25 years of FIBO – the largest fitness trade show in changing times 

FIBO lives on legends, has created legends and has itself been a star for a long time. It has drawn fitness gurus, Hollywood celebrities and entire football teams to the exhibition halls. The visits by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1993 and Sylvester Stallone in 2004 are unforgettable. Thanks to its visitors and exhibitors, FIBO can look back on the 25 years of its history with pride. When the first FIBO opened in 1985, nobody could have guessed what a huge success the concept would be – not even the men who invented the trade show: Volker Ebener and Karl Thelen. Even at the first FIBO, 10,000 visitors already flocked to the Cologne trade fair halls. Of the 69 original exhibitors at that first event, some are still represented at FIBO today, such as Gym 80 and SCHNELL Trainingsgeräte GmbH.


Apart from 1985, the years of 1991, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010 mark further important milestones in the history of FIBO. In 1991, the trade show moved from Cologne to Essen, which is still its home today. In 2000, the world’s largest trade fair organiser Reed Exhibitions took over FIBO, and has successfully continued it to the present day. Since 2003, FIBO, which is steadily growing, has established focal themes with the creation of the FIBO Worlds, thereby meeting the specific interests of professional customers. Further major restructuring followed in 2007. Since that year, the bodybuilding and weight training scene has had its new home in Halls 9, 10/11 and been run as an independent event under the FIBO POWER brand. In 2010 it also occupies Hall 12, which means that FIBO takes up the entire Essen Exhibition Centre.


Continuity and change – these are both characteristic of FIBO in many ways. The trade show has kept its name, FIBO, which combines the terms FItness and BOdybuilding, until the present day. With its present subtitle “International Trade Show for Fitness, Wellness and Health“, it has adapted to the requirements of the times and meets the industry‘s growing interest in these issues.
Continuity at FIBO is embodied by the people passionately working for the trade show’s success. They are the FIBO organisers, Reed Exhibitions Deutschland GmbH, on the one hand, but on the other hand also Volker Ebener, FIBO founder and FIBO doyen, who still offers help and advice and to this day has not missed a single FIBO.

The visitor structure also shows that the “old“ and the “new“ elements of the event have grown together. The fitness enthusiasts of the first FIBO visitor generation are still coming. In 1985, fitness training was considered rather an exotic discipline, meanwhile fitness studios have millions of members and prevention and health have become highly relevant issues. Today, FIBO visitors come from all kinds of institutions: fitness studios, health, physiotherapy and rehabilitation centres, spa and wellness centres, leisure centres, sports clubs and many more. Thus FIBO has won a large number of new fans over the years, and even quintupled its visitor numbers.
FIBO will keep moving, also in the next 25 years!

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For further information please visit www.fibo.de or contact the FIBO Press Department.  

Dr. Mike Seidensticker, Tel. (0211) 90 191-128 – Mike.Seidensticker@reedexpo.de
Cornelia Maschke, Tel. (0211) 90 191-182 – Cornelia.Maschke@reedexpo.de