Two of the global ceramic industry’s most important trade fairs open in Italy within 24 hours of each other later this month, covering both ends of the value chain — the design agenda on one side, production technology on the other. Anyone who has attended before should note the dates carefully, because one of the two has moved.
Cersaie and TECNA Open in Italy This Month
Cersaie, the International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile and Bathroom Furnishings, runs from 21 to 25 September 2026 at BolognaFiere in Bologna. TECNA, the global expo for ceramic machinery and production technology, runs from 22 to 25 September at the Rimini Expo Centre, roughly 120 km away on the Adriatic coast. Marmomac, the natural stone fair, runs 22 to 25 September in Verona.
The overlap is deliberate. The Italian industry schedules all three within the same September window — the so-called “surfaces week” — so that international buyers making the trip can cover design, technology and stone in a single journey.
Cersaie Has Moved a Week Earlier
Cersaie 2026 has been brought forward by one week from its traditional late-September slot. BolognaFiere will host the Davis Cup Finals from 24 to 29 November 2026, and the fairgrounds need additional lead time to build out the tennis village. Confindustria Ceramica agreed to the shift, citing its long-standing partnership with BolognaFiere. Anyone with the old dates mentally filed should check them against travel and hotel bookings.
Cersaie 2026 — The Design Agenda
Now in its 43rd edition, Cersaie is organised by EDI.CER spa in collaboration with BolognaFiere and promoted by Confindustria Ceramica.
The 2025 edition gives a reliable sense of scale: 94,577 visitors across 155,000 square metres and sixteen halls, with 627 exhibiting companies — 343 ceramic tile manufacturers, 98 bathroom furnishings producers and 186 companies in installation, raw materials, new surfaces and related services. Foreign exhibitors numbered 243, or 39% of the total, representing 29 countries. International visitors accounted for 47.5% of attendance.
The exhibitor list covers the brands that set architectural specification globally — Marazzi, Florim and Atlas Concorde on the tile side, and Laufen, Duravit, Grohe, Ideal Standard and Villeroy & Boch in bathroom furnishings. The 2026 edition continues the broadening of scope seen in recent years, making room for surfaces in materials other than ceramic alongside an expanded bathroom and wellness offering.
Of most practical interest to anyone working with large formats: the Città della Posa (Tiling District) returns for a second consecutive year in Hall 19, devoted to installation technique and large-format slab handling. Alongside it runs the Cersaie World Tiling Lab, a 200-square-metre area where six installer teams — from Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Morocco, the United States and Brazil — compete to install complete settings.
The “Costruire, Abitare, Pensare” (Building, Dwelling, Thinking) conference series returns, with a keynote lecture by Pritzker Prize-winning Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena on Thursday, 24 September. Eleven Pritzker laureates have delivered the Cersaie keynote to date, including Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Toyo Ito and Riken Yamamoto.
Admission is free with online registration at cersaie.it, and the ticket is valid for all five days.
TECNA 2026 — The Technology Side
TECNA — subtitled “The Global Expo for ceramics and more” — is in its 29th edition, organised by IEG (Italian Exhibition Group) in cooperation with ACIMAC, the Italian Ceramic Machinery and Equipment Manufacturers’ Association. Unlike Cersaie, TECNA is biennial and runs four days rather than five.
The 2024 edition drew more than 18,000 visitors from over 100 countries and 350 exhibitors across 70,000 square metres, including effectively every major global manufacturer of ceramic plant and production lines. ACIMAC represents the majority of Italian companies in the sector; overseas sales account for more than two thirds of the sector’s total turnover.
The stated focus areas for 2026 are artificial intelligence, energy efficiency, cybersecurity, cobotics and process digitalisation. The show covers the full production chain from raw material handling through digital decoration to complete production lines.
One significant addition this edition is the return of glaze and colour producers and chemical additive manufacturers, absent from recent editions. Ceramicolor-Federchimica, the Italian association of ceramic glaze and colour producers and metal oxide manufacturers, will hold a 100-square-metre stand and sit on the technical committee for the new Decortech Conference, a two-day programme on materials, aesthetics, technology, trends and design. Having the glaze and colour supply chain back on the same floor as the machinery makers means input materials and process technology can be evaluated in a single visit.
What This Means for the Trade
The two shows serve different decisions. TECNA is a capital expenditure show — where manufacturers evaluate kiln technology, press lines, digital decoration systems and automation, and where the payback maths on an upgrade gets worked out with the people who build the equipment. Its 2026 focus on energy efficiency and process digitalisation reflects where the global industry’s cost pressure currently sits, which will be familiar to anyone running a plant in Morbi.
Cersaie is a specification show. It is where the design language for finishes, formats and surfaces gets set for the coming cycle, and where architects, distributors and installers see what the leading European producers will be pushing. The Città della Posa and World Tiling Lab elements matter more than they might appear: as formats grow larger, installation capability becomes a real constraint on adoption.
For anyone not travelling, the launches are still worth tracking. What shows in Bologna in September has historically shaped showroom-floor product and architectural specification well beyond Italy over the following twelve to eighteen months — useful ammunition in specification conversations with architects and design-led buyers who follow international trade media.
