The French tech ecosystem gave rise to Vivatech, which in less than ten years has established itself as the showcase event for European innovation. But Vivatech does not sum up the sector: for a B2B SaaS vendor, a cloud integrator, a data scale-up or a cybersecurity player, the relevant calendar looks very different from that of a consumer startup seeking investors.
This is precisely the challenge of the tech sector: the diversity of company profiles and commercial targets makes choosing trade shows far more strategic than elsewhere. IT Partners to reach resellers and integrators, Big Data & AI Paris for specialisation, All4Customer for the customer relationship ecosystem, E-commerce Paris for digital retail: each event has its own audience, its own entry ticket and its own logic of returns.
This page covers the main tech trade shows on the French calendar, the specialised formats by segment, and the major European and global references that French players cannot afford to ignore. For the Agoris Certified profiles, we specify who attends (decision-makers, operational staff, suppliers, investors), with what level of seniority, and what type of business is actually signed on site or in the weeks that follow.
Our conviction: the ROI of a tech trade show depends far more on the quality of the visitor than on their volume. A profile that gives you the visitor figure without qualifying its real composition does not help you decide.
The benchmark trade shows in France
The French market for tech trade shows is one of the most fragmented. La French Tech created the conditions for a very dense events offering, where a large-format generalist event coexists with a multitude of vertical events, each with its own audience.
Vivatech is the largest tech trade show in Europe, organised every year in June at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles by the Les Echos group and Publicis. Its 2025 edition set a new record with 180,000 visitors, 14,000 startups from 171 countries, more than 3,000 investors and 450 speakers, including several heads of state and CEOs of the world's largest tech companies. More than 300 major announcements were made at this edition. Vivatech is at once a showcase for corporates exhibiting their innovation initiatives, a fundraising platform for startups and an event of international media visibility. It is less a classic commercial trade show than an event for positioning and visibility. Next edition: 17 to 20 June 2026, Paris.
IT Partners is the benchmark trade show for the IT channel in France, organised every year in February by RX France. It brings together brands, wholesalers, resellers, integrators and IT service companies around a format explicitly designed to generate business in IT distribution. Its visitors are made up of IT directors, sales managers and buyers from retail, local authorities, industry and services. In 2025 it moved to Paris La Défense Arena, with around 220 exhibitors per edition. It is the preferred tool for vendors and manufacturers wanting to activate their distribution networks in France.
Big Data & AI Paris is the French benchmark trade show on data and artificial intelligence in business, organised every year in September in Paris. It brings together the major international data and AI players, the pure players and scale-ups, as well as the most innovative startups. Its 2026 edition marks a deliberate refocus on large-account decision-makers: the aim is to double the share of visitors from large organisations and to qualitatively filter profiles in order to maximise the value of the encounters. It is the relevant place for data/AI solution providers selling to CIOs and business divisions, not for those addressing developers or startups.
All4Customer is the trade show dedicated to customer relationship management, digital marketing, data and e-commerce, organised every year at Paris Porte de Versailles. It is aimed at the marketing, CX and digital departments of large companies and mid-caps. Its positioning covers the entire CRM chain, from customer data collection through to marketing automation and conversational AI. It is the natural entry point for vendors of CRM, CDP, CCaaS and marketing automation solutions targeting buyers in large organisations.
Specialised formats by segment
The growing specialisation of the tech ecosystem has given rise to segmented events that usefully complement the calendar of the major trade shows.
BIM World Paris (annual, Paris) is the benchmark event on digital technology and the digital transformation of building and infrastructure: digital modelling, construction-site data management, smart building. It is aimed at a very specific profile, at the intersection of tech and construction.
E-commerce Paris (annual, Paris) is the benchmark trade show for French digital commerce, bringing together online retail players, technical and logistics service providers, and marketing solutions for e-commerce. It is aimed at the e-commerce, digital and IT departments of retailers and pure players. It is where platform and tooling investment decisions are prepared.
The French Tech community events also structure the calendar outside the classic trade shows: scale-up lunches, themed meetings by vertical (fintech, healthtech, greentech, deeptech), investor meetups in major cities. These informal formats are often more effective for local business development than exhibition stands.
The major European and global tech trade shows
For French tech players developing internationally, three events stand out as must-attends depending on their positioning.
CES (Las Vegas, annual in January) is the world's largest trade show for consumer and professional technological innovation, organised by the Consumer Technology Association. It brings together more than 4,000 exhibitors and 130,000 professional visitors from 160 countries. For French startups, it has become an essential international springboard: la French Tech has a strong presence there with regional delegations organised by the CCIs and competitiveness clusters. Its global media reach also makes it an unrivalled visibility tool for product launch years.
MWC Barcelona is the world's largest mobile connectivity event, organised every year in February or March by the GSMA at Fira Barcelona. Its 2025 edition brought together 109,000 participants from 205 countries and more than 2,900 exhibitors, with 1,200 speakers. It covers mobile telephony, 5G, AI applied to networks, industrial connectivity and smart mobility. The satellite event 4YFN (4 Years From Now) hosts more than 1,000 startup exhibitors and 900 investors in parallel. For players in telecoms, IoT and digital infrastructure, MWC is the structuring event of the year.
Web Summit (Lisbon, annual in November) is one of the largest tech events in Europe, distinguished by its strongly startup- and investor-oriented format. It brings together more than 70,000 participants from 160 countries around conferences, pitches and encounters between founders and funds. Its visitor profile is quite different from that of Vivatech or MWC: younger, more early-stage and venture-capital oriented, less corporate and large-account. It is the right place for a startup looking for its next funding round or its first international partners.
Beyond the trade shows: formats, communities and parallel events
Events culture in the tech sector is particularly dense and innovative. The major trade shows are often only the visible tip of an iceberg of parallel activities.
Side events and after-parties. Vivatech 2025 offered around fifty parallel events on the fringes of the trade show to extend conversations outside opening hours. This phenomenon is even more pronounced at MWC and CES, where some major deals are closed at private events organised by large groups on the fringes of the official trade show. For an exhibitor, understanding this calendar of side events is part of strategic preparation.
Competitions and pitch nights. Vivatech organises a Grand Pitch Night and a Demo Day every year, giving selected startups access to media and investor visibility far greater than that of a classic stand. MWC runs an innovation competition through the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator. These awards have become important signals of credibility for startups in their negotiations with large accounts.
Conferences and keynotes. Vivatech 2025 featured 450 speakers across more than 300 talks. These conferences are part of the trade show's value for visitors keeping an eye on strategic trends: many attend as much for the sessions as for the stands. For a vendor or consultant wanting to position themselves as an expert in their field, the conference circuit is often more profitable than the exhibition stand.
Communities and accelerators. Outside the trade shows, the French tech ecosystem comes to life around Station F, the French Tech Next40/120 programmes, the Bpifrance accelerators and regional hubs such as EuraTechnologies (Lille), Unitec (Bordeaux) and Minalogic (Grenoble). These structures organise meetings, demos and corporate events throughout the year that shape local partnerships well ahead of the major trade shows.
What Agoris covers on tech
Our Agoris Certified analyses take the sector's segmentation seriously. For each documented trade show, we specify who attends and with what level of seniority, what type of business is actually signed on site or in the weeks that follow, and what the difference is between the organiser's messaging and the public feedback from exhibitors at past editions.
In a sector where hype is structural and where visitor figures often mix students, the curious and decision-makers, the composition of the audience is the most valuable piece of information. That is what our verdicts seek to clarify.