Published November 5, 2026
Before your exhibit partner sketches the first concept for your next congress booth, do you know everything the layout needs to account for? Your booth has to follow the congress's own rules and work within your company's review process. If your medical team plans to share scientific information, you may also want a separate space for those conversations. Each of those decisions starts on the floor plan.
At Exhibit Happy by Steelhead, we work through those requirements with you at the concept stage. Here is a six-step checklist for designing a compliant pharma booth, from reading the congress rules to walking the finished booth.
Speak with our healthcare team if your next congress booth is still in planning and you want compliance designed into the layout from the start.
Here are six steps for designing a compliant pharma trade show booth, starting with the floor plan:
This article focuses on U.S. medical congresses and provides general information, not legal, regulatory, or compliance advice. Your regulatory, legal, medical, and compliance teams should confirm the requirements for your product and meeting. The checklist is general guidance, not a prescribed process.
A congress's exhibitor manual can set rules for booth height, sightlines, where activities and lines happen, and when your plan needs approval, so read it before design starts. These rules can change from year to year, and two recent examples show how specific they get:
Before anyone draws a wall, list everything your booth needs to do and what kind of information each activity communicates. That list shows which zones the floor plan needs and who has to approve what goes in them.
Booth content is regulated, too. Under 21 CFR 202.1(l)(2), an exhibit counts as drug labeling when it describes a drug, contains drug information supplied by the manufacturer, packer, or distributor, and is shared by or on that company's behalf.
A typical pharma booth might include approved-use promotion, unbranded disease awareness education, scientific exchange led by medical staff, demonstrations, and private meetings. Some activities bring their own rules. Sampling and hospitality are covered in our articles on sample distribution and reportable HCP interactions under the Sunshine Act. Investigational or pipeline content is restricted under 21 CFR 312.7(a). A sponsor or anyone acting on its behalf may not represent an investigational new drug as safe or effective for the purposes under investigation or otherwise promote it, though scientific exchange is preserved.
Ask your medical and compliance teams early what scientific information they plan to share at the booth and how those conversations will happen. Their answer tells you whether the floor plan needs a medical area. If it does, placing that space early helps, since it can shape the rest of the layout.
One type of conversation has specific FDA guidance. FDA's January 2025 guidance on scientific information on unapproved uses (SIUU) covers certain company-initiated communications about unapproved uses of products already approved or cleared for another use. For those communications, it says that "in commercial exhibit halls, FDA strongly recommends that firms divide booth space to allow for a dedicated space where SIUU communications can be shared." The guidance is nonbinding, and as of November 2026, FDA's guidance page still marks it as not for current implementation, pending the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) review.
If those communications aren't planned, your medical and compliance teams should still confirm whether other medical-information activities need their own space. Congress organizers may weigh in, too. The American College of Physicians' rules for its 2026 Internal Medicine Meeting encourage a medical affairs area within a booth space or as an additional linear booth.
Not sure how to divide your space? Talk to Us about the activities planned for your next congress.
Choose the walls, headers, and screens that will carry product claims before any graphics are designed. A surface that carries a claim may also need its risk information planned with it, and your regulatory team decides how the rules below apply to each one. Keeping claims to a defined set of surfaces is one way to make that planning more manageable.
Under 21 CFR 201.100(d)(1), prescription drug labeling that gives information for use, such as an indication or dosing, has to include adequate information for that use, including relevant warnings, side effects, and precautions.
The exception is reminder labeling, which calls attention to the product's name. It can't include indications, dosage recommendations, or any other representation or suggestion about the product, including through imagery. It also generally isn't allowed for prescription drugs with a boxed warning, apart from narrow exceptions for qualifying price information, so have your regulatory team confirm whether any reminder-only element qualifies.
Plan content hierarchy, viewing distance, and risk-information placement together. Addressing them early can help prevent layout changes later in the PRC/MRC review process.
Once the zones and claim surfaces are set, mark where each conversation moves and where each line forms. Congress rules can keep that activity out of the aisle. ACC.26's guide, for example, told exhibitors not to use the aisles to conduct or solicit business, so plan room for every queue inside your footprint.
Your staff will follow these paths during the show, so it helps to plan them alongside the handoffs your booth staff practice in training.
Sharing the floor plan with your promotional and medical review teams before graphics are designed gives them a chance to raise structural concerns while they're still simpler to fix. A plan marked with zones, claim surfaces, and handoff paths shows reviewers how the booth will work as well as what it will say. If changes do come up, our custom-rental Access Model lets your exhibit evolve with them, without starting over every time something changes.
Final booth content then follows your company's submission process. For drugs approved through a new drug application, 21 CFR 314.81(b)(3)(i) requires the applicant to submit promotional labeling to FDA at the time of initial dissemination with Form FDA-2253, and licensed biologics follow the same requirement through 21 CFR 601.12(f)(4). Your regulatory team should also confirm whether earlier submission requirements apply, including those for accelerated-approval products. Submission to FDA does not constitute approval of the materials.
Once the booth is built, walking it is a practical way to confirm it matches what your teams approved. If your exhibit partner pre-stages your booth before it ships, use that walkthrough to check that each zone sits where the plan shows it, every claim surface carries the approved content, screens show the current approved versions, and the handoff paths work at full scale. That check matters because FDA's Office of Prescription Drug Promotion lists "traveling to major medical meetings and pharmaceutical conventions to monitor promotional exhibits and activities" among its reviewers' tasks.
Each step in this checklist is easier when your exhibit partner understands the congress's rules, your planned activities, and your review requirements before the first concept. That way, the layout starts from what your teams need instead of adjusting to it after review.
Exhibit Happy by Steelhead designs content hierarchy, sightlines, and traffic flow with your PRC and MRC review in mind from the concept stage. Before designs reach your reviewers, we check congress-specific layout requirements and incorporate your team's direction on claim placement and risk-information visibility.
Pre-staging at our Las Vegas headquarters lets your team walk the full booth before it ships. It's a practical time to follow the path a visitor would take from a promotional conversation to any medical area and confirm every claim sits where your teams approved it.
Bring your congress manual and activity list to the first conversation, even if some plans are still taking shape. Book a Consultation to start your next floor plan.
It should show the congress's layout limits, a zone for each planned activity, any medical area, the surfaces that will carry product claims, and where handoffs and lines will happen. Marking those before graphics are designed gives your review teams a layout they can evaluate early.
Not necessarily. FDA's January 2025 guidance strongly recommends dedicated booth space when a company shares certain communications about unapproved uses of products already approved or cleared for another use, separate from approved-use promotion. The guidance is nonbinding and remains marked not for current implementation pending OMB review. Your medical and compliance teams should also confirm whether other medical-information activities need their own space.
Yes, when they meet the conditions in 21 CFR 202.1(l)(2). Exhibits that describe a drug, contain drug information supplied by the manufacturer, packer, or distributor, and are disseminated by or on its behalf are labeling, so that content falls under the same labeling rules as the brochures, detailing pieces, and other materials your company disseminates.
Only within strict limits. Under 21 CFR 312.7(a), a sponsor or anyone acting on its behalf may not promote an investigational new drug or represent it as safe or effective for the purposes under investigation, though scientific exchange is preserved. Have your regulatory and medical teams approve any investigational content and check the congress's own rules before it goes into the layout.
Sharing it before graphics are designed, marked with zones, claim surfaces, and handoff paths, gives reviewers the most room to raise structural concerns. Final booth content then follows your company's submission process, which for applicable products includes Form FDA-2253 at the time of initial dissemination, and for some, such as accelerated-approval products, earlier submission.