IBC’s Modern Salons and the Shifting Stack

Late-night collisions, live AI workflows, and shifting alliances at IBC 2025 signal where media infrastructure is heading next.

I think I have finally slept off my IBC time-zone hangover. This year’s show pulled in 43,858 visitors from 170 countries, with 1,300 exhibitors stretched across more than 12 kilometers of floor. The scale is absurd to consider, and if you tried to see everything, you’d end up half-dazed. But size alone isn’t the story for a show like this.

The real reason IBC still matters is the collisions. Broadcast engineers brushing shoulders with the technologists hoping to support their efforts. AI startups pitching into media infrastructure. Old colleagues turning a dinner into a strategy discussion. Amsterdam remains the one of the few places where you get to see the stack end to end, not just on slides, but in messy conversations that shape future workflows.

And the truth is, some of the most important meetings never happen on the show floor. They happen at night, over cocktails, when the guard drops and the talk blends business with the personal. Competitors in the daylight become old industry friends after dark, comparing battle scars, trading customer stories, and finding common ground. Those late sessions are where alliances form and where you glimpse the future before it shows up in booth graphics. They feel like modern salon spaces where ideas are stress-tested in real time by people who’ve known each other for decades and newcomers with fresh urgency.