Hannover Messe

Poster for the 1947 fair

The Hannover Messe (HM; English: Hanover Fair) is the world's biggest industrial fair. It is held on the Hanover fairground in Hanover, Germany. Typically, there are about 6,500 exhibitors and 250,000 visitors.

The Hannover Messe started in 1947 in an undamaged factory building in Laatzen, south of Hanover, by an arrangement of the British military government in order to boost the economic advancement of post-war Germany. The first fair was colloquially known as Fischbrötchenmesse (Fischbrötchen fair) due to the exemptions in food rationing for the fair at this time. It proved hugely successful and was hence repeated on a yearly basis, contributing largely to the success of the Hanover fairground in replacing the then-East German city of Leipzig as the new major fair city for West Germany.

In the 1980s, the growing information and telecommunication industry forced the organizer Deutsche Messe AG to split the fair. The CeBIT is a successful spin-off of the Hannover Messe.

Nowadays, the Hanover Fair covers all areas of industrial technology.