CIFTIS 2026 Opens in Beijing with Record Global Participation
The 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) opened Wednesday at Beijing’s Shougang Park, drawing participants from 90 countries, regions and international organizations with over 1,800 companies exhibiting on-site, according to CGTN. The five-day event, running through September 13, marks the first CIFTIS held in the opening year of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).
The fair has brought together 473 Fortune Global 500 firms and industry leaders, including Honeywell, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Alibaba, Schneider Electric, Qualcomm and Hong Kong Telecom, as Xinhua News reported.
A Permanent Home at Shougang Park
Shougang Park, a former industrial steelworks in western Beijing’s Shijingshan District, has served as the fair’s permanent venue since 2025. The decommissioned steel plant — which also hosted the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Big Air competition — now houses exhibition halls built around blast furnaces and cooling towers, creating what organizers describe as a “convention and exhibition town.”
The venue transformation reflects the fair’s own evolution since its 2012 launch as the Beijing Fair. What began with 50,000 square meters of exhibition space has grown into the world’s largest comprehensive trade fair dedicated to services, according to China Daily.
New Features and First-Time Highlights
This year’s CIFTIS introduces several first-time features designed to showcase China’s services capabilities. A “China Services” exhibition zone has been established for the first time in the core thematic exhibition area, presenting 140+ innovation cases spanning all 12 categories of services trade. Knowledge-intensive services — including artificial intelligence, large language models and intelligent agents — account for nearly 40 percent of the showcased cases.
The fair also debuts a dedicated overseas expansion services promotion and roadshow area, hosting 41 events to help Chinese companies expand globally, as ECNS reported. A new SME exhibition zone and the China Service Case Exhibition round out the expanded program.
Norway serves as this year’s Guest Country of Honor, with Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as Guest Province of Honor. Norwegian Commercial Counselor to China Han Ning noted that China is Norway’s largest trading partner in Asia, with about 160 Norwegian companies operating in China.
International Engagement Deepens
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is co-hosting the Global Trade in Services Summit for the first time, alongside UNCTAD and China’s Ministry of Commerce. WIPO Director General Daren Tang highlighted in a video address that China has posted rapid growth in services trade, with strong exports of knowledge-intensive services supported by the country’s IP and innovation ecosystem.
Senior international officials attended the summit, including Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga and Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Poulev. Chiwenga said CIFTIS is expected to create investment opportunities across conferencing, exhibition, infrastructure and digital services for Zimbabwe.
Nearly 100 conferences and forums are scheduled, organized around four thematic sections: open integration, win-win cooperation, digital and intelligent innovation, and green development. More than 200 new products and achievements will be unveiled, with over 100 making their global or China debut.
China’s Services Trade Momentum
The fair arrives amid robust growth in China’s services sector. Services trade totaled nearly 4.45 trillion yuan (about $656.6 billion) in the first seven months of 2026, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, according to official data. CGTN also reported that service exports grew by 17.6 percent in the first half of the year, becoming a crucial driver of foreign trade growth.
China’s services trade has surpassed $1 trillion in overall scale. Li Jun, director of the Institute of International Service Trade Research at the MOFCOM Academy, said China is transitioning from a “major services trading country” to a “strong services trading country.”
“Services trade is a direct reflection of the international competitiveness of the services sector and a crucial path for promoting high-quality and efficient development of the services sector,” Vice Minister of Commerce Yan Dong said, as reported by China Daily.
Strategic Significance in the 15th Five-Year Plan
Advancing high-quality development of services trade is identified as a key task in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan outline, which calls for optimizing negative list management, easing cross-border restrictions, encouraging services exports, and fostering knowledge-intensive services trade.
Beijing Vice Mayor Tang Wenhong emphasized that this year’s fair places greater emphasis on the linkage between services trade and services consumption, and between services trade and services investment, aiming to make the exhibition economy “more than just exhibitions, with unlimited spillover.”
What to Watch
The fair runs through September 13, with professional days through Friday and free public days on the weekend. Organizers have arranged 74 supporting activities at Shougang Park and across Beijing, along with 11 business inspection routes covering investment promotion and cultural tourism.
Beijing authorities have prepared extensive transport arrangements, including extended subway service on Line 11, free shuttle buses from Pingguoyuan Transport Hub, and more than 11,000 parking spaces across 29 lots, according to the Beijing government.
As the fair unfolds, attention will focus on whether the record international participation translates into concrete services trade agreements — and how China’s push from “Made in China” to “Serving the World” reshapes global services trade dynamics.