The 24th International Wood & Furniture Exhibition runs from 26 to 29 December 2026 at Tehran International Fairground. It is a show for the supply side of furniture making: woodworking machinery, boards and panels, edge banding, fittings, adhesives and coatings. If you are exhibiting, you have about eight weeks. That is enough for a custom stand, provided the main decisions are made in the next fortnight.
We build stands in Tehran from our own workshop, so this piece is written from that side. Rather than describing the fair, it covers the things that decide your schedule and the finish of your stand.
Plan for the people walking the aisles
Visitors here are mostly trade: cabinet makers, furniture manufacturers, joiners, interior designers and factory buyers. They run a hand along a surface, pull out a drawer and look hard at the edges. A stand built on large photos and slogans tends to feel thin to this crowd.
How we lay out the space depends on what you sell.
- Machinery: the floor belongs to the machines. Few walls, open sightlines from more than one aisle, and a quiet corner for talking about price, delivery and service.
- Boards, panels and surfaces: the stand itself can work as the sample book. More on that below.
- Fittings, adhesives and coatings: small products people want to pick up. Shallow shelves, a readable product code under each sample and a counter with sample packs do most of the work.
Build the stand from your own boards
For an MDF, high-gloss or melamine producer, the strongest message is a stand made from your own product. A visitor asks about a colour, and the answer is the wall they are leaning on.
The catch is timing. We want your boards in our workshop at least three weeks before opening, because cutting, edging and the trial assembly all happen on that material. Replacement sheets are not always quick to find in late autumn, the busiest stretch of the year for Tehran stand workshops. Our CNC cutting is in house, so we can work your sheets accurately with little waste, but send a few spares anyway. One knock during loading can mean recutting a panel.
Put a small label with the code and thickness next to each finish. Trade buyers photograph it and order by that code weeks later.
Start a machinery stand from the floor plan
A common mistake is to design the stand and only then ask where the machines go. For a machinery stand we work the other way round. The list of machines with length, width, height and weight comes first, each one goes on the plan with clear space around it, and walls, lighting and graphics follow.
Ask the organiser two things early: in what order machines and stand structures enter the hall during build-up, and what floor load your hall allows. Take both answers from this year’s technical manual, not from memory of last year, because the halls at the Tehran fairground are not all alike. We usually leave one side of the stand open until late in the build, so a machine can come in without a wall being taken down.
If you plan live demonstrations, put the times on a sign at the front. People come back at the stated hour, and your sales team knows when it needs to be on the stand.
A timeline to 26 December
- By 21 November: hall plan and stand number, the list of machines or products, and a rough budget.
- By 29 November: final 3D design signed off. Changes after this affect cutting and paint.
- By 6 December: your own boards, if we are using them, plus a vector logo and the stand texts.
- Around 11 December: final print files. Large-format print and light boxes take several days.
- Mid-December: trial assembly in our workshop. If someone from your side can see the stand standing, problems get fixed there rather than in the hall.
- Build-up days before 26 December: transport and installation, on the days and hours set in the organiser’s technical manual.
Note that build-up falls over Christmas. If you are waiting for parts or a technician from a European supplier, settle that now.
Building in a Tehran winter
The fair opens at the start of winter. Build-up nights in Tehran are cold and the loading doors stay open for hours. We finish all painting and gluing in the workshop, so the hall is for assembly only. Paint that has to cure in a cold hall usually still smells on opening day.
Two smaller points. Visitors arrive in heavy coats, so add a few hooks in the meeting area. And Tehran sometimes announces closures on high-pollution days in winter, so leave a day of slack in your travel and crew plans.
Next step
Send us the hall plan and stand number, the list of machines or products with their sizes, and tell us if you want your own boards used on the stand. With that we can put together a first design and a workshop schedule within a few days. If you are coming from abroad, our trade fair services in Tehran page explains how we handle the local side, and our projects show stands we have built before.
