布拉格会议中心宣布2029年启用新展厅及升级音响系统，承诺施工期零停摆

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A new Exhibition Hall, world-class sound, and a location most congress centres can only envy. Prague spent the last decade climbing the international rankings. It now sits sixth in the world in the ICCA global city ranking, ahead of London, Copenhagen and Tokyo, hosting more than 5,000 events and over 850,000 delegates in 2025 alone. And yet, at the Prague Congress Centre, the most instructive number is a different one: the number of congresses the venue has had to say no to.

“PCC already has enquiries from approximately fifteen world-class congresses, particularly in the field of medicine, whose organisation is directly contingent on the completion of the hall,” says Lenka Žlebková, Chair of the Board and CEO of the Prague Congress Centre.

That sentence is the entire business case for the project that broke ground on 16 June 2026 on the southern side of the building, towards Pankrác Square.

What arrives in 2029 The new Exhibition Hall adds 5,000 square metres of net, column-free exhibition space, divisible into up to five independent sections, and increases the complex’s total exhibition capacity to more than 21,000 square metres. In gala configuration, it seats 1,500 guests at round tables. Combined with the centre’s existing 70 halls and lounges, the expanded venue can handle events for up to 15,000 participants.

Architecturally, it is not a shed. Designed by Barcelona’s OCA Architects with Czech studio CMC Architects, the winner of an international competition held in 2017, it takes the form of a levitating tube almost 177 metres long, wrapping the existing brutalist landmark rather than competing with it. The investment is approximately €55 million, of which some comes from the centre’s own resources – an unusual position for a municipally-owned venue, and one earned by several record years. In its last reported year, the company posted revenues of close to €30 million and a net profit of €6 million, both of which were record highs. The hall is designed for LEED Gold, with rainwater retention and expanded green space around Pankrác Square.

For Roman Sovják, Director of Sales and Marketing at the Prague Congress Centre, the significance is less about square metres than about what a single, connected footprint does to an organiser’s programme. From 2029, the plenary, the exhibition and the gala dinner for 1,500 sit inside one campus, sharing freight access, delegate flow and catering logistics.

That is why the sales conversation has already moved into the next decade. International associations select venues five to eight years out; a hall that opens in 2029 is being sold in 2026. The fifteen enquiries Lenka Žlebková refers to are not speculative interest but pipeline – bids where the decision hinges on capacity that does not yet physically exist. It is a familiar exercise for anyone in the association market: selling a rendering, backed by a signed construction contract, a fixed handover date and a general contractor already on site.

The 27 months nobody will notice  Here the Prague story diverges from the usual expansion narrative, and organisers should read this part twice.

Construction runs for roughly 27 months, with the shell and core complete by the end of 2027 and final handover scheduled for September 2028, followed by trial operation and building approval before full commercial use. Throughout 2027 and 2028, during the noisiest, dustiest, most disruptive stretch of any building project, the Prague Congress Centre remains fully operational. All planned congresses, conferences, cultural and social events take place without restrictions. Nothing is cancelled. Nothing is relocated.

The construction sequencing was designed around that commitment rather than the other way around: the new hall rises on the southern flank of the complex, away from the main delegate entrances, and the works are phased to minimise impact on visitors and organisers. The honest exceptions are on the parking side. Capacity in the complex is temporarily reduced because of the hall and the parallel reconstruction of the South Garage, and P+R operations closed on 7 May 2026. The integrated Holiday Inn Prague remains accessible throughout, with a recommended detour route where needed.

For a client signing a 2027 or 2028 contract, that is the single most important guarantee in the file – and a competitive argument in itself, since venues undergoing expansion frequently ask organisers to absorb the inconvenience.

World-class sound in Prague While the new hall rises, the existing complex is being transformed from within. Around €4.8 million is going into new sound systems and theatre and stage technology in the existing halls, with the audio element alone representing an investment of almost €1 million in the Congress Hall. The centrepiece is the L-Acoustics L2 – and according to the venue, the Prague Congress Centre will be the first in the Czech Republic to install it as a permanent system.

What the L2 actually delivers is easier to hear than to describe. It is a system built to project sound evenly across a large room, so the person in the last row of the balcony hears essentially what the person in row one hears – same clarity, same balance, same presence. Fewer, slimmer enclosures also mean less hardware hanging in sightlines. For a congress, that translates into speech that stays intelligible for a delegate following a non-native speaker in their fourth language of the day; in a congress hall, intelligibility is not a luxury feature, it is the product. But the Congress Hall is also one of Prague’s significant cultural stages, and this is where the investment reaches beyond conference programming. Concerts, live performances and solo vocalists ask far more of a room than a keynote does: warmth in the low end, detail in the top, and a voice that carries without strain to 2,764 seats. The same system that carries a plenary session on Tuesday carries a symphony on Saturday.

The same system serves the venue’s other identity. The Prague Congress Centre is not only a congress house: it hosted the Czech Lion film awards for the first time this year, and staged The Phantom of the Opera, chandelier descent and all. “PCC is not just a congress centre, but a place for culture, social events and unique experiences,” Roman Sovják has said, adding that exceptional cultural and social events “will always be our domain, and that is why we are modernising our largest halls.” The upgrade programme also covers stage technology and new facilities for hybrid broadcasting and global livestreaming.

Roughly 200 events and 250,000 visitors a year pass through the building, with the mix shifting deliberately towards longer, larger, more demanding international congresses. Those are precisely the events for which production quality is scrutinised in the site inspection.

Under the building, a metro station The third pillar of the proposition cannot be bought at any price: location.

Vyšehrad station on metro line C sits directly beneath the complex, at the southern end of the Nusle Bridge. Muzeum – Wenceslas Square, the National Museum, the edge of the historic centre – is two stops away, a journey of minutes rather than a shuttle-bus operation. The airport connects by bus and two metro lines. For an organiser, this removes an entire cost line and an entire category of risk: no transport contract, no delegates stranded at 23:00 after the gala, no traffic contingency.

The four-star Holiday Inn Prague, with 254 rooms, is integrated into the complex, so speakers, committees and staff sleep inside the venue perimeter. The medieval Vyšehrad complex, with its park and 11th-century Gothic basilica, is a short walk away – a ready-made social programme.

And then there is the view. The building’s northern terrace looks straight across the Vltava valley to Prague Castle and the historic skyline. Once the Exhibition Hall is finished, the terrace will be transformed into public space with a café, a viewing point and outdoor seating, plus step-free access directly to the metro, complementing the Art District Vyšehrad contemporary art project.

That combination – panorama, metro, hotel, and from 2029 a 5,000-square-metre hall – is what Prague is putting on the table for the next decade of international congresses. As Lenka Žlebková frames the shift: “International congresses today are looking for much more than adequate capacity. Organisers expect flexible spaces, cutting-edge technology, sustainability and a strong destination experience.”

The building site on Pankrác Square is the answer. The uninterrupted event calendar through 2027 and 2028 is the proof that the answer comes without a price for anyone booking today.

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