FABTECH 2026

A North American metal forming, fabricating, welding, and finishing event featuring the latest equipment and technologies.

FABTECH 2026

FABTECH runs October 21–23, 2026 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 Paradise Road.

Expo hours are 9am to 5pm on Wednesday and Thursday, and 9am to 4pm on Friday — the last day is an hour shorter, which is worth checking against a return flight.

What it is

FABTECH is, in the organiser's words, North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event — the processes that turn sheet, plate, tube and bar into finished parts. It has been running for more than 40 years and is produced jointly by several industry associations rather than by a commercial organiser.

The organiser puts the show at 1,400 exhibitors and more than 31,000 attendees across over 700,000 square feet of floor.

It has not been in Las Vegas for a decade

FABTECH moves between host cities, and 2026 is its first Las Vegas event in ten years. If you last attended in Chicago or Atlanta, the venue, the hotel geography and the travel arithmetic are all different this time.

The seven pavilions

The floor is divided into seven pavilions, which is the single most useful thing to know before walking in:

• Forming & Fabricating
• Welding
• Automation
• Finishing
• Stamping & Press Automation
• Tube & Pipe
• Job Shop

Each covers a portion of the sheet metal manufacturing industry, and exhibitors, sessions and new-product listings are all filterable by pavilion. On a floor this size that is the difference between a planned day and a wasted one.

Conference and events

The conference programme runs to more than 180 sessions and workshops. Sessions are ticketed separately from the floor, and the organiser has introduced a FABPass covering any conference session along with food and beverage tickets and merchandise.

Two things run alongside it:

• Emerging Leaders, a half-day programme for manufacturing professionals under 35, built around networking, a keynote and a hands-on workshop.
• Keynotes and panels daily, plus the Women of FABTECH networking breakfast.

Admission

Show floor admission is free if you register before the organiser's cut-off date; after that, and on site, a registration fee applies. The cut-off is published on the organiser's site — register early and the floor costs nothing.

The other FABTECH events

FABTECH is a family rather than a single show, and the others are on different dates in different countries:

• FABTECH Mexico — May 4–6, 2027, Monterrey, Nuevo León.
• FABTECH USA — September 13–16, 2027, Chicago, Illinois.
• FABTECH Canada.

If Las Vegas in October does not suit, Chicago the following September may.

Seven pavilions — Forming & Fabricating, Welding, Automation, Finishing, Stamping & Press Automation, Tube & Pipe, and Job Shop.

First Las Vegas event in ten years.

1,400 exhibitors and 31,000+ attendees across 700,000+ square feet, on the organiser's figures.

180+ conference sessions and workshops, ticketed separately, with a new FABPass covering any session.

Emerging Leaders, a half-day programme for professionals under 35.

Floor admission is free if you register before the cut-off.

Friday closes at 4pm, an hour earlier than the other days.

The audience is weighted toward people who buy, run or maintain metalworking equipment.

Owners and plant managers at job shops and contract fabricators — the Job Shop pavilion exists specifically for them.

Manufacturing and process engineers comparing machines running under load rather than on a datasheet.

Welding engineers and inspectors, who have a pavilion of their own.

Stamping and press operations, likewise.

Maintenance and automation staff evaluating robotics and material handling.

Tube and pipe fabricators.

Manufacturing professionals under 35, for whom the Emerging Leaders half-day is built.

Buyers of contract fabrication, who come to find suppliers rather than machines.

Register before the cut-off and floor admission is free, which makes a day trip cheap relative to most shows of this size.

The exhibitor base is capital equipment and what surrounds it, and the seven pavilions are a fair map of it.

Machine tool builders — laser cutting, press brakes, punching, bending.

Welding equipment and consumables.

Automation and robotics integrators.

Stamping and press automation.

Tube and pipe machinery.

Finishing, coating and surface preparation.

Software — CAD/CAM, nesting, shop-floor and quoting systems.

Tooling, abrasives and workholding.

Two things shape a stand here. Visitors arrive expecting to see machines running, so a static booth is a weaker showing than it would be at a conference. And because the floor is filtered by pavilion in the directory and the app, being in the right pavilion matters as much as the stand itself.