The 8th International Shopping Centers & Retail Real Estate Exhibition, often called the Retail Show, is listed for 7 to 10 December 2026 at the Tehran International Fairground. The people who take stands here fall into three groups, and each needs something different from a stand. Mall developers and operators want tenants and buyers. Retail brands are looking for their next location. Shopfitting, lighting, shelving and retail technology suppliers want to show what they make.
Work out which group you are in before anything else. The design follows from that.
Developers presenting a project
For a developer, the stand is really a temporary sales office. Serious visitors want to sit down, look at floor plans and ask about unit positions. Give most of the floor to tables and plan displays rather than tall walls and an oversized logo.
- If you have a scale model of the project, make it the centre of the stand, with room for a few people around it and lighting from above that doesn’t throw hard shadows.
- Models break. Ship them separately from the stand structure and bring them in after painting and fit-out are finished.
- Build a small room with a door for talks with anchor tenants. Those conversations don’t happen in front of the aisle.
- A large screen for renders and walk-through video works well, as long as hall lighting doesn’t wash it out and its sound doesn’t reach the meeting table.
Shopfitting and retail equipment suppliers
For this group, the stand is the sample. Your visitors are store-planning and technical managers from retail chains, and they will look at the same things you sell them: shelf joints, colour consistency, edge finishing, display lighting. A sloppy stand undoes any catalogue.
We usually suggest building part of the stand as a real corner of a shop, with stocked shelving, a lit display case and a counter. It tells the story faster than photos of past projects on a wall. We cut parts on CNC in our own workshop and trial-assemble them before the fair, which matters a lot when the stand itself is meant to prove build quality.
If you sell retail lighting, keep the stand’s general lighting low so your own fittings stand out.
Retail brands looking for sites
Brands scouting new locations usually take smaller stands and come to meet mall managers. The stand should show your store identity in a few square metres: the colours, materials and lighting customers see in your branches. One wall that reads like your shopfront and a table for meetings is enough. Spend on the quality of that space rather than on more of it.
After the fair
Decide this before the design starts. Shopfitting firms can often reinstall the shop corner in their own showroom, and developers can move the model and some wall panels into the project’s sales office. If we know from the start that a piece will be reused, we build it to come apart and go back together without damage. That costs little at build stage and is almost impossible to add later.
Timing, the venue and neighbouring shows
There are about nine weeks to opening. We would aim for final design and artwork sign-off around 9 November, four weeks out. If you need a model or video content, order it now. Those usually take longer than the stand itself.
The Printing & Packaging Exhibition and Iran GEO run on the same dates at the venue, so loading gates will be busy and delivery times need agreeing in advance. Height limits, drawing deadlines and power orders are set out in the organiser’s technical manual, and we prefer to work from this year’s version rather than last year’s figures. Tehran is cold in December and paint dries slowly in a cold hall, so we finish painting in the workshop wherever we can.
Coming from abroad? Our trade fair services in Tehran page explains what we handle for foreign exhibitors.
Next step
Send us your stand size and position, a couple of photos of your store or project, and a list of what has to go on the stand: model, screens, shelving, display cases. You can see stands we have built on our projects page.
