SEMA and AAPEX Week 2026: How Exhibitors and Las Vegas Businesses Can Get a Month of Content Out of It

When and where are SEMA Show and AAPEX in 2026?

SEMA Show 2026 runs November 3 through November 6 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and it is open to the public only on the final day, Friday, November 6. AAPEX 2026 runs November 3 through November 5 at The Venetian Expo and Caesars Forum, a few miles down the Strip from the convention center.

Both events draw automotive aftermarket manufacturers, distributors, retailers, shop owners, builders, and media into Las Vegas during the same week. If you exhibit at either show, or you run a shop, detail bay, or wrap business anywhere in town, that overlap is the opportunity. The city is full of people who care about cars, parts, and builds for four straight days, and almost none of them are capturing it on video in a way that lasts past the week.

What should exhibitors plan before the show floor opens?

Decide your shot list before you land, not on day one of setup. A booth that's busy on Wednesday looks different from the same booth on a quieter Monday, so plan to capture build reveals, product demos, and aisle interviews across multiple days rather than betting on one afternoon.

• Build reveals: shoot the cover-off moment, not just the finished vehicle sitting still.
• Product demos: have a team member narrate the demo on camera, even if you also plan to shoot b-roll separately.
• Aisle interviews: line up two or three people in advance, a partner brand, a repeat customer, a shop owner who uses your product, rather than hoping someone good walks by.

This is the same planning discipline that goes into any corporate and convention production, and it's worth treating your booth presence with that level of structure. If you want a second set of hands running camera while your team runs the booth, trade show video production in Las Vegas is built for exactly this week.

What can local Las Vegas auto shops and detailers do without a booth?

You don't need a booth at the Convention Center or the Venetian to ride this week. If you run a detail shop, a wrap shop, or a repair business anywhere in the valley, the automotive crowd in town for SEMA and AAPEX is already thinking about cars. That's your audience, even if they never see your storefront.

Film your own shop's week: a wrap job going on, a detail in progress, a customer's build getting finished touches. Post it as the local counterpart to what's happening across town, not as coverage of the show itself. A short interview with your lead tech or owner explaining what they're working on that week does more for a local audience than a generic shop tour filmed in March.

This only works if the content actually gets posted and sequenced well, which is where a plan from the social media management guide helps more than another camera.

What footage should you capture during the four days? A checklist

Think in categories, not in one long highlight reel. Hit each of these at least once and you'll have enough variety to cut different pieces later.

• Wide establishing shots of your booth or shop with people actually in frame
• Close-up product or build detail shots with no talking, pure b-roll
• One on-camera interview per day, different person each time if possible
• A walking shot from your perspective moving through the space
• Candid reactions, someone seeing a product or build for the first time
• A short end-of-day recap, even just thirty seconds, said straight to camera

Write this list down and hand it to whoever is holding the camera, including yourself. The convention content capture checklist walks through this in more detail if you want a version to print and bring with you.

How do you turn four days of footage into a month of content afterward?

The mistake most exhibitors and local businesses make is posting everything the week it happens and going quiet after. Four days of varied footage, shot with the categories above, gives you enough raw material to post two to three times a week well into December if you pace it out.

Pull the interviews apart into standalone clips. Pair b-roll with a few lines of text about what the product or build actually does. Save one or two pieces for a longer recap once the show is over and you have some distance on it. This is the same logic behind one recording session, a month of content: the value isn't in shooting more, it's in shooting with enough variety that editing later has somewhere to go.

Is a mobile podcast setup worth it for show week?

If your team, your partners, or your customers are going to be in the same city for four days anyway, that's a rare window to sit people down for real conversations instead of thirty-second aisle interviews. A mobile podcast crew can come to your booth, your suite, or your shop and record multiple episodes back to back while everyone is already in town.

G Media runs mobile podcast production at conventions for exactly this kind of week, at $750 per hour with a three-hour minimum, which usually covers several conversations in one sitting rather than one. If you'd rather bring people to a fixed setup, the podcast booth rental option at Las Vegas conventions works the same way in reverse: people come to you between meetings.

Outside of convention week, the podcast production in Las Vegas guide covers the regular studio option too, where a first fully edited episode runs $149 for a standard session of roughly ninety minutes.

Who should actually shoot it?

You can absolutely run a phone camera yourself through the week, and plenty of the checklist above works fine that way. The tradeoff is attention: every minute spent framing a shot or checking audio is a minute not spent working your booth or running your shop.

If the week matters enough to your business that you're already planning travel, booth design, or extra staff around it, it's worth putting the same thought into who's capturing it. The guide to choosing a video production company in Las Vegas is a useful filter if you're weighing options, and a free studio tour is a low-pressure way to see a local setup before the week gets busy. For everything outside the convention floor, from event photography at $175 an hour to videography at $250 an hour, the standard video production services cover the rest of what a show week tends to need.