Exhibiting at LEAP: what to sort before build-up

Exhibiting at LEAP is decided weeks before anyone walks onto the floor. The show runs 31 August to 3 September 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, and what ruins a first-time stand sits on earlier deadlines: a late visa, demo hardware held at the border, six halls covered by two tired people. This guide sets out what is fixed, what it costs, and what to do with the four days once they start.

What is already fixed

LEAP's exhibitor resource centre puts build-up at 19 to 30 August, with hall access from 8am to 10pm across halls 1, 2, 3, 1A, 4 and 5. Vehicle Access and Parking Permits are issued only during build-up, between 25 and 30 August, from the Organiser Office in Hall 2. If your contractor is arriving on the 29th with a truck and nobody has collected a permit, that truck waits.

Show days run to a split timetable. LEAP's own FAQ gives visitor hours as 12:00 to 21:00 and exhibitor access as 09:00 to 21:30 daily. That is four days of nine public hours each, so 36 hours of actual selling, plus three exhibitor-only hours every morning. Most teams burn those three hours on coffee. They are the best hours of the day for walking other stands and booking meetings before the crowd arrives.

Exhibitor parking sits at CP1, with golf-cart shuttles to the gates, but during build-up those shuttles run only on 29 and 30 August. The planning date is 19 August, not 31 August: freight, visas and collateral must all be done before build-up opens.

Who is on the floor, and who actually buys

LEAP's key information page records attendance of 100,000-plus in 2022, 172,000-plus in 2023, 215,000-plus in 2024 and 201,000-plus in 2025. It describes that audience as enterprise leaders, founders, engineers, investors, government officials and international delegations.

That is a crowd, not a buyer list. An engineer, a founder raising a seed round and a government procurement lead all scan the same badge reader, and only one has a budget line for what you sell.

The show runs 20 tracks across four days, including Climate Tech, Cloud and SaaS, Cyber, Fintech and eCommerce, Gov Tech, Health Tech, Smart Cities and Space Tech, plus feature areas such as the Tech Arena and the Investor and Founder Stage. Before you arrive, name the two tracks your buyer sits in and the two that waste your time. That decision determines where anyone not holding your stand should be standing.

The cost lines that move, and the ones that do not

LEAP does not publish stand rates; its exhibit page routes enquiries to a sales contact, so treat any figure quoted on a third-party site as unverified. What you can plan is the shape of the spend.

Fixed once signed:

Floor space, priced by square metre and location.
Shell scheme or space-only build. Space-only means a contractor, drawings and approvals on top.
Contractor labour during a build-up window that starts twelve days before the show.

Variable, and where budgets break:

Freight and customs clearance, including carnet handling.
Visas and flights for every person on the badge list.
Riyadh accommodation. LEAP's guidance warns that availability during the show is limited and allocated first-come, first-served, so booking late is a price rise, not a risk.
Staffing hours, including people who cover the hall rather than the stand.

Exhibitors underfund the last line because it is the only one that scales with the floor. Our guide to measuring trade show ROI shows how to attach these costs to outcomes finance accepts.

Visas and freight

Entry

The official Saudi eVisa portal states that visitors from 66 eligible countries can apply for what it describes as a one-year, multiple entry visa allowing tourists up to 90 days in the country. It lists permitted purposes as tourism-related activities such as events, family visits, leisure and Umrah, excluding Hajj. If a passport is not on that list, the portal directs applicants to the nearest Saudi embassy.

Note that "events" covers attending. If a team member will be doing paid work on your stand, confirm the route with the embassy rather than assuming a tourist eVisa stretches that far. Apply early enough that a refusal is recoverable.

Check every passport holder against the portal's eligibility list.
Apply at least four weeks before build-up, not before the show.
Keep a scan of each approved visa in one shared folder.
Hold refundable fares until approvals land.

Kit

Saudi Arabia accepts ATA carnets for temporary admission. ZATCA runs a pre-approval e-service for goods entering under a carnet, listed with no fees and a stated duration of five days, asking for an importer number, a passport copy and the carnet issued in the exporting country.

