There were 487 exhibitor booths at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)’s 2026 annual meeting, held in Chicago’s McCormick Place. Fierce Pharma Marketing attempted to see each one.
That was the goal, at least. As it turns out, that task may in fact be physically impossible, or at least take an entire day of valuable writing time. McCormick Place is, after all, widely known as the largest convention center in North America, boasting over 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space. It’s no surprise ASCO has chosen McCormick as its designated meeting spot for more than two decades running, as where else could fit the entire global oncology community all in one place?
Beyond the posters and the data readouts that set the stage for the evolving state of cancer care each summer, hundreds of companies and organizations of all sizes and sectors fill up the massive exhibit floor to display their oncology-related messaging in creative, memorable, larger-than-life and outside-the-box ways.
What’s in a booth?
Just as pharma marketing is bound by strict government regulations, exhibitors must also abide by a set of ASCO guidelines. Other than having to meet a set of eligibility requirements, the ASCO exhibitor handbook outlines several standards for the booths themselves. For one, all exhibit floor spaces must be fully carpeted or covered with an “approved material”—no bare floors here! Water features, interestingly, are allowed for certain booths, with approval required in advance by ASCO, of course.
There is also a long list of prohibited activities that you won’t see on the exhibit hall floor. These include drones, flashing lights, “lighter than air objects,” magicians, jugglers, “sleight of hand artists,” caricature artists and many more. However, it appears that caricatures made by an AI SketchBot robot artist are allowed, as evidenced by Immunome’s booth this year.
And what can visitors take home from ASCO, other than an expanded breadth of knowledge? Freebies, of course! But, as the ASCO exhibitor rules stipulate, not all giveaways at the booths are created equal.
Commercial exhibitors, for one, are not allowed to offer tote bags at their exhibits, while non-commercial entities can. Balloons, wheelie bags, blankets, stuffed animals, t-shirts and drugs (prescription and non-prescription) are also not allowed. This reporter’s personal favorite freebie was a WVU Medicine-branded rubber ducky, which I collected amid a group of business suit-clad executives with thick accents expressing confusion over the concept of a rubber duck.
And of course, the exhibits don’t come cheap. Beyond the price of actually filling the booths with elaborate displays, the space alone comes at a cost of $94 per square foot for inline booths and $109/square foot for island exhibits. A corner premium, meanwhile, will cost $500 per open corner, according to ASCO’s exhibit space policies for 2026.
As the floor map shows, the booths that occupied the most floor space more or less matched the showing on Fierce Pharma’s top 20 pharma companies by 2025 revenue special report, with some exceptions.
To be clear, booth size and floor space doesn’t always speak to the company and its positioning at ASCO and the oncology field. Revolution Medicines, for one, had one of the most talked-about data readouts and a comparatively modest 40x40 foot booth near the food court bathed in green lighting similar to the company’s logo.
Nearby, vaccine maker BioNTech also dressed its 30x30 booth to theme in its signature “ocean green,” offering a pistachio mocha latte at its coffee bar to match. Some of the largest pharmas, meanwhile, had booths up to 130x80 feet in dimension.
Coffee bars were, of course, found all across the exhibit floor. While this reporter could not possibly try them all, one that particularly stood out was CRO Precision for Medicines’ signature drink of a toasted marshmallow latte, featuring marshmallow fluff that promised to be “torched to perfection before your eyes.” And perfection it was!
Other than coffee spots, infused water jugs were quite a popular choice, as were desserts in the ice cream vein, such as frozen yogurt or even, in one case, an entire Good Humor freezer bin full of fudge bars. This Chicago-based reporter took particular note of Chicago-themed foods scattered across exhibits, such as cookies shaped as the Chicago flag and a stand offering local Italian beef. I also heard excited whispers of a hot dog stand (with all seven toppings, of course) and Garrett’s popcorn offerings, but sadly didn’t encounter these treats myself.
Perhaps that’s due to the massive maze that the exhibit floor becomes once ASCO is in full swing. I found myself lost with no exit in sight only twice, which is impressive given the circumstances. Even worse, my phone couldn’t handle the dozens of photo ops positioned across the floor and ran out of battery (also twice).
