The ACC Liverpool Group is marking the 10th anniversary of Exhibition Centre Liverpool. The centre opened in September 2015 as the final piece of the waterfront events campus.
The purpose-built venue was developed to meet growing demand for large-scale exhibitions, trade shows and consumer events, following the earlier success of ACC Liverpool and the M&S Bank Arena, both of which opened in 2008. Together with the 216-bedroom Pullman Hotel, which launched in 2016, the campus now forms one of the UK’s most versatile city-centre event destinations.
In its first decade, Exhibition Centre Liverpool has hosted more than 500 events and welcomed over 2.2m visitors, generating an estimated £320m in economic impact for the Liverpool City Region. Flagship events have included the Labour Party Conference, Comic Con Liverpool, FIFAe, the Beyond Van Gogh and Monet experiences, and serving as the press and hospitality hub for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest.
The venue has won several industry accolades, including ‘Best Venue Under 8,000 sqm’ at the Exhibition News Awards twice, and ‘Venue of the Year’ at the AEO Excellence Awards in both 2023 and 2025.
Speaking about the milestone, Faye Dyer, chief executive of The ACC Liverpool Group, said: “When Exhibition Centre Liverpool opened in 2015, it was a bold statement about our city’s ambition. The arena and convention centre had already proven Liverpool’s ability to host major events, but demand was growing and the new exhibition space allowed us to scale up, diversify, and compete internationally. Ten years on, the results speak for themselves: millions of visitors, hundreds of events, and hundreds of millions in economic impact.”
The wider campus has hosted around 4,500 events since 2008, attracted more than 8.3m visitors and contributed over £2.1bn to the local economy. The group is now focusing on international growth, sustainability and digital innovation to remain competitive in the next decade.
Recent highlights include the campus-wide expansion of Comic Con Liverpool, which in 2024 became the venue’s largest-ever event with more than 40,000 attendees, and the announcement of further strategic investments aimed at enhancing Liverpool’s position in the global events market.
