Exhibiting at a fair in Türkiye
You have the fair, the hall and the square metres. Everything between that and opening day — the drawings, the fair authority's file, production, installation and dismantling — is done from Istanbul by the company that builds your stand in its own workshop and installs it with its own crew.
Where you will be exhibiting
Most fairs in Türkiye are held at a handful of venues, and the rules are not the same at any two of them. These are the ones our portfolio is built in — each link opens the credited projects we have delivered there, counted from the portfolio itself.
İstanbul Fuar Merkezi, Yeşilköy
The venue that carries the largest part of our portfolio. It belongs to İstanbul Dünya Ticaret Merkezi, a member of the World Trade Centers Association network: eleven halls and around 98,000 m² of rentable space, eight halls operated by CNR Expo and three by WTC Istanbul. The metro station carries the venue's name — and our office is in the same complex, a few minutes from the halls.
Projects at İstanbul Fuar MerkeziTüyap, Büyükçekmece
Istanbul's other large fairground, at the western edge of the city. It is a different site with its own technical conditions, its own build-up windows and its own approval desk — which is the whole reason we read the specification of your fair rather than assuming one venue's rules apply at the next.
Projects at TüyapIf your fair is somewhere else
Not a problem, and not a guess either. The mechanics below hold across Türkiye; the numbers — heights, deadlines, fees — come from that fair's own technical specification. If you do not have it, we obtain it before quoting, and the figures that end up in your quotation are the ones written in it.
From your first message to the empty hall
Seven steps. They are the same for a company exhibiting in Istanbul for the first time and for one that comes back every year; what changes is how much of it you want to see.
1 · What you send us
The fair name, the hall and stand number, the floor area, and the stand's position — island, corner, peninsula or inline, because the position decides how many faces are open and how much finishing there is. If you already have the organiser's technical specification, send it; if you do not, we find it.
2 · Design and revisions
The stand is drawn around your brand, the floor area and the hall, and presented for approval as a 3D model with photorealistic renders. Three rounds of revisions are included; further rounds are chargeable, and that is said before the first round, not after the third.
3 · The fair authority's file
The drawings go to the fair's technical office roughly two weeks before build-up. That correspondence is in Turkish and it is ours — you do not deal with it. What the organiser charges for project approval and site safety, and the electricity fee, are inside the figure we quote; they do not reappear as invoices during the fair week.
4 · Production in our own workshop
Timber, metal and glass are worked in our own workshop in Istanbul, not subcontracted, and we inspect the work ourselves with our master craftsman. That is also why the schedule is ours to hold rather than somebody else's to explain.
5 · Installation
In Türkiye our own crew installs the stand inside the build-up window the organiser defines. The delivery date is written into the contract: the stand is finished before that window closes, by the evening of the final build-up day. Where the window is longer we usually finish two or three days before opening.
6 · The fair days
On-site support runs through the fair. It is inside the quoted price rather than an extra line, so a panel that needs adjusting or a lamp that fails on the second morning is dealt with rather than negotiated.
7 · Dismantling — and what does not happen next
Dismantling and the first cleaning are included. We do not store stands afterwards, and the reason is arithmetic rather than capacity: panels are damaged in storage, a replaced panel does not match the colour of the old ones, and the difference shows on the floor. If you want the same design at your next fair, we build it again.
What is asked for in Türkiye, and who answers it
On a custom stand, half the work is production and the other half is a file. The mechanics below are the same at every fair; the numbers change from one to the next, and the ones that apply to yours are taken from that fair's own technical conditions and written into the quotation.
Project approval
A custom-built stand needs an approved project. Without approval a stand may not exceed 2.50 m; with an approved project, custom stands are commonly allowed up to 5 m. Both figures come from real technical conditions we have worked to — they are the shape of the rule, not a promise about your fair.
Island stands: half of every face open
Where a stand faces aisles on four sides, at least half of each face has to stay open. A design that closes itself off is not approved, so this is settled at the drawing stage rather than discovered at the approval desk.
Above four metres, and double-deckers
These need a structural report: stamped and signed by a certified structural engineer, with a letter of undertaking beside it. The organiser names the firm that issues it and sets the structural inspection fee, and both change from fair to fair. Our part is to deliver the drawings and dimensions that firm asks for, on time and complete, and to show the fee in writing in the quotation.
Flame-retardancy certificate
That is the document's name. Where flammable material is used on a stand it may be required, and it goes to the fair's technical officer before build-up. In Türkiye the practice varies from fair to fair; in Germany it is required without exception. We obtain the certificate together with the material when we specify it, so it is in the file when the hall asks. We do not commit to a fire class before the material is chosen.
