Automotive aftermarket · Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV · Nov 3-6, 2026

SEMA Show 2026lead capture

The honest read on SEMA Show 2026: what the organizer scanner really costs, what the badge encodes, and whether the venue WiFi holds up. Tendro is a lead capture app: your booth team scans badges and business cards with their phones, and it is $499 flat for the whole team at one event. One $499 fee covers every phone on your booth staff, instead of renting scanners per device.

Start free trial See the cost breakdown

Test the free desk trial: point a phone at last year's badges and a stack of business cards and judge the enrichment yourself. No credit card.

SEMA Show 2026 fact sheet

Organizer scanner rental

$455 to $735

per device or package, the published 2026 XPress Leads order form

Booth hotspot, up to 10 users

$1,750 advance

5 Mbps, on the SEMA 2026 Cox Business form (updated 04/25) published on semashow.com

Show days · order clock

Nov 3-6, 2026

Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV. The advance rate ends on September 22, 2026; every order after that pays the second column.

Tendro (our line in this table)

$499 flat

whole booth team, one event, any badge from their phones

The basics

SEMA Show 2026 at a glance

Specialty-equipment manufacturers selling to retailers, installers and distributors fill this floor: performance and racing parts, wheels and tires, trucks and off-road, restyling and car care, mobile electronics, collision and refinish, tools and equipment, across the North, West, Central and South halls.

Show dates	November 3-6, 2026
Venue	Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV
Lead retrieval	Registration through Maritz XPressReg. Lead retrieval by Maritz XPress Leads (CDS), show code AAIW1126.
Who exhibits	Automotive aftermarket

The scanner cost

What does lead retrieval cost at SEMA Show 2026?

The published 2026 XPress Leads order form runs $455 to $735 per device or package, with one dated rate cutoff before the show.

These are current numbers, not a prior-year proxy. Maritz XPress Leads (CDS) publishes the 2026 form in the open, and the form prints its own cutoffs. The advance rate ends on September 22, 2026; every order after that pays the second column. The last tier carries no end date. It runs to the show.

Device (2026 form)	Through 9/22/26	After 9/22/26
App on your own device (one activation)	$455	$525
App package (three activations, custom qualifiers included)	$625	$685
Handheld rental (one activation)	$605	$685
Handheld rental package (one activation, custom qualifiers included)	$640	$735

The add-ons ride on top of the device line, advance and after-cutoff: Event API $1,120 and $1,330; Bluetooth printer $145 and $170, pairing with one device only; custom qualifiers or surveys $150 and $170 when not bundled; delivery with app training and pick-up $205 and $230; literature fulfillment $205 and $230; Digital Backpack a flat $500. Every activation past the three in the app package is $145. The optional loss and damage waiver is $95 per rental item, processing is $25 with $10 off for ordering online, and sales tax is extra. Replacement charges are $1,000 for a rental device or a Bluetooth printer, $250 for a Bluetooth adapter and $90 for a power cord and block.

The form also prices the failure case. Purchase orders are not accepted; cancellation outside the last 30 days is $100, inside it no refund. Leads captured as badge images or handwritten badge IDs can be uploaded within 14 days after the show and carry a data services fee the form does not state. That is the organizer's own fallback for a badge its scanner could not read.

The 2026 XPress Leads order form is public on semashow.com. Orders go through xpressleadpro.com with show code AAIW1126, and the advance rate ends on September 22, 2026. Source.

The badge

What does the SEMA Show 2026 badge actually encode?

SEMA has not published what its 2026 badge encodes. Assume an ID that only the XPress Leads scanner resolves.

SEMA mails badges to domestic exhibitors and attendees ahead of the show and publishes the XPress Leads order form, but no public 2026 source states the badge's code type or what it encodes. The conservative assumption is an organizer ID resolved only by the rented scanner, and the form's own provision for uploading badge images and handwritten IDs after the show points the same way. Tendro reads the printed face by OCR and enriches the contact; it does not resolve the organizer's ID. A vCard or MeCard QR, if a badge carries one, decodes directly.

What Tendro reads is the printed face, the name, title, and company, and enrichment fills the verified email and firmographics the badge leaves off. Same for business cards and QR codes. No universal app, Tendro included, decodes the organizer's encoded badge ID.

