EXPO 2027 Is 11 Months Away. Who Is Carrying Your Show?
There is a particular kind of pressure that arrives with a brief of this scale.
EXPO 2027 is nothing like a product launch, a fair or a music festival — the formats most Serbian agencies have built their expertise around. It is a 93-day living programme spanning more than 130 national pavilions, each running its own diplomatic and cultural calendar, in front of international audiences and foreign press.
For the local agencies assembling their EXPO teams right now, the instinct is to start with what they know: the production company, the AV supplier, the catering partner, the venue coordinator. But there is one role that is often left for later — and it is the one that will hold the entire communication arc of the program.
What EXPO actually requires
The standard EXPO event brief presents a specific set of challenges that most agencies in the region have not yet encountered at this scale.
The first is linguistic. It is a state-level occasion where the primary audience may speak no local language, where diplomatic protocol governs the order of proceedings, and where a single mispronounciation or protocol mistake can create an embarrassment that outlasts the evening.
The second one is cultural. Every pavilion at EXPO 2027 brings its own cultural register — what formality looks like, what humour is appropriate, what silence means, what applause signals. An MC who has not worked across different cultural contexts will default to a single register, regardless of the room they are in. At EXPO, that default will be visible immediately to the people who matter most.
The third is operational. EXPO events run long, run complex, and run simultaneously with dozens of other events competing for the same press attention and VIP presence. The MC is the person who absorbs the unplanned — late arrivals, the overrunning speaker, technical failures, the unexpected diplomatic guest — and converts it into a non-event before the audience has time to notice. That capability is not a nice-to-have. At EXPO-level, it is a baseline requirement.
The agency that gets this right
The agencies building their EXPO teams right now have a choice that will be invisible in the brief but visible in the room. They can confirm the MC a couple of weeks before, hand them a locked run-of show, and hope for the best. Or they can bring them in early — as a communication partner, not just a presenter — and build a programme that was designed to land from scratch.
Eleven months is enough time to get this right.
It is also enough time to leave it too late.
Hristina Stojiljković is a professional MC and event host based in Belgrade, available for corporate events, conferences and high-stakes occasions across the region and internationally. Feel free to reach out, I respond within 24hours: inquiries@hristinastojiljkovic.com.