IMTS draws the full manufacturing supply chain. Roughly 90,000 people attend, and the crowd was a mix of shop owners and executives, manufacturing and design engineers, machinists and programmers, plant and operations managers, procurement and buyers, and students and educators. If a business cuts, forms, or finishes metal, someone from it is usually on the floor.
It is a genuinely international show: IMTS 2026 expects more than 6,200 international registrants from over 105 countries, alongside exhibitors from 29 countries. Overseas visitors register free, which pulls buyers from around the world into Chicago for the week.
On the exhibitor side, 2,000-plus companies show equipment — the machine-tool builders (Haas, Mazak, Okuma, DMG Mori, Makino, Doosan/DN Solutions and many more), plus tooling, workholding, automation, metrology, controls, software and material suppliers. Many builders run machines live, cutting real parts on the floor.
For a used-machine buyer, that concentration is the value: you can compare brands and machine classes side by side in a day, talk to the people who build and sell them, and calibrate what current new iron costs — which is exactly the context you need to judge a used machine's price.
Official show site: imts.com · Dates: September 14–19, 2026 · Venue: McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois.
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