Luckily, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and its HER2-targeted bispecific Ziihera saved the day, with tables featuring a display of the bispecific antibody as batteries and phone chargers sticking out of its arms, representing “the power of dual HER2 targeting.” Elsewhere, Merck and its Keytruda Qlex branding was plastered over a few portable phone charger stands, which were locked due to recharging in my time of need. Points off for Keytruda—the drug may be up there as one of the most powerful oncology assets on the market right now, but its branded portable phone charger kiosks couldn’t always say the same.
Since commercial booths are required to separate their medical affairs and commercial functions, many used the separation between R&D and marketed products to their advantage with separate themes and displays. Others, like Jazz, used multiple themes anyway to differentiate between their commercial products. While Ziihera was depicted as a thunderstorm that included an AI display featuring bolts of lightning coming out of the user’s arms, Jazz’s small cell lung cancer med Zepzelca was chilling on the beach, complete with sand-colored carpeting and a snow cone stand. Visitors could also “open more with Zepzelca” quite literally, with a massive interactive pop-up book that uniquely illustrated clinical trial data.
Fennec Pharmaceuticals, too, made quite a show out of its allotted space, continuing its “Indy’s Nuts” campaign, a collaboration with the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation and British racecar driver Jack Harvey that brought testicular cancer awareness and bags of peanuts to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month. In keeping with the theme, the company promoted its chemotherapy-induced hearing loss treatment Pedmark with an electric toy car race track, two racing simulators and, of course, plenty of Indy’s Nuts.
Many companies took the chance to display their products and focus on dazzling and creative ways, such as Takeda’s imaging of red blood cells across the floor and on transparent walls, representing its focus on blood cancers. And Bristol Myers Squibb brought the term “medical library” to life with a setup depicting shelves of books colored to theme in the company’s purple, grey and white palette.
Boehringer Ingelheim, meanwhile, sailed onto the exhibit floor with a brand-new product to highlight in its lung cancer therapy, Hernexeos. A massive Hernexeos-branded boat was positioned on top of a moving ocean-like floor under a sign reading, “Set a New Course Forward,” complete with blue lungs as sails. The waves continued in a unique ceiling display for attendees to sit and chat under.
Elsewhere, some companies opted to loudly display their heritage, such as Daiichi Sankyo, which posted up with its signature cherry blossom tree in a reflection of the Japanese pharma’s century-long ties to Washington D.C.’s iconic cherry blossoms.
Genentech, for one, decked out its massive 10,000-square-foot spot as a celebration of its 50th anniversary of operations, touting its history as “the first biotech company.” Visitors could walk through a highly detailed recreation of the company’s first laboratory, complete with a digital chalkboard, lab coats, beakers and more.
Next door at Gilead Sciences and Kite, a large, mosaic-style display came to life in real time through live painting, depicting Trodelvy ambassadors under the tagline “Revealing the Reason: ambassadors of Trodelvy.”
The patient-centered theme was found in many of the exhibit booths, represented through large-scale photos, digital videos or even Proto Holograms. EMD Serono physically represented its patient focus through a collaborative coloring display, joining the artwork together with the tagline “As One for Patients.”
Beyond the products and the data that drive so much discussion at the conference, the heart of ASCO naturally lies with the desire to help patients. Bayer honored this in a moving way (literally), with a display asking visitors to honor someone important in their life by writing their name on a wind chime (“Who Moves You?”)
Over the three days during the conference that the exhibit hall was filled, executives and oncologists alike swarmed in and out of the gates to take it all in before the lights, the ceiling-high signs and innovative displays of cancer-centered art were put away for the year.
Amid the rush of crowds across the exhibit floor, I even encountered a lone pigeon that somehow had fluttered in (without the required badge and registration, mind you!) and was taking its opportunity to munch on some stray crumbs on the floor. While some passersby reacted with quizzical looks, no one slowed down to ponder or take action on the pigeon situation, aside from this reporter, who stopped to take multiple photos of the bird and its meal.
Perhaps the pigeon is a highly respected bird oncologist on its lunch break. Anything goes at ASCO.