SITEM · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated September 2026

Key takeaways

• The SITEM (Salon international des musées, monuments et tourisme culturel, International Trade Show for Museums, Monuments and Cultural Tourism) brings together each spring at the Carrousel du Louvre the suppliers and service providers of museums, monuments, cultural venues and tourist sites: museography, scenography, conservation, lighting, mediation, ticketing, digital.
• Next edition: the 31st, from Wednesday 31 March to Thursday 1 April 2027. Open from 9am to 9pm on the Wednesday, 9am to 6pm on the Thursday.
• Organiser: Museumexperts SAS, a Paris-based company chaired by Beaux Arts & Cie, the group behind Beaux Arts Magazine, which also owns Le Quotidien de l'Art. No co-organiser.
• Annual frequency since 2004. The history goes back to 1988 and the Salon international des musées et des expositions (SIME, International Trade Show of Museums and Exhibitions), inaugurated at the Grand Palais.
• Report from the 30th edition, held 25-26 March 2026: 4,816 professional visitors, up 6% on 2025, and 175 exhibitors, including 70 new ones.
• Not to be confused with Museum Connections, the other Paris trade show for museum suppliers, held in January with more than twice the number of exhibitors and a broader range extending to museum shop products. SITEM plays the card of a tighter, highly institutional format, backed by a cultural press group.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The organiser splits its exhibitors into five families: 33% in promoting collections and heritage, 30% in collections management, conservation and equipment, 19% in patronage, communication and audience relations and management, 12% in museography and scenography, 6% cultural institutions and associations.

The online directory's filter gives a sense of the specialisation: preventive conservation, mounts and plinths, display cases, artwork transport, restoration, museum lighting, audio guides, augmented reality, computerised collections management, olfactory scenography. It also includes players who do not sell anything in the strict sense: professional federations, heritage networks, public institutions.

Notable exhibitors

The official exhibitor directory still displays the 2026 list, around 180 entries. It includes collections-management software publishers such as Axiell France and Archimed, lighting specialists such as ERCO Lumières, security specialists such as Assa Abloy, protective glazing specialists such as Tru Vue, ticketing providers such as Vivaticket and Fever, as well as Fujifilm, the INA, Bloomberg Connects and Art Explora. The Ministry of Culture, Pass Culture, ICOM France, the OCIM and the Réseau des Grands Sites de France also held a stand. The 2027 list had not been published at the time of writing.

Visitor quality

According to the profile published by the organiser, with no year specified, the visitor base is made up of 78% French and international cultural institutions, 17% culture-sector professionals (architects, set designers, lighting designers) and 5% commercial companies. The foreign institutions named include the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal and the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève.

In 2026, international visitors accounted for 7% of attendance, from 35 countries, according to the organiser's report relayed by News Tank Culture. The trade show is therefore primarily a gathering for the French sector, with a marked French-speaking outreach: the Délégation générale du Québec à Paris is an institutional partner and the Société des musées du Québec exhibited in 2026.

No OJS certification or third-party attendance audit is published.

Programme & community

Conference programme

The programme is put together with Beaux Arts Institute, around sessions the trade show wants to be "résolument pragmatiques" ("firmly practical"). It is complemented by 45-minute workshops where an exhibitor presents a project in tandem with a client cultural institution, and by open-stage pitches. Video replays and podcasts remain available after the trade show.

The 2026 edition had 48 conferences, workshops and pitches, up from 40 in 2025. The topics set the tone: mediation in the age of artificial intelligence, museums and the living world, developing own-resource funding, accessibility, collaborations with influencers, ecological transition, security for an open museum, heritage as a driver of sustainable tourism. The 2027 programme had not been published at the time of writing.

Awards

For its 31st edition, the trade show is holding the third edition of the Grands Prix du SITEM (SITEM Grand Prix awards), which in 2025 took over from eight editions of the Startup Contest. Two prizes are awarded:

• the Grand Prix Impact rewards a CSR approach; it is reserved for exhibiting companies;
• the Grand Prix Innovation Numérique, run with the Club Innovation & Culture, recognises a digital innovation deployed in or by a French cultural institution, which applies alone or with its company partners.

Applications are open from 6 October 2026 to 19 February 2027. The jury shortlists finalists on 8 March 2027, who pitch in public on 31 March, the day the awards are presented. The 2027 jury includes Bpifrance, Dassault Systèmes, the Caisse des Dépôts group, Audiens, the IFCIC and the Crédit Coopératif, among others. In 2026, the winners were Ducaroy Grange for Impact and Cap Sciences for Digital Innovation.

