A significant shift in convention centre design is the move away from static, traditional meeting halls toward dynamic spaces. This bold vision inspired the transformation of HUNGEXPO Budapest Congress and Exhibition Centre, which underwent an extensive expansion and refurbishment during the pandemic. At the heart of the project is a modular congress centre featuring a flexible 2000-seat auditorium capable of rapid transformation and turnover. Versatility was a key priority for HUNGEXPO, aiming to target new markets and broaden their scope of events in response to the competitive global landscape of conference and exhibition venues.
Flexibility, a true ‘wow’ factor
For Agnès Optizer, Director of Hosted Event Sales, the hall’s flexibility stands out as a defining feature: “We show the changeover video to every client! We can advertise our congress centre with it [because] there is an attractiveness and a ‘wow’ factor with the Gala seats.” A Gala Venue Seating System – in which seats may be raised to variable heights or concealed beneath the floor structure in just minutes – alongside wall partitions for temporary spatial division into two or three separate smaller halls, ensures optimal flexibility. Ideal for both large-scale and more intimate events, 45% of the 100 annual events now take place in the new hall. It regularly hosts not only congresses but also weddings, Bocuse d’Or competitions, formal dinners, product launches, car exhibits, music and entertainment performances, and gala evenings. “We like to hold the gala dinners in the hall, because it’s a nice size. Good for like 600 or 700 people, which is a usual size of those kind of events. And in terms of eating, it’s very convenient as well,” adds Optizer.
Experiencing hall transformation
The venue’s built-in flexibility marked a major advancement: “Before, we could build a session room directly on the exhibition floor, but it was expensive and not nearly as nice. And some associations did not even accept a temporarily built room,” notes Optizer. The transformation system currently supports 25 distinct pre-programmed room configurations, allowing complete transitions at the push of a button (see Figure 1 for examples of configurations), and it could handle unlimited future layouts to meet evolving needs. Based on data collected daily over the past two years, the most frequently used configurations include flat banquet (30%), full auditorium (18%), and a two-separate-hall setup (12%). An additional eight configurations demonstrate the system’s ability to accommodate a wide range of unique event requirements (see Figure 2 – pie chart). Moreover, ‘’around 18 % of the events took advantage or the possibility to change the setup during the event,’’ adds Optizer.
To meet organizers and attendees’ expectations for increased space versatility, HUNGEXPO leveraged Gala’s technology. In just a few years, it has proven an essential tool—supporting a broad range of event formats, enabling seamless layout transformations between and during events, and even serving as an effective marketing tool. The venue’s ability to adapt automatically to different event formats, and audience capacities highlights how advanced technology empowers the convention and exhibition industry to stay relevant and competitive in the long term.
Figure 1. Examples of HUNGEXPO’s hall pre-programmed configurations:
Figure 2. HUNGEXPO’s hall usage form June 2023 to June 2025*
* Data automatically collected daily by Gala Systems’ control panel.
