Back in January, we made our predictions for what would define event marketing in 2025 — from AI integration and personalization to evolving attendee behaviors. Now that the year’s coming to a close, it’s time to see how those predictions held up.
We asked our experts to grade their own predictions — from A+ foresight to “needs improvement” — and share what really happened, what caught them off guard and what they’re watching for 2026.
Anjia Nicolaidis, group director, international strategy
Prediction: AI will transform global audience acquisition and engagement.
Score: B+
The prediction held: AI is reshaping global audience acquisition, but 2025 was more about experimentation than full transformation. The most meaningful gains showed up in the day-to-day work of attracting international attendees, helping teams localize content faster, stretch limited resources further and analyze markets with greater precision.
Reality Check: This past year, AI delivered its biggest impact by accelerating the labor-intensive work that often makes localized, country-specific content impractical for many event organizers. Country-specific emails, ads and content that once required substantial effort were produced in a fraction of the time. On-site, AI-powered interpretation made education more accessible for non-English-speaking attendees, and we saw international NPS scores jump where it was deployed, signaling greater satisfaction at events. Behind the scenes, AI-enhanced analytics enabled clearer visibility into how global participation was shifting. It helped us anticipate policy changes, visa windows, affordability swings and competitive pressures with more accuracy. In short, AI made international strategies more scalable, data-driven and resilient.
Looking Ahead: For 2026, the real shift will be from “trying” AI tools to training specialized AI agents to take on the routine operational tasks involved in international audience acquisition and outreach. Imagine an AI–powered global recruitment engine able to provide “always-on” market intelligence, build and score international prospect lists, localize and personalize outreach at scale, provide pre-show international partner and delegation support and surface key insights through continuous reporting on market conditions and campaign performance metrics. The opportunity to build a more resilient and responsive model for growing international attendance is here — and it will give organizers far more control over their global pipeline. Now that will be transformational.
Caitlin Fox, president
Prediction: Millennials and Gen Z will be critical for sustaining event participation and will force legacy trade shows to adapt their formats and marketing strategies.
Score: A-
Millennials and Gen Z have become the defining factor in sustaining event participation — but the pace of change has been faster than even optimists expected. Legacy organizers didn’t just need to adapt formats and marketing strategies; they needed to reimagine relevance. What we framed as a gradual generational handoff turned into a disruptive demand for new voices, formats and cultural fluency.
Reality Check: The inflection point hit mid-2025. Registration data and post-event surveys showed sharp rises in attendance among under-40 professionals when experiences felt social, purpose-driven and efficient. Legacy events that clung to long-form sessions and traditional networking models struggled to engage. “Professional development” messaging gave way to “career growth,” “community” and “impact.” Social content, influencers and authentic peer-to-peer storytelling became the new acquisition darlings. Meanwhile, decision-making shifted: Millennials are now the budget holders and Gen Z is influencing how information is consumed and shared. Many organizers underestimated how fast that dual influence would converge.
Looking Ahead: 2026 will reward organizers who move beyond adapting to younger audiences and instead build with them. That means co-creation of content, new credentialing models and community-driven storytelling that continues year-round. The marketing voice must evolve from promotional to participatory. The next evolution won’t be about getting millennials and Gen Z to attend; it’ll be about empowering them to shape the events they attend.
Jess Hammett, marketing strategist
Prediction: As event attendance levels out post-pandemic, finding new areas of growth will become more of a focus for organizers.
Score: A
Reality Check: It’s been a busy year for attendee acquisition pivots. Many shows are hitting a soft plateau after COVID recovery and looking for the next step. I’ve been working with clients across multiple industries to uncover opportunities in untapped or ancillary markets and align marketing strategies to attract them.
Looking Ahead: Growth will always be a focus for event organizers, but efforts to acquire new attendee types must also align the show with their needs, or retention rates will suffer. I believe this will require organizers taking a new look at their programming and experience through the lens of their attendee base, and sustaining growth over time.
Kimberly Hardcastle, chief strategist
Prediction: The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events will introduce new challenges and considerations for professionals in the events industry.
Score: B+
The prediction held up as climate disruptions did hit events hard, but I focused too narrowly on weather. The true headwinds of 2025 were both literal and figurative: storms, wildfires and heat waves collided with tariffs, travel restrictions and economic uncertainty. I called the outcome but missed some of the causes.
Reality Check: I warned that weather would be a wildcard and it was. Heavy snow shut down travel corridors in early spring, late-season hurricanes caused costly re-routes and heat waves tested the limits of many of our clients’ outdoor activations. But the cause of the turbulence extended well beyond climate. Organizers faced shipping delays, fluctuating material costs, visa bottlenecks, etc. The disruptions I cautioned against materialized, they just came from more directions than expected.
Looking Ahead: Resilience planning will continue to be front and center in 2026. The smartest organizers will bake adaptability into everything, including contracts, material sourcing and venue backup plans that consider weather and world events. The goal won’t be avoiding disruption per se, it’ll be to absorb it gracefully and keep the experience intact when the winds, literal or otherwise, start to blow.
Laura Davidson, senior vice president, digital
Prediction: Marketers will increasingly adopt a more commercial mindset.
Score: B
I was right that marketers would lean into a more commercial mindset. We’ve seen clear signs of growth in budgets being reallocated toward exhibitor marketing, and even new hybrid roles emerging that combine attendee and exhibitor growth for a more holistic view.
