Karl Mayer will not exhibit at ITMA 2027 in Hanover. Instead, the German machinery maker will mark its 90th anniversary with a week-long technology event in September 2027 at its headquarters in Obertshausen, near Frankfurt, where customers, suppliers and textile industry specialists can see new machinery running under production conditions.

The decision reshapes the trade-show calendar for warp knitting, technical textiles and warp preparation buyers. Karl Mayer plans to stage live demonstrations of new machine generations alongside textile applications and fabric concepts currently in development, using more than 5,000 square metres of space across its Textile Innovation Center and Product Innovation Center. Specialists covering the company's different machine and technology areas will be on hand throughout the week for technical discussions with customers.

The company frames the move as a question of capacity and context. An anniversary programme at its own site gives Karl Mayer considerably more demonstration space than a standard exhibition stand, and it allows the company to show machinery next to the textile development and application work that machines enable — a setup no rented hall in Hanover can match.

"Our anniversary activities are about much more than individual machines or new features," CEO Lutz Wolf said. "They are about the next major technical breakthrough developments and true textile innovations across warp knitting, technical textiles and warp preparation."

Wolf added that the company has a strong pipeline of developments across all three areas, which it will present during 2027. That claim remains a stated intention until the September event; the company says further details of the anniversary programme will be announced over the coming months.

For mills and sourcing operations planning capital expenditure cycles around ITMA 2027, which runs in Hanover from September 16–22, the absence of Karl Mayer shifts the evaluation opportunity roughly 500 kilometres south to Obertshausen. Buyers who want to benchmark machines from multiple vendors in one place will need to budget for a separate visit.

Shanghai comes first

Before the anniversary programme, Karl Mayer will present its latest developments at ITMA Asia + CITME 2026 in Shanghai from November 20–24. The company will run two stands, splitting its technology areas: warp knitting and technical textiles in Hall 4.1, stand C18, and warp preparation in Hall 3, stand A24.

The Shanghai exhibition will sit alongside a Product Show at Karl Mayer China in Changzhou, where the company will demonstrate additional machinery and applications. The two-venue combination offers a first indication of the broader approach the company intends for its anniversary year — moving beyond individual machine launches to present technologies together with the textile applications they make possible.

Founded in 1937, Karl Mayer reaches its 90th anniversary in 2027. Between now and then, the Changzhou and Shanghai dates give Asian customers the nearest opportunity to see the current development pipeline in operation before the full anniversary reveal in Obertshausen.