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Europe's Largest AI Festival on One Platform: Event App and Exhibitor Management at data:unplugged 2026
As an event grows, so do the demands on its digital side. data:unplugged, Europe's largest AI festival, experienced exactly that in 2026.
On March 26 and 27, 2026, more than 11,000 attendees gathered at Halle Münsterland in Münster, Germany, across 20,000 square meters in five halls. Add to that more than 200 speakers on five stages and over 40 masterclasses and side events. It was a leap in scale the festival had never made before.
The team around Dr. Bernard Sonnenschein was therefore looking for a partner that could deliver the event app, masterclasses and exhibitor management from a single source and grow with the festival.
Why a program app isn't enough at this scale
A festival with more than 11,000 attendees and over 150 exhibitors needs more than a program app. The goal was a platform that serves visitors, exhibitors and sponsors alike.
At the center were the masterclasses, the festival's key sponsorship format. On top of that came onboarding more than 150 exhibitors, who had to submit their stand details and print data for the stand construction documents on time, and ticketing that works with the festival's sales channels.
The goals:
- a stable white-label app for more than 10,000 attendees
- digital masterclasses as the central sponsorship format
- exhibitor onboarding without endless email back-and-forth
- targeted networking for attendees through matchmaking and meetings
The solution: three building blocks, built step by step
A white-label app in the data:unplugged look. Agenda, speaker profiles, exhibitor listings, matchmaking, meetings, an interactive hall plan and integrated communication in one app. Plus masterclasses with a digital application process.
An exhibitor hub instead of hundreds of emails. Exhibitors such as Microsoft, Snowflake, adesso, DeepL, AWS, SAP, Coca-Cola and Deutsche Telekom submitted their stand details and print data for the stand construction documents directly in the system, some with files over 300 MB. In the other direction, the organizing team sent briefings and personalized documents to individual exhibitors or to all of them at once. On the deadline, the data was frozen and handed over to the festival team as a complete export.
Ticketing. Tickets were sold directly through talque and merged with the festival's other sales channels. The platform was designed for more than 10,000 attendees.
Two festival days on one platform
On both festival days, the program ran through the talque app: agenda, speakers, exhibitors and hall plan in one place, plus live updates and personalized emails to attendees and exhibitors.
The masterclasses were especially well received and ran remarkably smoothly on talque. Attendees were happy too: the app earned an average of 4.5 stars on the App Store and Google Play. The talque team was on site on both days, supporting the festival team directly.
What you can take away for your own event
Masterclasses as a sponsorship format. Applications and participant management run digitally on one platform, for partners and attendees alike.
Networking, not just a directory. Matchmaking, meetings and an interactive hall plan help more than 11,000 attendees find the right people and stands.
An exhibitor hub instead of email ping-pong. Stand details, print data and briefings from more than 150 exhibitors run through one system, especially in the final weeks before the event.
A team, not just a vendor. In the two weeks before the festival, talque's project management was available every day, and on site during the festival.
The partnership between data:unplugged and talque continues beyond the festival.
Get all the details in our data:unplugged 2026 case study.
If your next event is bigger than your last one, let's talk.
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