Where I missed the mark was on the scale of that shift in budgeting terms — exhibitor marketing represents 10-20% of total spend, not the 30-40% that is required to really reach and grow new, challenged or international markets within B2B.
Reality Check: 2025 marked the start of a smarter balance. While attendance marketing remains the biggest line item, more organizers began experimenting with exhibitor-focused campaigns — testing AI-enabled lead generation, retargeting and sponsorship activation programs that directly tie marketing to revenue. The shift wasn’t dramatic, but it was decisive: Marketing teams started thinking more about the commercial impact across both sides of events.
Looking Ahead: In 2026, expect more always-on campaigns driven by content — repurposed using AI for efficiency. Some growth teams will have a more unified funnel, using attendee intent data to power exhibitor prospecting and post-show insights to drive year-round commercial programs, potentially with one shared budget for growth.
Michael Engard, senior web developer
Prediction: Audiences will adapt to generative AI at an accelerating pace, and marketers have to get smart about using it.
Score: A+
There’s no doubt that generative AI continued to evolve at a breathtaking pace in 2025. Hardly a week goes by without word that a new AI product has hit the market, a new and improved learning model just dropped or a whole industry or creative field is being turned upside down once again. The days when one could be cavalier about six-fingered AI models are swiftly receding, as the power to produce convincingly realistic, detailed images and even video becomes commonplace. Audiences now expect to encounter AI-generated content on a regular basis — and their relationship with AI is increasingly complicated.
Reality Check: Research shows that consumers are less likely to purchase products and services that describe themselves as “AI-powered” or perceived to be using AI-generated assets. With 76% of Americans believing it’s important that we can tell the difference between human- and AI-generated content, marketing copy and imagery is being subjected to constant scrutiny in search of telltale signs of AI usage, with some surprising results, such as the controversy over the use of the em dash. At the same time, when creative AI tools are used conscientiously, they offer efficiency and cost-saving advantages that marketing teams can’t ignore. And while AI in general has a rocky reputation with the public, audiences in the scientific, medical and financial fields show less skepticism and more optimism toward AI’s potential benefits.
Looking Ahead: Three years out from the seismic event that was the public release of ChatGPT, most organizations still see themselves in the early days of their relationship with generative AI. Marketers will continue to experiment with it, both in terms of how we use it to conduct our campaigns, and how we talk about it to our audiences, whether they be bullish or wary. Expect messaging in 2026 to shift away from giving AI a starring role and toward a greater emphasis on benefits and results, positioning AI-powered enhancements as a means to an end.
Shereé Whiteley, senior copy director
Prediction: Effective event marketing will require a blend of AI-driven insights and authentic human copywriting.
Score: A+
Turns out, I was pretty on target with this prediction. But to be fair, it was less of a guess and more of a read on where things were headed going into 2025. AI usage exploded this past year — and so did the amount of “insert-brand-name-here” copy that fails to create an emotional connection with audiences. What I didn’t expect was just how intense the AI backlash would be, with terms like “AI slop” entering the zeitgeist and lists of “AI copy tells” popping up everywhere. The upside? That backlash started important conversations about what makes marketing copy compelling and impactful.
Reality Check: AI has become ubiquitous for good reason. It provides insights that power plenty of wins, from smarter segmentation to enhanced personalization. It’s an incredible creative copilot — I think of it like a super ambitious, fast-working intern who never gets tired. But I’m not going to take whatever that intern hands me and expect it to land with my audience. Study after study shows that people can spot AI content — that’s because it takes a lot more than proper grammar and sentence structure (which, for the record, are not AI tells) to compel real people to take action. It requires authenticity, empathy and good judgement. In the words of AI Academy Co-Founder Dave Birss, “AI can produce output. Only humans can decide what’s worth keeping.”
Just to be clear: I’m not anti AI. I’m anti blah. And what we’ve seen this past year is that blah copy comes from letting AI draft it without a human at the helm who knows how to push past “good enough.”
Looking Ahead: In 2026, I think marketers’ obsession with “AI-powered everything” starts to normalize. AI tools will get better, and humans will get better at using them — but hopefully with a more nuanced understanding of effective human-tech partnerships. AI becomes the invisible infrastructure: the research assistant, the pattern-spotter, the first-draft generator. But the creative center of gravity shifts back to people who can deliver the authenticity audiences (especially younger ones) demand. As Caitlin Fox put it, “Brands that win won’t be the ones who ‘use AI.’ They’ll be the ones who use AI strategically, guided by teams with real creative craft and audience understanding.”
Sara Fellows, senior director, communications
Prediction: Storytelling will take center stage in 2025, as event organizers face a digital world saturated with content and rapid-fire information.
Score: B+
Reality Check: Storytelling has continued to be important, but it hasn’t yet reached the level of focus needed to truly connect with Gen Z and millennial audiences. Most event marketers are still emphasizing logistics and features over narratives that build emotional connection and community. We saw some progress through influencer content, creator partnerships and event storytelling on social — but the industry overall is still catching up to the type of authentic, fast-paced storytelling that performs best across modern platforms.
Looking Ahead: Freeman’s latest research highlights retention as one of the biggest priorities for organizers in the year ahead — and storytelling will play a critical role in achieving it. The more audiences see themselves reflected in the story, the more connected they feel to the community and the more likely they are to return. Moving forward, we should be directly correlating storytelling with retention, using narrative to build familiarity, trust and emotional investment. Storytelling isn’t just about capturing attention anymore — it’s about keeping it.
