Exhibition «Vietfood & Beverage – Propack 2026»

   Ho Chi Minh City fills up with the people who feed the country: coffee cooperatives, sauce and noodle makers, seafood exporters and the engineers who assemble filling and packaging lines. For three days the halls turn into one long negotiation, with tasting spoons in hand and annual contracts signed at the stands.

   This is the 30th edition of a show that has run without a break since 1996 and now anchors Vietnam's food trade calendar. Two exhibitions run side by side under one roof. Vietfood & Beverage covers food, drinks, seafood, nutritional and functional products, ingredients and additives. ProPack Vietnam covers processing machinery, packaging technology, preservation equipment and franchising. Organisers plan 30,000 sq m of floor space, up from 25,000 sq m at the previous edition.

   The essentials:

• — 1,400 stands and more than a thousand companies from over 20 countries and territories;
• — 11 international pavilions — India, Poland, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Greece, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, China and Vietnam;
• — a Business Matching programme that pairs buyers with suppliers by product category;
• — industry seminars run with the Vietnam Packaging Association (VINPAS) and the Vietnam Association of Food Science and Technology (VAFOST);
• — tastings and live equipment demonstrations at the stands.

   If you run a restaurant, a café or a small production line, one walk through the halls replaces months of sourcing calls: suppliers of raw materials, packaging and machinery stand within a few hundred metres of each other. Importers and distributors come for Vietnamese producers who are already export-ready. Plenty of people simply come to eat — in 2025 the show counted 21,000 trade visitors plus roughly 9,000 members of the public.

   The organiser is Vinexad, the exhibition arm of the Ministry of Industry and Trade with nearly fifty years behind it, working with the Food and Foodstuff Association of Ho Chi Minh City (FFA) and the Vietnam Beer, Alcohol and Beverage Association (VBA), and backed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The show carries UFI Approved Event status, the international benchmark for trade fairs.

   Luu Bao Hoa (Lưu Bảo Hoa), chief executive of the food company Dân Ôn, sums up the exhibitor view: "We have taken part in Vietfood & Beverage – Propack for more than 12 years. It is a large and respected show in Vietnam's food sector and it draws a serious crowd. We meet major manufacturers from home and abroad, find the partners we were looking for and widen our supply network."

   The pull is the market itself: nearly 100 million consumers at home, and the EU–Vietnam free trade agreement (EVFTA) steadily cutting tariffs on Vietnamese food and drink heading to Europe. The Hanoi edition follows in November, so this is the year's first look at what the sector is bringing to market. The venue sits in the Phú Mỹ Hưng area south of the centre, around half an hour by car outside rush hour.

   A few house rules: business-appropriate clothing is expected — no shorts, sleeveless tops or flip-flops — pets are not allowed in the halls, and smoking is banned inside. Entry is by prior visitor registration on the show website.

   Questions about exhibiting or accreditation go to the organising committee at [email protected]. Visitor registration takes a couple of minutes, and it is worth sorting your badge before you arrive.

   Bring business cards and an empty bag — few people leave this one empty-handed.