LEAP co-located events: what DeepFest changes

LEAP co-located events put DeepFest inside the same badge, the same venue and the same four days as LEAP itself, so the person standing in front of your stand may have flown in for an AI keynote in Hall 5 rather than for anything you sell. Most exhibitor plans do not account for that, and the cost lands later as a lead list nobody can qualify. This post sets out how the co-location is actually structured, where the traffic physically sits, and how to tell in four questions which show a visitor came for.

What LEAP's co-location actually is

DeepFest is the co-located event. It runs to its fourth edition and shares LEAP's dates and venue exactly: 31 August to 3 September 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre, Malham. It is not a separate venue, not a separate entrance and not a separate ticket.

It is also not one thing. On the organiser's own agenda, DeepFest appears twice: as a stage in Hall 5, and as one of twenty industry tracks running across the conference programme. So "co-located" here covers a physical stage, a content track, and a brand that pulls its own audience, and each of the three reaches your aisle differently.

One warning before you plan anything around a date. When this was written, DeepFest's own site still carried an old April date for LEAP while LEAP's FAQ gave 31 August to 3 September. Regional show dates have moved more than once in the past two years. Check the organiser's own page for the show you are exhibiting at, and check it again before you book freight.

The badge is shared, so the visitor is not yours

LEAP's pass page states that every pass tier carries full conference access across both LEAP and DeepFest stages. The general pass is free ahead of the show and 50 US dollars after, with priority, founder, investor, student and press tiers alongside.

Read that as an operational fact, not a pricing note. A free pass holder who came to watch three AI talks holds the same access as a procurement director with signing authority. Your scanner cannot tell them apart. Neither can your stand team, unless somebody asks.

This is where badge scans mislead. A scan records that a person stood near you. It does not record why they were in the building. If you already run a tight qualification script, apply it harder here — our note on qualifying leads at a trade show covers the ninety-second version. The co-location adds one question in front of it: which show did you come for?

Where the co-located traffic actually sits

The organiser's published agenda lists the stages by hall. That hall list is the closest thing to a traffic map you will get before doors open.

Hall 5 is the AI centre of gravity

The DeepFest stage sits in Hall 5, alongside Tech Arena, the AWS Academy sessions and the Google Cloud booth theatre. If your buyer is a data or AI decision maker, this is the hall that concentrates them. If your buyer is not, Hall 5 traffic is the traffic most likely to look qualified and convert to nothing.

Halls 1 and 1A run the pitch and build content

Main Stage is in Hall 1. Code Stage, the Investor and Founder Stage and the Rocket Fuel pitch stage are all in Hall 1A. Expect founders, engineers and investors, in that order of density, and surges keyed to pitch slots rather than a steady flow.

Halls 2, 3 and 4 carry the sector tracks

LEAP Studio is in Hall 2. The Orbital rooms run across Halls 2, 3 and 4. World Tech is in Hall 3. AI Leaders, LEAP Connect, the Locker Room and the Sports Tech stage are in Hall 4. The sector tracks — climate tech, cyber, fintech, gov tech, health tech, smart cities, space tech — are where a named vertical buyer is most likely to be sitting.

Match your stand position against that list before you brief anybody. If your stand is in Hall 3 and your buyer is in Hall 5, the co-location is working against you, and no amount of stand design fixes it.

The hours squeeze nobody plans for

LEAP's FAQ gives visitor admission as 1pm to 9pm daily, with some pass tiers admitted from noon. Exhibitors get the halls from 9am to 9.30pm.

Eight visitor hours a day across four days is 32 hours of floor time in total.
Exhibitor hall access runs about 12.5 hours a day, so roughly 50 hours on site.
That leaves about 18 hours per person of setup, resets and teardown that produce no conversations.

Now layer the co-located programme on top. Whenever a headline session runs on the DeepFest stage or Main Stage, the aisles thin and the seats fill. When it ends, several hundred people leave one hall at once. Those two states need different staffing: fewer people at the stand during a keynote, more people positioned at stage exits immediately after.

Staff a flat number across a flat eight hours and you are understaffed for every surge and overstaffed for every gap.

Four questions that tell you which show they came for

Ask them in order. Each one narrows the answer.

"Which sessions are you here for?" A named stage answers your question without you having to ask it. Hall 5 and DeepFest means AI first. A sector track means a vertical buyer.
"Is this your first day, or are you here all four?" A single-day visitor is usually local and self-directed. A four-day pass usually means a company sent them.
"Who else from your team is on site?" One person is a scout. Three people with different job titles is an evaluation.
"What are you looking to have in place by the end of the year?" This tests budget and timeline without asking about either.

If the first answer names a DeepFest stage and your product has nothing to do with AI, you have not found a bad lead. You have found a fast no, four questions in, which is worth more than a scanned badge.

Worked example: covering a shared badge with four people

Take a stand in Hall 3 selling into gov tech, with four people on the floor.

One person holds the stand at all times. That is a fixed quarter of your headcount.
Two people work the sector tracks in Halls 3 and 4, where the gov tech and smart cities content runs. They work the queue before a session and the exit after it.
One person floats to Hall 1A around pitch slots, and to Hall 5 only when a session on the agenda names a public sector or infrastructure topic.

Across four days that is roughly 128 person-hours of floor time, about 96 of them away from the stand. The number is not the point. The allocation being driven by the agenda rather than by the aisle your stand sits on is. For the wider picture of who is in the building, see who attends LEAP in Riyadh; for everything that has to be sorted before build-up, the full LEAP exhibitor guide covers visas, freight and stand logistics.

What do exhibitors ask about LEAP's co-located events?

Does a LEAP pass include DeepFest?

Yes. The organiser's pass page states that every tier, including the free general pass, carries full conference access across LEAP and DeepFest stages. There is no separate DeepFest ticket to buy and no separate registration to complete. For an exhibitor that matters more than it sounds: it means the DeepFest audience is already inside your hall, holding a badge that scans like everyone else's.

Is DeepFest held in a separate hall?

The DeepFest stage is listed in Hall 5, alongside Tech Arena and the AWS and Google Cloud session spaces. The floor itself is not partitioned by show, so DeepFest attendees move through every hall. Treat Hall 5 as a concentration point rather than a boundary.

Do the co-located events inflate the attendance figure?

The organiser publishes a single expected attendance figure of more than 200,000 and does not break out a LEAP-only against DeepFest-only split. Assume the headline number counts everyone through the door under a shared badge. Set your own targets from your buyer profile and your stand capacity instead.

Should I take stand space in Hall 5 to catch AI traffic?

Only if AI decision makers are your buyer. Hall 5 concentrates the DeepFest audience, which raises footfall and lowers the average relevance of that footfall for everyone else. A stand in the hall that matches your own sector track will usually produce fewer conversations and better ones.

Where Event BDR fits

A shared badge is a coverage problem before it is a sales problem. Event BDR places vetted, trained BDR reps on exhibition floors in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, so you can hold your stand and still have people working the halls where your buyer's sessions actually run. You pick specific reps for specific days, so you can put people on the floor for the four show days and none for build-up. Leads and meetings arrive as a live feed with a recap each evening, so you know by lunchtime on day one if your scans are coming from the wrong track. If you are weighing that up for this floor, the LEAP show page has the dates, venue and coverage detail.