Bumper sales year for business events at ICC Belfast
ICC Belfast, Northern Ireland’s only purpose-built convention centre, has recorded a bumper year for business event bookings in 2025-26.
With the last quarter of the financial year still to go, a total of 93 conferences, exhibitions and conventions have been contracted. These will see more than 62,000 local, national and international delegates visiting the venue.
ICC Belfast is an economic powerhouse for the city’s tourism and hospitality sectors. Each large scale business event fuels bulk hotel bookings and supports restaurant trade, visitor attractions and transport providers. The events contracted so far will generate an estimated £31.5million in economic impact for the city and region.
Rob McConnell, CEO of ICC Belfast said,
This has been a record breaking year for ICC Belfast and we’re already ahead of our target. It’s testament to the hard work of our specialist sales teams who have taken a new strategic approach to identifying key markets, sectors and booking cycles.
“One of the biggest challenges in this sector is that the sales cycle is long – we are booking events as far away as 2029. In recent years, the sales pipeline hasn’t been as fully booked as it could be. The so-called “COVID bounceback” in 2022 and 23, saw the team working hard to re-book cancelled events, but as a result, there was less of a new business focus."
We’re very pleased to see our new sales strategy bearing fruit with bookings coming in for 2026 and beyond. Next June will be our busiest month of the year, when we’ll be at 80% occupancy with business and entertainment events.
“ICC Belfast is operating in a highly competitive market and we’re going up against venues in Glasgow, Barcelona, Vienna. We place a heavy focus on the whole Belfast experience in our pitches for these huge events. We work closely with Visit Belfast and Tourism NI to ensure we have all the cogs in the engine playing their part in showcasing our big Belfast Welcome."
We’ve realised that if we can get potential clients here and show them what we’re all about, there’s a high chance of landing the booking.
The biggest growth in bookings at ICC Belfast has been in International Association business with eight confirmed including the European Political Science Society (in June 2026) and the European Regions Airline Association (in October 2026).
ICC Belfast was recently confirmed to host the live broadcast of the qualifying draw for the UEFA EURO 2028, which will see managers and stars of the soccer world flocking to the city next December.
The venues will also play a key part in the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann festival in August 2026, and in Belfast’s year as European City of Sport, with major boxing and snooker events to be announced in the coming weeks.
