NASA, Florida to Launch CAPEWEEK Aerospace and Technology Expo at Kennedy Space Center in March 2028

CAPEWEEK, a new annual aerospace and technology expo, will debut March 27 through April 2, 2028, on the 15,001-foot former space shuttle landing runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The event will combine a leadership forum, an industry exposition and public days featuring flight demonstrations and technology displays. It is designed to grow to accommodate more than 500,000 people a year.

The event is being developed through a public-private partnership among NASA, the state of Florida, Space Florida and CAPEWEEK. It will convene companies working across aerospace, defense, superintelligence, energy, autonomy, robotics and advanced mobility on land, sea, air and space, from rockets and fighter jets to autonomous ships, electric vehicles and delivery drones. The leadership forum will bring executives, investors and government officials together to collaborate across these sectors.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, "America should have a place where the people building the future can come together with the public that inspires and supports them. There are few more fitting places than Kennedy Space Center and the runway where the Space Shuttle returned from orbit." He added that CAPEWEEK will put aircraft, spacecraft, technologies and the people behind them in one place and give hundreds of thousands of visitors a front-row seat to the next era of American innovation.

Cyrus Sigari, Founder and Mission Commander of CAPEWEEK, said, "America is the techno-aerospace republic. The world's great air shows have long brought the industry together; CAPEWEEK gives America a stage of its own to join them." He said the event is designed so that, beyond serving industry, it is where the next generation comes to see the future they were promised.

Large aerospace exhibitions have traditionally been run as commercial trade events, and the reach of any one of them depends on who commits to exhibit. CAPEWEEK is structured differently: a federal agency, a state and its space-industry body sit alongside the organiser from the start, and the venue is a government-owned runway with a defined history. For exhibitors, that shifts the calculation toward questions of access, security and logistics on federal property, alongside the usual cost-versus-audience trade-off.

The programme's scope also matters. By placing rockets, fighter jets, autonomous ships and delivery drones in one exposition, the organisers are pitching a cross-sector audience rather than a single segment such as business aviation. For companies in business aviation and advanced air mobility, the practical question is whether the public days and the leadership forum produce the buyer, investor and regulator contact that a dedicated trade show does. The 2028 debut is the point at which that becomes testable; until then the partners' announcements on exhibitor participation and forum format are the signals that carry the most weight.