetings with exhibitors at the trade show and an educational tour of venues in the region. The dedicated page still shows the dates of the 2025 edition: the 2027 programme calendar had not been published at the time of writing.

Community & networks

The partners shown on the 2027 edition page are ONLYLYON Tourisme et Congrès, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Tourisme, the technical partner Novelty, BOOM (the national association of Office Managers), the Club Hôtelier lyonnais, the association Event Again, Le Cousu Traiteur, the regional business media outlet Ours and the mobile bar Spritzando.

The trade show is part of the SBE network, which reports a community of 25,000 people with event projects and 300 business-tourism players, and offers other formats: a trade show in Marseille, afterworks in Paris and Montpellier, workshops and educational tours.

At national level, the trade show does not have the same scope as Séminaire Expo or Heavent Paris, Paris events held jointly by another organiser: SBE Lyon remains focused on the regional offering and on a short meeting format.

On site: what you need to know

The trade show takes place at the Matmut Stadium Gerland, 353 avenue Jean Jaurès, in the 7th arrondissement of Lyon. By public transport, metro line B stops at the Stade de Gerland station, five minutes away. By bike, a Vélo'v station is five minutes away and a bike park is set up nearby. By car, the A6 and A7 motorways are five minutes away, and visitor parking is reached via the Lions entrance.

2027 opening hours: Thursday 4 February from 9:00am to 7:00pm, Friday 5 February from 9:00am to 5:00pm. For exhibitors, set-up is possible the day before or from 7:00am on the day of the trade show, and dismantling can begin thirty minutes before closing.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For exhibitors

• Get in touch early: choosing your location is possible, but priority goes to customers of the annual SBE guide.
• Choose the surface area according to your pitch: on 2 to 8 m², the point is the conversation, not the staging.
• Plan for badge scanning: the only contacts returned after the trade show are those of the visitors scanned.
• Make the most of the second, shorter day for follow-up meetings arranged on Thursday.

For decision-making visitors

• Register in advance to obtain your badge and the list of exhibitors, and pick out the venues and suppliers to see.
• Come with a precise brief: dates, headcount, budget, type of event. The format lets you compare several venues in a single day.
• To discover the region, find out about the Top Buyer programme, which is covered by the organiser.

CSR policy & initiatives

Neither the trade show's page nor the Séminaires Business Events website publishes a formal CSR policy, a carbon footprint assessment or an ISO 20121 certification specific to the event. The presence among the partners of the association Event Again, which brings together event-industry players around a collective approach, is a networking link, not a commitment by the organiser.

The venue is operated by GL events, under the Lyon events banner. In a press release of February 2026, GL events reports a CSR strategy shared by its four Lyon sites, including the Matmut Stadium Gerland, and the ISO 20121 certification of its sites: the same document, however, names only Eurexpo Lyon and the Centre de Congrès de Lyon as certified. Access to the stadium by metro and bike also limits car use for Lyon-based visitors.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The trade show, which the trade press described in 2021 as "formerly Salon du Séminaire", held its 2017 and 2019 editions at the Centre de Congrès de Lyon before moving to the Matmut Stadium Gerland, where it was already held in 2022. The calendar, for its part, has not changed: two days in early February, a slot that the trade press called a historic date in 2022.

The figures available are all pre-show announcements and point to a stable size: 165 exhibitors expected in 2017, more than 170 in 2019, more than 150 in 2022, more than 180 shown for 2027, for an announced attendance of between 1,300 and 1,500 people. The absence of published results rules out talking about growth: the constant is the model, a limited number of stands facing a filtered audience.

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

All data without an explicit source comes from the organiser's website.

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