A carnet covers what leaves with you: demo hardware, screens, laptops, samples. Giveaways and printed material are not temporary imports, so handle them separately or print in Riyadh. Serial numbers save arguments on the way out.

Staffing: the arithmetic most exhibitors get wrong

Run the maths on a two-person stand. Thirty-six public hours across two people is 72 person-hours. A real qualifying conversation takes roughly eight minutes, plus four to record it properly, so call it twelve. That is five per person-hour at best, and three once you allow for breaks, booked meetings, dead spells and people who only want a pen.

Seventy-two person-hours at three conversations each is about 216 conversations across four days, against a floor that drew over 200,000 people last year. Your stand is a meeting point, not a coverage strategy. What separates a good LEAP from a wasted one is who works the rest of the hall while your two people hold the stand, which we covered in lead generation at LEAP Riyadh.

Brief on questions, not on the pitch

Everyone representing you should run the same four questions and record the answers the same way:

What are you working on that made you stop here?
Who else has to agree before something like this gets bought?
Is there budget assigned this year, or are you still scoping?
What would make you take a call in the two weeks after LEAP?

Four fields recorded identically by every person beat a brilliant unscripted conversation nobody wrote down. An Arabic one-page leave-behind and at least one Arabic speaker on the team change how quickly a Saudi buyer gets to the point.

The follow-up window closes before you fly home

Leads decay because the buyer met thirty other stands the same week. Sort the day they happen:

Tier A, roughly 10 per cent: budget, authority and timeline all present. Contact the same evening, proposing a meeting while both parties are in Riyadh.
Tier B, roughly 30 per cent: a real problem, no timeline. Contact within 48 hours, quoting their answer to question one.
Tier C, the rest: nurture. One useful email in week two.

On 216 conversations that is 22 people to reach on show nights, which is achievable, and 65 by the following Sunday, which is not if the data is still in a notebook. Export daily. Our exhibitor playbook covers recording and hand-off, and if Saudi Arabia is new to you, our guide to vetting B2B lead generation companies in Saudi Arabia sets out what to check first.

What do exhibitors ask about LEAP?

When and where is LEAP 2026?

LEAP 2026 runs from 31 August to 3 September 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, Saudi Arabia. Visitor hours are 12:00 to 21:00 each day and exhibitors are admitted from 09:00 until 21:30. Build-up runs 19 to 30 August with hall access from 8am to 10pm across halls 1, 2, 3, 1A, 4 and 5.

Do I need a visa to exhibit at LEAP?

Most international visitors do. The official Saudi eVisa portal lists 66 eligible nationalities for a one-year, multiple-entry visa allowing stays of up to 90 days, and names events among the permitted purposes. If your nationality is not listed, or a team member will be doing paid work on site, contact the nearest Saudi embassy for the correct route rather than relying on a tourist eVisa.

How do I get demo equipment into Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia accepts ATA carnets for temporary admission. ZATCA operates a pre-approval e-service listed with no fees and a five-day duration, requiring an importer number, a passport copy and the carnet issued in the exporting country. Items you intend to give away are not temporary imports and need separate handling, so consider printing collateral in Riyadh instead.

How many people do I need on the stand?

More than most teams book, and placed differently. Two people cover roughly 216 qualifying conversations across four show days once breaks and write-up time are counted. If your target is higher, the extra capacity has to come from people working the aisles, the other halls and the side events, not from a bigger stand.

Where Event BDR fits

Event BDR places vetted, trained BDR reps on exhibition floors in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, including LEAP. The point is coverage: your team holds the stand and takes the meetings, while reps work the halls your own people cannot reach and send qualified leads back through a live feed, with a daily recap. You choose specific reps for specific event days, and can add unpaid backups billed only if a no-show forces you to activate one. It does not replace your salespeople. It stops a floor this size being covered by two of them. See what that looks like on our LEAP exhibitor page.