The History of EXPO

The history of EXPO goes as far back as 1851 when London hosted the very first universal world exhibition. At that time, Great Britain was the world’s leading industrial power, and every nation was invited to participate in the exhibition under the overall theme “Industry of all Nations”.

On 1 May 1851, Queen Victoria officially declared the first World Exhibition open in the recently erected Crystal Palace. The exhibition with 14,000 exhibitors from 25 countries was with more than 6 million visitors an overwhelming success and was subsequently followed by a number of grandiose exhibitions in the capitals of the great industrial countries. Common for all of these early World Exhibitions was that the countries used them as a basis for showing their latest industrial products, inventions and techniques.

One exhibition was followed by another - sometimes one every year - and they grew larger and larger with the culmination of the great exhibitions in Paris in 1889 - the one with the Eiffel Tower - and in 1900.

With the exhibition in Brussels in 1958, the World Exhibitions started to change concurrently with the societal development from being exhibitions of the latest technical breakthroughs towards being wide national manifestations, where the participating countries present themselves in their entirety, generally in relation to enterprise, tourism and culture within the relatively broad themes, established for every exhibition.

Since the exhibition in Sevilla in 1992, World Exhibitions have been multicultural festivals that meet the curiosity of modern man towards other nations and cultures, within a clearly defined setting and a foreseeable period of time. World Exhibitions have become a meeting place for people in the real world.

BIE - the International Exhibitions Bureau - has its head office in Paris. Steen Christensen, chief consultant with the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, has been the chairman of BIE's Executive Committee since November 2007.