So the honest limit carries its own fix: without the organizer's licensed access (the rented scanner or a paid event API) no app resolves the encoded ID, and OCR plus enrichment returns the named, verified contact without waiting on the rental. The universal badge scanner explainer walks through how.

One more thing worth checking: exhibitor contracts vary on third-party capture policies, so read yours before the show.

The WiFi

Does the WiFi hold up at Las Vegas Convention Center?

LVCC booth internet is Cox Business only: a 10-user 5 Mbps hotspot is $1,750 advance or $2,100 standard, and a 3 Mbps wired drop starts at $500.

Cox Business is the Las Vegas Convention Center's exclusive connectivity provider, and SEMA publishes a show-branded Cox order form for 2026. A shared Business Starter wired drop is up to 3 Mbps with one private IP address, $500 advance or $600 standard, up to three addresses in total; Business Select at 10 Mbps is $750 or $900; routers, servers and NAT devices are prohibited on the shared wired service. The booth hotspot is sold by user count and speed: up to 10 users at 5 Mbps is $1,750 advance or $2,100 standard, 25 users $2,500 or $3,000, and the 10 Mbps versions start at $2,000. Every phone on the booth that needs the hotspot counts against that user cap. Dedicated bandwidth starts at $2,500 for 5 Mbps.

The advance rate applies only to orders placed and paid 30 days before the event; SEMA's deadline checklist puts the Cox advance date at October 2, 2026, and orders inside 72 hours of the show carry a 20% expedite fee.

It gets worse under load. Show-floor WiFi is half-duplex, and per Cisco's high-density WiFi design guidance, a single access point degrades past roughly 25 clients per radio. The busiest hour on the floor is the hour the signal is thinnest.

Tendro captures to the phone first. Every scan queues locally with its real timestamp and syncs in order when the connection returns, so a soft WiFi bar never costs you a lead. The offline capture write-up covers how the queue behaves when the venue drops.

The alternative

What is the $499-per-event alternative?

Tendro is $499 per event with unlimited team members, never per device. A five-person booth pays one flat fee, not five rentals.

SEMA's 2026 form is public and its advance column closes on September 22, so the order most exhibitors have not placed yet is about to cost more. The price sheet is the same Maritz XPress Leads sheet FABTECH uses in the same building two weeks earlier: one app activation on your own phone is $455 through September 22 and $525 after, the three-activation package $625 then $685, one rented handheld $605 then $685, the handheld package with qualifiers $640 then $735. Every activation past the three in the package is $145. A five-rep booth on its own phones is $625 plus two $145 activations, $915 before delivery, printers or the $1,120 Event API line that gets your own leads into your own CRM. The same booth on Tendro is $499 flat, however many phones. Two SEMA-specific lines: the Digital Backpack, your content as QR codes in the booth, is a flat $500 here where FABTECH prices it at $250, and badges are mailed in advance with a September 25 domestic registration deadline, so the badge a rep hands you was printed weeks ago. Booth internet is Cox Business on LVCC terms with its own October 2 advance deadline.

One fee, not per device.$499 covers the whole booth. Unlimited devices, unlimited scans. A five-person team is one rental, not five.

Volume discounts from 10+ events.Running the year? From 10+ events a flat per-event rate drops as you add events.

Any CRM with a public API.Salesforce, HubSpot, or any CRM with a public API. Sync starts with your first paid event, under 10 seconds scan to record.

Start free trial The hidden cost of organizer scanners

The desk trial

How do you test it before SEMA Show 2026?

Run the free desk test before SEMA Show 2026: scan old badges and business cards, judge the enrichment, then decide.

The free trial is the scan-and-enrichment desk test. Point a phone at last year's badges and a stack of business cards, watch what Tendro reads and enriches, and grade the data before SEMA Show 2026 opens.

We do not publish a blanket enrichment match rate. Industrial badges enrich differently than SaaS ones, which is exactly why the desk test exists: run it on your own badge stack.

The free trial covers capture and enrichment; CRM sync switches on with your first paid event, so you test field mapping against a real show, not a sandbox. The desk test costs a lunch break and answers the enrichment question before any show is on the line.

Straight answers