Community & networks

The list of 2027 partners is broad. Bloomberg Connects is the official partner. On the institutional side: the Ministry of Culture, Pass Culture and the Délégation générale du Québec à Paris. On the professional network side: ICOM France, the AGCCPF, the AFROA (artwork registrars), the OCIM, the SNELAC, the Club Innovation & Culture, La Demeure Historique, Sites et Cités remarquables de France, the Réseau des Grands Sites de France, the Parcs naturels régionaux de France and France Patrimoines & Territoires d'exception.

On the press side, the trade show relies first on its own group's titles, Beaux Arts and Le Quotidien de l'Art, which publishes a special edition during the two days. News Tank Culture, Espaces, Sonovision and Archimag are also among the media partners.

The organiser also runs the Musées (em)portables festival ("Portable Museums"), dedicated to three-minute videos shot on mobile phones on the theme of the museum, which the Ministry of Culture had included among the "fifteen outstanding measures for the museum of tomorrow".

On site: what you need to know

The trade show is held at the Carrousel du Louvre, in the 1st arrondissement, beneath the museum. For detailed access information, see the venue listing. In brief: metro lines 1 and 7, Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre station, Carrousel du Louvre exit; RER C, Musée d'Orsay stop; buses 21, 27, 39, 48, 67, 68, 69, 72, 81 and 95. The Carrousel du Louvre's Indigo car park has 600 spaces.

2027 opening hours: Wednesday 31 March from 9am to 9pm, Thursday 1 April from 9am to 6pm. The first day therefore runs into the evening.

Entry is paid for visitors: €55 incl. VAT full rate, €11 incl. VAT for students and jobseekers. Visitor registration is announced to open in January 2027. Revolugo is the partner accommodation agency.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For the exhibitor

• Book early: the trade show's sales floor plan is already online, useful for viewing available spaces before registering for the 2027 pack.
• Bring a client: the 45-minute workshop is built in tandem with a user institution, and it is the format that sets a supplier apart from its competitors in front of an audience of curators.
• Apply for the Grands Prix before 19 February 2027 if the company has a documentable CSR approach: the Grand Prix Impact is reserved for exhibitors.
• For a young company, compare the Startup Box and the Access stand, two discounted formats subject to the organiser's approval.

For the decision-making visitor

• Target the Wednesday evening session, until 9pm, for meetings that do not fit into a museum's working day.
• Use the workshops as case studies: each solution is presented alongside the institution that implemented it.
• For an opening or renovation project, tour the trade show by professional family, from preventive conservation to digital mediation, over just two days.
• Compare with Museum Connections in January if the museum shop and merchandise offer is part of the project.

CSR policy & initiatives

The trade show's website has no page dedicated to environmental or social commitments, and no ISO 20121 certification is displayed for the event.

Commitments do exist, however, set out by Jérôme Buvat, director of Beaux Arts Events, in Le Quotidien de l'Art in March 2025: 95% of materials reused, reduced carpeted areas, and all suppliers located within 40km of Paris. Le Quotidien de l'Art belongs to the same group as the trade show: these figures are not audited by a third party.

The topic mainly runs through the content. The 2025 edition had opened a section dedicated to eco-design, both material and digital, and the Grand Prix Impact has, since 2025, rewarded an exhibitor's CSR approach against four criteria: employment and human impact, environment and ecological impact, impact and heritage, impact and economy. The ecological transition of museums also featured in the 2026 conference programme.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

SITEM is the heir to two trade shows. The first, the SIME (Salon international des musées et des expositions), was inaugurated on 14 January 1988 at the Grand Palais by the Minister of Culture François Léotard, on an idea by Jean-François Grünfeld: it showcased museums themselves, before coming to an end in Venice. The second, the Salon international des techniques muséographiques (International Trade Show of Museum Techniques), was created in Dijon by the OCIM for science museums, then taken over and expanded to all museum suppliers. It became annual in 2004, absorbed the SIME's scope in 2007 and moved to the Carrousel du Louvre under the name SIMESITEM until 2015, before a spell at Les Docks, Cité de la mode et du design, from 2016, its 20th edition, then a return to the Carrousel.

The recent period shows the format's resilience. The calendar was disrupted by the pandemic: January in 2020, September in 2021, June in 2022, before returning to spring, late March or early April, from 2023 onwards. Over the last two editions, attendance has grown (around 4,500 visitors in 2025, 4,816 in 2026) while the number of exhibitors has stayed stable at around 175 to 180: the Carrousel imposes a capacity limit, and turnover happens through rotation, with 70 new exhibitors in 2026.

Positioning has also shifted. The museum-techniques trade show now talks about cultural tourism, own-resource funding, venue hire and local areas: a museum conceived as a cultural business, which the trade show calls the "musée global" ("global museum"). This is what sets it apart from Museum Connections, which is larger and more geared towards the commercial offer.

Dates for the 2028 edition had not been announced at the time of writing.

All data not attributed to a source comes from the organiser's website.

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