GSX 2026 TL;DR
- 14–16 September 2026 at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta. Hall hours 9:30 am–5:00 pm, and 9:30 am–2:00 pm on Wednesday.
- The organiser expects 14,000+ security professionals and 500+ exhibitors, which makes account prioritisation the whole game.
- The exhibit floor covers 190,000+ square feet, so book meetings by hall and zone and leave walking time between them.
- Capture the security problem, the buying role, the timing and the next step, not only the badge contact record.
- Book the follow-up meeting while the buyer is at the booth; the post-show inbox fills the morning the hall closes.
- Run a daily account review across the three days so the team can recover missed stakeholders before Wednesday 2:00 pm.
Everything You Need to Know Before You Arrive in Atlanta
Dates and hours: 14–16 September 2026. Exhibit hall 9:30 am–5:00 pm Monday and Tuesday; 9:30 am–2:00 pm Wednesday. Pre-conference programming runs 12–13 September.
Venue: Georgia World Congress Center, 285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW, Atlanta, Georgia.
Scale: The organiser expects 14,000+ security professionals, 500+ exhibitors, 200+ education sessions and 190,000+ square feet of exhibit space. Three days at that size will not cover a territory by walking it, so build routes and meeting points before you land.
What should a rep ask at the GSX 2026 booth?
Ask what the visitor is protecting, and what is currently failing. A GSX attendee rarely arrives without a live problem: a site that failed an audit, an access control platform at end of life, an executive protection programme with no travel intelligence, or a supply chain the board has started asking about. Follow with the buying role, the current vendor or process, the budget cycle, and who else has to approve. Then agree an explicit next step and write it down before they leave.
Who walks up to the booth at GSX 2026?
The chief security officer who owns the budget
The chief security officer arrives with a budget and a board question. They are usually comparing an integrated programme against the cost of running physical and information security as separate teams. Show them programme-level outcomes and total cost rather than feature lists, and expect them to ask what the numbers look like in year three.
The security director who runs the programme
The security director runs the programme the chief security officer signs off. They evaluate whether your product survives contact with their staffing model: who administers it, how long training takes, and what happens on a bad night when one officer is alone with the interface. A live demonstration of the administrator's screen does more here than a capability slide.
The integrator or consultant who resells you
Integrators and consultants at GSX are buying on behalf of someone else. They want margin, install time, support terms, and confidence that you will not compete with them on the same account. Treat the conversation as a channel conversation and get the specific end-customer deal they have in mind before they walk away.
The information security leader crossing over
Information security is one of the nine GSX focus areas, so expect leaders whose remit now covers cameras, badges and building systems as network assets. Their first question is usually about the security of your product rather than the security it delivers: authentication, patch cadence, data residency, and what the device talks to.
How should the team work each day of GSX 2026?
Opening day — protect Monday's keynote rush
Monday opens with the Peter Diamandis keynote and the hall opens at 9:30 am. Expect the first two hours to be walk-past traffic and the afternoon to carry the intent. Put your strongest qualifier at the aisle and hold pre-booked meetings for after lunch.
Middle day — preserve Tuesday's full hall
Tuesday is the only full day with no opening ceremony and no early close, so it is the day to convert. Review Monday's captures at breakfast, chase every named account that has not appeared, and use the education session breaks as the windows when senior attendees actually leave the hall.
Final day — close before the hall shuts at 2:00 pm
The hall closes at 2:00 pm on Wednesday. Anything not booked by Wednesday morning will be chased by email against every other exhibitor at the show. Spend the last two hours closing next steps rather than scanning, and send calendar invitations from the floor.
Which GSX 2026 focus areas should you track?
Information security
Information security is one of the nine GSX focus areas, and it is where physical and network security budgets now overlap. Map the sessions in this track and the exhibitors selling identity, access and device management, because those are the booths your prospect is comparing you against.
Executive protection
Executive protection sessions at GSX 2026 follow ASIS publishing an executive protection standard, and ASIS research names budget constraints and staff compliance as the main barriers. If you sell travel risk, intelligence or protective services, that is the objection to prepare for.
Supply chain security
Supply chain security covers cargo, vendor risk and the physical integrity of goods in transit. Attendees in this track usually carry a compliance driver rather than a discretionary budget, so ask which regulation or customer audit started the project before you demonstrate anything.
Organizational resilience
Organizational resilience pulls in business continuity and crisis management owners who do not report into security. They are useful because they hold a separate budget line. Ask who runs their tabletop exercises and what the last real incident cost the business.
What should happen after each GSX 2026 conversation?
Every GSX conversation should be in the CRM before the next morning, in one order: agreed meetings first, active projects second, everything else third. Record the security problem, the buying role and the agreed next step alongside the contact, because the contact alone does not tell the follow-up owner why the conversation mattered.
A team that kept the problem, the role and the next step can attribute pipeline to GSX 2026 and defend the booth spend next year. A team that kept only badge data starts from a contact list and reconstructs the show from memory, days later, against every other exhibitor's follow-up.
Lead Retrieval at GSX 2026
MCI is the official registration, housing and lead retrieval provider for GSX 2026. Standard exhibit space includes one lead retrieval licence for an in-line booth and three for an island booth, so most teams already have scanning before they order anything. What it does well is the registration record: verified name, title, company and email, typed by the attendee at registration. The rate card for additional licences is not published on the public site; it sits behind the Exhibitor Resource Center login.
What it does not record is why the conversation mattered. B2Brain captures the security problem in the visitor's own words, the current platform or process, the buying role, the blocker and the agreed next step, from the rep's own phone, including conversations in the aisles and at the ASIS receptions where no scanner is present. B2Brain reports booth capture in under 30 seconds per conversation. That is capture speed, not a substitute for the verified registration record.
The recommendation is to run both. Keep the included MCI licence for the verified contact and run B2Brain alongside it for the context and the booked meeting. Nothing already ordered is wasted, no exhibitor services form is involved, and there is no deadline to miss.
Build your GSX 2026 ROI and Pipeline Math
Booth space at GSX 2026 is published: $64.00 per square foot for booths of 400 square feet or less, $59.00 per square foot above that, and $375 per corner. A 10 by 10 in-line booth is therefore $6,400 of space before anything else. The first-time exhibitor pavilion is $7,000 per 10 by 10 and includes drape, carpet, furniture, a 5 amp power drop and one lead retrieval licence.
That figure excludes the parts that usually cost more than the space: Freeman drayage and labour, electrical through Edlen, internet through CCLD, exhibit build, travel, and staff time. Put your own numbers into the Event ROI Calculator rather than working from an example, because the only inputs that matter are yours.
Turn GSX 2026 floor conversations into booked pipeline
Four moves decide whether GSX 2026 produces pipeline: prioritise the accounts that fit your ICP before you fly to Atlanta, brief every rep before the hall opens at 9:30 am on Monday, capture the context in seconds rather than writing notes after the visitor leaves, and book the next meeting while the buyer is still standing at the booth.