Exhibiting at the Scottish Event Campus
The SEC is Scotland's principal exhibition site and sits on the Clyde in Glasgow, a short walk from Exhibition Centre station. It is a campus rather than a single building: the SEC Centre holds five interconnected exhibition and event halls totalling over 22,000 square metres, alongside the 3,000-seat SEC Armadillo designed by Foster + Partners and the 13,000-capacity OVO Hydro.
For exhibitors that mix is the appeal. A trade show in the halls can run alongside a conference in the Armadillo and an evening event in the Hydro, which produces a level of footfall through the campus that a standalone hall rarely matches.
SEC Centre — 22,000+ sqm
Five interconnected exhibition and event halls. This is where trade shows run.
SEC Armadillo — 3,000 seats
Foster + Partners landmark, used for conference programmes alongside shows.
OVO Hydro — 13,000 capacity
Arena events on the same campus, which lifts footfall across the site.
Exhibition Centre station
Rail on the doorstep, so visitors and crew arrive without a car.
The campus at a glance
Three distinct buildings, connected but not interchangeable. Establishing which one your show occupies is the first practical step, because access, ceiling heights and load-in differ between them.
Five interconnected halls
The SEC Centre's halls run to over 22,000 square metres between them and interconnect, which means organisers can scale a show up or down or run several events side by side. It also means your neighbours may not be from your show at all.
Interconnection cuts both ways for an exhibitor. Visitor flow between halls is good, so a stand positioned near a linking route can pick up traffic from an adjacent event. But hall boundaries move between editions depending on how the space has been divided, so a stand position that worked last year is not guaranteed to sit in the same relationship to the entrance this year. Check the current floorplan rather than working from the previous one.
Building in Glasgow from a Midlands workshop
Glasgow is a long day's drive from Redditch, and that distance is a scheduling question rather than an obstacle. It is planned for in exactly the way a European build is planned for.
Plan the drive as a fixed cost
It is a long day from the Midlands. It goes in the schedule, not the contingency.
Confirm the building first
Halls, Armadillo and Hydro are different propositions with different access.
Work from the current floorplan
Interconnecting halls get divided differently between editions.
Reuse across the calendar
A stand built to travel covers Glasgow and the NEC off one structure.
Why exhibitors choose us for Scottish shows
We design and manufacture in our own workshop in Redditch and install across the UK, Ireland and Europe with our own crew. For a Glasgow show that means the people who built the stand travel with it — you are not handing a drawing pack to a Scottish subcontractor and hoping the finish matches the visual.
We are ESSA members. A full build covers design, manufacture, transport, installation, on-site management and dismantle, plus the RAMS, structural sign-off and vehicle scheduling your organiser requires. We store the stand between shows, so a Scottish show and an NEC show can run off the same structure rather than two separate builds. Enter your dimensions in our online stand builder for an instant estimate.
FAQ
Yes. The site was known as the SECC — the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre — and is now the Scottish Event Campus, or SEC. Many exhibitors and organisers still use the old name, and you will see both in circulation.
The SEC Centre holds five interconnected exhibition and event halls with a combined area of over 22,000 square metres. The wider campus also includes the 3,000-seat SEC Armadillo and the 13,000-capacity OVO Hydro, which are separate buildings used for conference and arena events.
Trade exhibitions almost always run in the SEC Centre halls, but the campus runs conference programmes in the Armadillo and arena events in the Hydro, sometimes concurrently. Confirm the building and the hall with your organiser before design starts, because access and load-in differ between them.
Yes. We design and manufacture in our own workshop in Redditch and install across the UK, Ireland and Europe with our own crew, so a Glasgow build is the same team as an NEC build. The distance is a scheduling consideration, planned in from the start rather than absorbed at the last minute.
Usually, and it is the sensible way to run a mixed calendar. We build stands to travel and reconfigure rather than to be used once, and we store them between shows, so a Scottish show and a Birmingham show can come off the same structure.
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