Trade Fairs for Sourcing

A lot of good factories never show up in a search, and a fair is often the one place they go looking for buyers. This page lists sourcing fairs one by one, each with its next edition first, so you can work out which trip is worth the flight.

Fair warning - we only cover India so far, because that's where our research runs deep. Other countries join the list once we've done the same work on them, and not a day before.

Why Fairs Still Matter

The factories you most want are often the hardest ones to find online. An Indian B2B manufacturer said it plainly on a forum in 2023: "Now we mostly acquire new customers through trade shows, or references" (r/india, 2023 (opens in a new tab)). If that's how a maker finds its buyers then a directory search will miss it, and a fair won't.

A fair puts a few hundred exporters in one hall for a few days, which means you can hold the product, compare finishes across stands in an hour and meet the person who'll actually answer your emails. Hosted-buyer programmes go a step further. The organiser pays for part of your trip and books meetings before you land, and for a first trip to a country we think that beats walking a big general fair on your own.

Exhibitors talking with visitors at a trade fair stand

What a Fair Won't Tell You

A stand doesn't prove the exhibitor makes what's on it. Export-council fairs admit registered exporters with a track record, and some of those members are merchant exporters who buy from makers. That's a perfectly normal way to trade, and plenty of big retailers buy exactly that way. It just means you ask the same question at every stand - who makes this, and who answers for its quality?

A fair isn't a shortcut past the checks either. Names you pick up in the aisles go through the same checks as names from anywhere else, and the method is in what "verified" means. Some events that call themselves trade fairs are really public shows or domestic industry days, so each fair page says plainly which one it is.

How We List Fairs

We show a date only once the organiser has published it on its own site. Until then the page says "dates not yet announced", because repeating last year's dates or copying a listing site is how buyers end up at an empty hall. We don't publish ticket, stand or registration prices either. They change edition to edition, so check the current fee with the organiser.

Organisers may pay to be listed. Where one does, the fair carries one quiet line, "Listing provided by the organiser", and that's all. Payment never changes a fair's order, its prominence or the label on its dates.

Fairs by Country

India is first on the list, with 22 fairs and recurring events plus the government-backed Reverse Buyer-Seller Meets. Start with India's trade fairs for overseas buyers, which sets out who pays for what and which fairs are really export-sourcing fairs.

You can filter by country, by month and by sector (carpets, home and gifts, textiles and apparel, gems and jewellery, leather and footwear, sports goods, engineering, automotive, food, organic food, seafood, rice, spices, pharma, toys, fashion jewellery, handloom and multi-product).

Would you rather someone else set up the meetings, pre-screened the exhibitors and ran the visits? SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) does that at any fair listed here.

