The booth trend of 2026 is buttons. Actual, physical buttons.
Event Marketer’s mid-year trade show trends report identifies a clear pattern across 2026 show floors: attendees are pushing back against screen overload and flocking to tactile, analog booth experiences. Documented examples include AARP’s buttons-and-dials AgeTech Collaborative booth at CES, LEGO’s flower carts at Licensing Expo (with exceptional dwell time), Boehringer Ingelheim’s collective mosaic at ASCO, a kinetic sand beach, and wonderMakr’s hands-on specimen "lab" at EMS. The analog booth is out-dwelling the LED wall, and it’s a fabrication story.
In brief. Event Marketer’s mid-year trade show trends report identifies a clear pattern across 2026 show floors: attendees are pushing back against screen overload and flocking to tactile, analog booth experiences. Documented examples include AARP’s buttons-and-dials AgeTech Collaborative booth at CES, LEGO’s flower carts at Licensing Expo (with exceptional dwell time), Boehringer Ingelheim’s collective mosaic at ASCO, a kinetic sand beach, and wonderMakr’s hands-on specimen "lab" at EMS. The analog booth is out-dwelling the LED wall, and it’s a fabrication story.
The most useful sentence in Event Marketer’s mid-year trends report is this one: pushing back against screen overload, attendees can’t resist getting tactile. The evidence spans five different shows and industries. At CES, of all places, AARP’s AgeTech Collaborative booth invited participation through buttons and dials, physical controls mixed with digital walls to create a personal journey per attendee. At Licensing Expo, LEGO parked flower carts with build instructions and watched dwell times go through the roof. At ASCO, a medical oncology congress, Boehringer Ingelheim’s collective mosaic gave attendees a moment of focused quiet and connection to something larger. At EMS, Skyline built a kinetic sand beach, and Toronto’s own wonderMakr ran a "lab" where attendees placed specimen slides, vials, and Petri dishes into an analyzer to learn about the company’s services.
Even the decor is going analog: the report notes cassettes showing up as design elements and phone booths becoming a floor fixture, with the wry aside that AI bots may soon be on the other end of the line.
The same instinct shows up wherever the field cameras point: Fage’s sampling counter under a giant yogurt cup at Expo West, Oatly serving lattes off a conveyor, Ford’s hands-on Bronco map station holding kids at the New York auto show longer than any screen nearby, a robotic cocktail rig stopping traffic at Shoptalk. Different industries, same hands.
Why tactility wins in 2026
Fage at Expo West: a sampling counter under a giant yogurt cup. Photo: Event Marketer.
Brience is a Toronto-based custom fabrication and experiential design studio, so we’ll admit the bias up front: this trend is our thesis wearing a lanyard. But the mechanics are objective. Screens are the ambient condition of every show floor, which means a screen can’t differentiate anything. Hands are idle, and idle hands stop for buttons, sand, bricks, and tiles. Touch also encodes memory in a way watching doesn’t: the attendee who assembled a LEGO flower or placed a mosaic tile did something at your booth, and doing is what gets retold.
The five builds, decoded
| Build | The mechanic | What it took to work |
|---|---|---|
| AARP AgeTech (CES) | Buttons and dials driving a personal journey | Industrial-grade physical controls wired to digital walls; clear architecture and storytelling |
| LEGO flower carts (Licensing Expo) | Guided micro-build with instructions | Restock logistics and staffed carts; instructions tight enough to finish, loose enough to enjoy |
| Boehringer mosaic (ASCO) | Collective artwork, one tile per person | A substrate designed for thousands of imperfect placements to still look intentional |
| Kinetic sand beach (EMS) | Pure sensory play | Containment, hygiene cycles, and a finish that survives constant hands |
| wonderMakr lab (EMS) | Props as information interface | Fabricated specimen objects plus a reader mechanism; the demo is the exhibit |
Read the third column twice. Every one of these "simple" analog experiences rides on unglamorous engineering: restock flow, substrate design, durable controls, containment. Tactile booths look effortless precisely because the fabrication absorbed the difficulty. A charm-bar-style station that runs out, jams, or looks trashed by 2pm teaches the opposite lesson about your brand.
House of Oatly: lattes served off a conveyor, hands first. Photo: Event Marketer.
Ford’s Bronco Built Wild station at NYIAS: a hands-on map viewer holding kids longer than any screen. Photo: Event Marketer.
If your next booth concept is a wall of screens, run the mid-year test: what would an attendee’s hands do here? We build the answer, including tech hidden inside physical objects
A robotic cocktail rig stopping traffic at Shoptalk. Photo: Anna Huddleston / Event Marketer.
Source: Event Marketer, "2026 Trade Show Trends: Five Mid-Year Exhibit Ideas to Watch" (mid-July 2026).