Business · Events
Visual Impact was the industry's 2026 trade show. The next is PacPrint in Action, 1 to 2 September 2027
If you were trying to work out where the industry met next, the organiser
answered it plainly in August: Visual Connections said the next industry trade show would be Visual
Impact Conference & Expo 2026, running 2 to 4 September 2026 at Sydney Showground.
When we wrote this, PacPrint, the show that has anchored this industry since 1970, had no published
2027 date, and its own website still described its May 2025 show in the future tense. Both have
since moved on. Visual Connections now says The next industry trade show will be PacPrint in
Action & Connect Conference 2027 in Melbourne from 1-2 September 2027.
, and the PacPrint site now
points to PacPrint 2028.
Update, 2 October 2026. This was written on 29 August as a preview, and the headline and summary have been updated now that its moment has passed. The organiser’s page no longer carries the line we quoted naming Visual Impact as the next show, so that is reported rather than quoted, and it now lists a Visual Impact Expo 2026 post-show report as coming soon. The PacPrint site no longer describes its 2025 show in the future tense. What replaced the 2027 gap is covered in PacPrint skips 2027 and returns in August 2028. The analysis below is as published.
What is actually on
Visual Impact's own site says The 2026 Visual Impact Expo will run from 2-4 September,
2026 at the Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park
, and that This year, the show has
been totally reimagined, consolidating its place as the leading event for the visual
communications sector
. Visual Connections lists the venue as The Dome and Hall 2A at the
Showground, and pairs the expo with a Connect Conference.
Both organisations are the same organiser: Visual Connections is the supplier association that runs the shows, and it lists Visual Impact under its 2026 events and a PacPrint 2025 post-show report under 2025.
What is not on, and how we checked
Trade coverage in 2022 reported that PacPrint would move to a two-year cycle alternating between Melbourne and Sydney, which would put a Melbourne show in 2027. We have never been able to confirm that against the organiser, and we still cannot. Here is the state of the record as at 29 August 2026.
| Page | What it says |
|---|---|
| pacprint.com.au | Titled “PacPrint25”. States that PacPrint 25 will be held in Sydney from 20-23 May, 2025, lists that show's daily opening hours, and directs readers to For more information on PacPrint 2025, please contact Visual Connections. No 2027 date, no Melbourne. The footer copyright reads 2016. |
| visualconnections.org.au, events | Names Visual Impact Conference & Expo 2026 as the next industry trade show. PacPrint appears under 2025 events, as a post-show report. |
| visualconnections.org.au/pacprint | Returns a 404. |
What we are not saying. None of this means PacPrint has been cancelled, and we do not report that. A trade show can be between cycles, and an out-of-date event website is an out-of-date event website, not an announcement. What we can report is narrower and checkable: fifteen months after PacPrint 25 finished, the organiser publishes no date for the next one, names a different show as the industry's next, and the PacPrint site has not been updated. We have not contacted Visual Connections to ask.
Why it matters to a printer planning a year
Capital equipment gets bought at these shows, or at least first seen at them. A biennial
show is a planning anchor: it tells a business when the next chance to compare presses in one
room will be. Since 1970, PacPrint has been that anchor, and its own site still makes the claim
in the present tense, describing itself as the most comprehensive and relevant B2B event
serving the evolving needs of the print, sign and graphics industries in Australia, New Zealand
and across the Asia-Pacific region
.
For 2026 the answer is Visual Impact, and it is next week. For 2027, on the published record, there is no answer yet. If you are budgeting for a stand or a trip, that is the practical position, and it is worth asking the organiser directly rather than relying on a four-year-old trade report.
Update, 1 October 2026. There is an answer now, and it is not the one the 2022 report implied. Visual Connections has published PacPrint 2028 in Melbourne, with a new two-day PacPrint in Action on 1-2 September 2027. The sentences above are left as they were written, because they were accurate on 29 August when nothing was published.
Methodology. All three pages were fetched and read in
full on 29 August 2026, and the PacPrint home page was saved so the state of the record on
that date is preserved. Every quotation is verbatim from the page cited. The 2022 trade report
of a Melbourne 2027 show is described but deliberately not cited or linked, because it is a
competing trade masthead and our rule is to treat such reporting as a lead to verify rather
than a source to repeat; the point here is precisely that we could not verify it. We have not
contacted Visual Connections, so this reports the published record only and no conclusion
should be drawn about the show's future from it.Sources
See something wrong? Request a correction and we will check it against the source and log the outcome here.