Next dates not confirmed
AAHAR
Bharat Mandapam, India
The name AAHAR means "food", so most importers assume it's where you go to buy Indian food. Mostly, it isn't.
Next dates not confirmed
BFLEX Bharat Footwear & Leather Expo
Bharat Mandapam, India
"We do a lot of leather goods in India which rarely has quality issues." That line came from an Amazon seller comparing sourcing countries (r/FulfillmentByAmazon, 2019), and it matches what we hear more widely. Leather and soft goods are where foreign buyers report some of their better India results, and BFLEX is the leather export council's show for exactly that trade.
Next dates not confirmed
Bharat International Rice Conference
Bharat Mandapam, India
If you import basmati or non-basmati rice then this is the one event that puts a big slice of India's exporters in one building for three days.
Next dates not confirmed
Bharat Mobility
Bharat Mandapam (components show at Yashobhoomi, 4 to 7 Feb), India
An Indian castings and fasteners maker shipped his first three export containers to a buyer in Dubai on payment against delivery, because "no one was ready to pay advance" (r/IndiaBusiness, 2025). That's the other side of the table at Bharat Mobility. Plenty of the component makers in these halls want export orders badly, and a buyer who turns up prepared holds more cards than most guides admit.
Next dates not confirmed
Bharat Tex
Unknown, India
Most textile fairs show you one link of the chain. Bharat Tex shows you all of it, from fibre and yarn through fabric to finished garments, home textiles and technical textiles, and a consortium of the textile export councils runs it.
Next dates not confirmed
BIOFACH India
Delhi-NCR (hall not yet named), India
If you import certified organic food, natural products or millets then BIOFACH India is the one Indian show built around your category.
Next dates not confirmed
HEPC Handloom and Home-Textile Fairs
Unknown, India
A buyer planning a trip to Karur, one of India's home-textile towns, wrote this in January 2026 - "I tried enquiring online and through email's but unfortunately only few of the many manufacturers/Factories have responded" (r/Karur, 2026). The locals told him to warn owners ahead of time and then just walk in. Council fairs fix exactly that problem, because the weavers and exporters who ignore…
Next dates not confirmed
IFJAS (India Fashion Jewellery and Accessories Show)
Unknown, India
"I don't wanna order something that has lead or something." That's a buyer abroad asking about Indian costume jewellery (r/ABCDesis, 2021), and another in the same vein said flatly "there's no fashion jewelry that doesn't have lead probably" (forum reply, 2025). The worry is fair, and it is also fixable. At IFJAS you can put that exact question to a hall full of exporters, face to face.
Next dates not confirmed
IHGF Delhi Fair
India Expo Centre & Mart, India
If you buy home, gift or lifestyle goods from India then IHGF is the big one. Brassware, furniture, textiles, gifts and fashion accessories from India's craft clusters all turn up under one roof, twice a year, at Greater Noida just outside Delhi. It suits buyers who want to see a lot of categories in one trip, and it's kind to the ones who shortlist before they fly and brutal to the ones who do…
Next dates not confirmed
IIJS (Signature, Tritiya, Premiere)
Jio World Convention Centre and Bombay Exhibition Centre (Mumbai); BIEC (Bengaluru, Tritiya), India
IIJS is the gem and jewellery export council's own show, and it's the trade's front door to Indian jewellery makers. It runs three times a year under three different names. Exhibitors are council members only and nobody sells over the counter, so it's a show for people with a jewellery business, not a place to pick up a few pretty pieces.
Next dates not confirmed
India Carpet Expo
Carpet Expo Mart, India
The India Carpet Expo is the carpet export council's own fair, for hand-knotted, hand-woven and tufted carpets and floor coverings. It sits in Bhadohi, right inside the carpet belt, so the product you're looking at was woven a short drive away. It also has the most generous hosted-buyer package we've found at any Indian fair, which doesn't hurt.
Next dates not confirmed
India Engineering Sourcing Show (IESS)
Unknown, India
A US machine shop owner once summed up his Indian parts in one line - "super crooked drill holes, every single threaded hole needs to be retapped by us" (r/Machinists, 2021). Precision work is where foreign buyers report their worst India results, and it's also where the good Indian plants are very, very good. IESS is the one fair built to help you tell the two apart.
Next dates not confirmed
India International Footwear Fair (IIFF)
Bharat Mandapam, India
IIFF is ITPO's footwear fair at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, covering finished footwear, components and machinery. Buying shoes from India? Then it's one of two Delhi footwear shows worth weighing up, and the other is BFLEX, the leather council's buyer-seller meet.
Next dates not confirmed
India International Leather Fair (IILF)
Unknown, India
IILF is Chennai's leather fair, sitting on the doorstep of the Tamil Nadu tanning and footwear belt around Ambur, Ranipet and Vellore. ITPO hasn't announced the 2027 dates yet, so we don't show the ones floating around third-party sites.
Next dates not confirmed
India International Trade Fair (IITF)
Bharat Mandapam, India
IITF is the India fair buyers search for most and should rely on least. A UK importer who knows the Indian side put the bigger problem well in 2026, saying most real makers are hardly online at all (r/smallbusinessuk, 2026), and an Indian B2B manufacturer said much the same from the other side - "Now we mostly acquire new customers through trade shows, or references" (r/India, 2023). So fairs m…
Next dates not confirmed
India Sporting Goods Fair
Yashobhoomi (IICC), India
An Australian club player ordered a cricket bat straight from a maker in Meerut. The seller quoted 1,127 g, and when it landed in Australia it weighed 1,232 g (r/Cricket, 2025). That's about 9% over, on the one spec a player feels first. It's also the kind of thing you can settle in person, holding the product and putting the tolerance in writing, which is what this fair is for.
Next dates not confirmed
Indusfood
India Expo Centre & Mart (main edition); BIEC (Bengaluru); Helipad Exhibition Centre (Gandhinagar), India
Indusfood is the Indian food fair built for people like you, the importers. It's a closed-door show run by the Trade Promotion Council of India (TPCI), and only pre-approved buyers get in. When food importers ask us about AAHAR, this is where we send them instead.
Next dates not confirmed
iPHEX
Bharat Mandapam, India
iPHEX is Pharmexcil's export fair for medicines, APIs, healthcare products, AYUSH and nutraceuticals. It flies in overseas delegates, sets up meetings and runs factory visits. It's for regulated buyers - importers, distributors and procurement bodies with the licences to bring these goods in.
Next dates not confirmed
Seafood Expo Bharat
Unknown, India
Seafood Expo Bharat is the seafood fair run by MPEDA, India's marine products export authority. It's the one Indian show built entirely around seafood exporters, so if you import shrimp, fish or processed seafood then it's the fair to watch.
Next dates not confirmed
Toy Biz International
Bharat Mandapam, India
We pulled every EU Safety Gate alert on goods of Indian origin from January 2021 to September 2026, and toys showed up with a clear pattern. Six alerts were for N-nitrosamines in rubber and foam parts such as plastic tyres, and two more were for phthalates. The UK's product safety office logged four phthalate reports on Indian face stickers, a cricket set and hockey sticks in the same period (o…
Next dates not confirmed
World Food India
Bharat Mandapam, India
World Food India is the Ministry of Food Processing Industries' show at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. It's a government event built to pull investment into Indian food processing, with a big exhibition attached. You can buy there, but that's not what it's designed around.
Next dates not confirmed
World Spice Congress
Unknown, India
The World Spice Congress is the Spices Board of India's meeting for the global spice trade. It's a congress with an exhibition on the side, not a sourcing fair with a thousand stands. The board, the big exporters and the regulators all sit in one place, which makes it the best room we know for learning how Indian spice actually gets tested.