Rigging is not available everywhere
Suspending anything from the ceiling is normally not possible at the exhibition venues in Istanbul; it exists in Hall 1 in Antalya and at international venues. Where it does exist, the permit is at the fair administration's discretion. If your design leans on a hanging sign or a suspended structure, we discuss it before the hall and square-metre decision, not after.
Floor rental is a separate contract
The floor space is rented from the organiser; the stand is bought from the company that builds it. Two contracts, two invoices, two budget lines. Keeping them apart is the quickest way to see whether a stand quotation is actually expensive.
Bringing your goods into Türkiye: the ATA carnet
The stand is built here, so it never crosses a border. Your exhibits do. This is the part of the job that is written up almost everywhere in the outbound direction and almost nowhere in this one, so here it is from the Turkish side.
Türkiye accepts foreign carnets
Türkiye has been inside the ATA system since 1975, with TOBB as the national guaranteeing association, and accepts foreign ATA carnets for exhibitions and fairs. Goods for display or use at an exhibition are named in Annex B.1 of the Istanbul Convention on temporary admission. The carnet stands in place of the customs declaration and the guarantee, so no separate temporary-import declaration is drawn up and no separate security is lodged.
The regime codes on the way in
On the Turkish side, temporary importation under a carnet runs under regime code 5800, and the re-export of those goods under 3158. The 2600 and 6326 pair you will find on our page about building abroad is the other direction — goods leaving Türkiye. Mixing the two is one of the more expensive ways to lose a morning at the border.
Electronic declaration: possible, not obligatory
Since the amendment published in the Official Gazette of 2 June 2021 (No. 31499) to the Customs General Communiqué on Temporary Importation, goods travelling under a carnet may be declared electronically before they reach the entry customs office; the procedure runs through the e-ATA/TR programme under Circular 2021/17. Note the wording: it is an option, not a requirement — several English-language carnet advisories state it as compulsory. Doing it in advance is still what saves the time.
What the customs officer actually checks
That the carnet was issued under Annex A of the Istanbul Convention and is valid for the Turkish customs territory, that the goods are of a kind the temporary-admission list covers, that boxes A to G carry the right information, and that the temporary importation declaration in box F is filled in and signed. The holder or the representative then gives a service address and identity details, and the carnet is registered inside its validity.
The general list is the part that matters
Identification on the way out is made against the general list on the back of the carnet, so each item wants its own line with marks, serial numbers and dimensions, and a realistic weight and value — that value is the basis of the security. Descriptions specific enough for the same object to be recognised on re-export are worth the hour they take. Your customs broker settles the tariff classification; an exhibition stand, incidentally, has no single tariff code at all, which is explained on our page about building abroad.
What does not belong on the carnet
Samples and giveaways you intend to hand out on the stand are not written into the carnet — goods that will not travel home again do not belong to a temporary-admission regime, and they move under their own. Deciding which box a crate falls into before it is packed is cheaper than deciding it at the border.
Where your shipment and our stand meet
Your exhibits are your own shipment: the carnet is issued by a chamber of commerce in your own country and cleared by your own broker. The stand is ours. The places where the two touch — delivery to the hall, handling of empties, where each crate is opened and how the exhibits are positioned on the stand — are agreed in writing before build-up, not on the morning of it.
The other direction — customs, the ATA carnet and the calendar for stands leaving Türkiye
From another country, in practice
Language
This site is published in English, Russian, Chinese and Arabic, and we reply in the language you write in. The file that goes to the fair authority is in Turkish; that one is ours.
Time
Istanbul is UTC+3 all year round — Türkiye stopped changing its clocks in 2016. The difference to your city therefore does not shift when Europe or North America moves to summer time; work it out once.
Currency and scope
Quotations are given in euro, converted at the Turkish Central Bank rate on the day of the quotation, and every quotation writes out what it covers line by line. Floor rental, utility connections and VAT are separate items.
Price band, with its scope and its dateVAT and the invoice
The quotation shows VAT on its own line. For a stand built for a private-sector buyer in Türkiye, VAT withholding as a rule does not arise — stand construction is not among the services listed as construction works in the Turkish VAT Communiqué. How the invoice is treated for a buyer established outside Türkiye is a question for your own adviser, and we say so rather than answering it: this is where to look, not a tax opinion.
Where we are
The office is in the Dünya Ticaret Merkezi complex in Yeşilköy — the same complex as İstanbul Fuar Merkezi — and the workshop is in Esenyurt, on the European side of the city. You are welcome at both; seeing a stand half-built tells you more about a builder than any portfolio does.
You prepare for the fair, we prepare the stand.
Send the fair name, the hall and stand number, the square metres and your dates. You get a plan counted back from opening day and a quotation whose scope is written out.