CES 2027 runs January 6 to 9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with exhibits also spread across the Venetian Expo and other venues around the city. If you are exhibiting, three logistics decisions will determine how your show week goes, and all three need to be made months before you fly in: how your booth gets to the hall, how it is packed to survive being handled by people who have never seen it, and where it goes the moment the show closes. Here is the timeline and the decisions that sit on it.
We are a crating and logistics company minutes from the Convention Center, building crates in house for over 25 years and holding show gear between events for repeat exhibitors. Everything below comes from working the dock rather than reading the exhibitor kit.
The CES Logistics Timeline
Most of what goes wrong at a show was decided, or not decided, months earlier. Working backwards from January:
| When | What Happens | What You Should Be Doing |
|---|---|---|
| 6 to 4 months out | Booth design locks, space is confirmed | Confirm your hall and booth number, since venue determines freight routing. Get crate specs started against the finished design |
| 3 to 2 months out | Exhibitor service kit publishes deadlines and rates | Read the kit. Decide advance warehouse versus direct to show. Book freight. Order crates |
| 6 to 4 weeks out | Advance warehouse window opens | Mock assembly, then pack. Ship to the advance warehouse if you chose it |
| Show week | Targeted move in, install, show days | Arrive with a panel map and a packing plan, not just crates |
| Final day | Hall closes, empties returned | Outbound bill of lading submitted before the deadline |
| After | Freight leaves or goes to storage | Decide now whether it makes a round trip or stays in Las Vegas |
Your Booth Location Changes Your Freight Plan
CES has run as a multi venue show for years, and it matters more than exhibitors expect. A booth in a Convention Center hall, a booth at the Venetian Expo and a booth at a resort property are three different freight problems with different docks, different marshalling arrangements and different move in schedules. Confirm your hall and booth number before you finalise anything, and check the official CES exhibitor information for the current venue map and deadlines, since these are updated each cycle.
The practical consequence: if you are exhibiting in more than one venue, or moving assets between them mid show, plan that as a separate logistics job. It is the single most common way a CES install goes sideways.
Getting Your Booth Into the Hall
Two routes, and the choice is a risk decision more than a cost one.
- Advance warehouse. Your freight is received weeks ahead and is in the hall when your target time arrives. Costs more. Removes the single largest failure point, which is a truck that does not make its delivery window during the busiest week of the Las Vegas year.
- Direct to show. Delivery in an assigned window on move in day. Cheaper, and fine for freight you could rebuild or replace. Unforgiving if anything slips.
For anything irreplaceable, custom built or on the critical path of your demo, use the advance warehouse. Deadlines and rates come from the exhibitor service kit for your specific hall, so read it rather than assuming last year’s dates carry over.
Worth budgeting for separately: material handling, usually called drayage, is the charge for moving freight from the dock or warehouse to your booth, storing empties during the show and returning them at teardown. It is billed by the general service contractor, typically by weight, and it is not included in what your carrier quoted. Full explanation in our trade show crating guide.
Packing a Booth for CES Specifically
CES freight gets handled hard. Your crates will be forklifted at least four times, stacked among thousands of others in empty storage, and reopened at teardown by tired crew working against a clock. Design for that, not for the truck ride.
- Screwed lids, labelled foam positions, and a packing map inside the lid. Repacking correctly at teardown should not depend on anyone remembering how it came out.
- Load bearing tops. Empties get stacked. A lid that only keeps dust out will come back caved.
- Fork entry from at least two sides, and marking on multiple faces: weight, orientation, booth number, show name, company name.
- A defined home for every accessory. Cabling, spares, tools, hanging hardware. Loose bags on top of a crate do not survive empty storage.
- Face protection for displays. On LED cabinets the packages sit proud of the panel surface and anything pressing on the face shears diodes. Detail in our guide to packing and shipping large LED displays.
- Reusable construction if you exhibit more than once a year. A crate divides its cost across every trip. See reusable plastic and wood crates and how custom crates save money.
We build custom crates to booth dimensions in house, and we do on site crating when something is too large or too fragile to move before it is packed. Being local also means we can handle a same day rebuild during show week, which an out of state vendor structurally cannot.
Lithium Batteries and International Freight
CES is the show where this bites hardest, because so much of the floor is battery powered. Lithium ion and lithium metal batteries are regulated dangerous goods, and the rules differ by transport mode and by whether batteries are loose, packed with equipment or installed in equipment. Air freight is strictest. Keep UN 38.3 test summaries for every battery type, declare correctly, and check current IATA and PHMSA guidance rather than last year’s checklist. We handle lithium battery shipping, packing and storage as a dedicated service.
If your gear is arriving from outside the United States, wood packaging must be heat treated and stamped under ISPM 15 or it can be held at the port. We apply the ISPM 15 stamp in house on international shipments, so a booth arriving for CES does not sit in customs during move in week.
Teardown: The Part That Costs People Money
Two things exhibitors consistently get wrong at the end of a show.
You Cannot Repack the Moment the Show Closes
Empties are held in empty storage by the general service contractor and returned to your booth after the hall closes on the final day. There is a queue, and you are in it. Plan for the wait, and make sure your packing design does not require a fresh, unhurried crew to execute correctly.
Miss the Outbound Bill of Lading Deadline and You Lose Control of Your Freight
This is the expensive one. If your outbound paperwork is not submitted by the deadline in the exhibitor service kit, show management can ship your freight at their discretion, by a carrier they choose, at your cost. It is commonly called forced freight, and it is how a booth ends up on a truck to the wrong city at a rate nobody agreed to. Submit the bill of lading early, confirm it was received, and do not leave it to whoever is still standing at the end of teardown.
We do outbound freight pickup from Convention Center properties, plus cross docking for consolidating multiple shipments and same day delivery when something has to move immediately.
Should Your Booth Go Home or Stay in Las Vegas?
For exhibitors who come back, storing locally is usually the largest single saving available. A booth that ships to headquarters in January and back to Las Vegas the following December pays round trip freight, twice the handling, and twice the damage exposure, for an asset that sat in a warehouse either way.
We hold show gear in our Las Vegas warehouse between events, with receiving, inventory and outbound handling through 3PL services. For a company doing CES plus one or two other Las Vegas shows a year, the freight saved usually exceeds the storage cost outright, before counting the avoided damage.
It is not the right call for everyone. If your booth gets reconfigured between shows, or your team needs physical access to the gear during the year, ship it home. The question is worth asking deliberately rather than defaulting.
Why Local Matters During Show Week
We have crated gaming equipment, signage and show assets for properties including Wynn, Aria, Caesars, Hard Rock and Mandalay Bay, packed and shipped the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit, and built crates for a Formula 1 race car and the Stargate movie prop. Different freight, one constant: the date does not move.
During show week that translates into something specific. When a crate comes back damaged from empty storage, when a last minute addition needs crating before it can ship out, or when something has to be rebuilt overnight to make an outbound truck, proximity is the whole answer. A vendor two states away cannot solve any of those. Our convention and event packing service and trade show exhibition movers cover the full week.
Plan Your CES 2027 Freight Now
Send us your hall and booth number, what you are shipping with dimensions and weights, whether anything is battery powered, whether it is arriving from outside the US, and whether you expect to exhibit again in Las Vegas next year. We will come back with a crate spec, a freight plan and a quote, including whether storing locally beats shipping home. Call 702-748-4973 or 1-833-801-9084 toll free, email contact@lasvegascrating.com, or request a quote online. We also offer white glove delivery and electronics shipping.