NI Chamber Festival of Business 2026, St George's Market, Belfast
When NI Chamber brought the Festival of Business back to St George's Market in September 2026, AXL returned as the event's official AV partner. Our brief was to turn a working Victorian market hall into two fully produced stages for more than 1,200 business people, with a main stage built around a 9.5m LED video wall arch that framed the whole set.
The Festival of Business is NI Chamber's signature networking event and one of the biggest dates in Northern Ireland's business calendar. The 2026 edition ran from 8.30am to 1.30pm on Wednesday 16 September, with a sales and marketing programme across two stages and a marketplace of more than 100 local companies. Caroline O'Neill, founder of Digg Community, hosted the main stage, with speakers including Sinead Quinn, director of inflight at Ryanair, Sam Shephard, founder of Juice Jar, and explorer James McManus.
The festival was supported by headline sponsors Budget Energy and Flogas, supporting sponsors Second Nature, Mattioli Woods, NI Cyber Security Centre and Fortinet, venue partner Belfast City Council and media partner U105.
For AXL, it was our second Festival of Business as AV partner, following the 2025 edition at the same venue.
Planning a large-scale business event, conference or exhibition in Belfast or anywhere in Ireland? Get in touch with Team AXL.
The brief
St George's Market is one of Belfast's best-loved buildings, but it is a market hall, not a conference centre. There is no stage, no house AV and no built-in rigging, and the room is a vast open space under a glass and iron roof with daylight pouring in. Anything the event needed, we had to bring, build and power ourselves.
The brief came down to four things:
Give the main stage real presence in a 4,000 square metre hall, so it read as the centre of the event from anywhere on the floor
Keep screens bright and legible in full daylight
Run a second, fully independent stage alongside the main programme, without the two stages competing for sound
Support the marketplace, registration and exhibitors without adding pressure on the day
Our solution
A 9.5m LED video wall arch
The centrepiece was a 9.5m wide LED video wall arch that framed the main stage like a proscenium. Rather than a single screen sitting behind a lectern, the arch turned the whole stage into a branded set, carrying the Festival of Business identity, NI Chamber branding and the full sponsor line-up across the header, visible from the far end of the market.
Inside the arch, the stage was dressed with black drapes on all sides, lit in deep blue, creating a clean, enclosed stage space that pulled the eye straight to the speaker.
A second LED wall behind the stage
Set back within the arch, a 4m x 2.5m LED video wall at 2.9mm pixel pitch sat on its own 1m riser behind the stage. This carried the live content: speaker welcome cards, presentations and session graphics. Layering the two walls gave the set real depth, and meant the sponsor branding on the arch stayed on screen while the content behind the speaker changed session by session.
Both walls were ballasted with stage weights, powered from a 63A three-phase distribution board we brought and installed, and driven through a Novastar processor. Because LED produces its own light, the content stayed bright and saturated under the market's glass roof, with no need to darken the hall.
Show control and presenter support
Sources were switched live on a PixelHue P10 video switcher, with two MacBook Pro playback machines, a professional clicker system and 50m fibre HDMI runs back to the technical position. A 40" confidence monitor at the front of the stage was concealed behind a black fabric panel, so speakers could see their slides without it spoiling the look of the set.
Stage and staging
The main stage was a 4m x 2m platform on Revostage decking with pleated skirting, finished with a black tempered glass lectern for the host and keynote speakers and set with lounge chairs for the interview sessions.
Sound for a very big, very live room
A market hall full of 1,200 people networking is not a quiet room. The main stage PA used Electro-Voice loudspeakers on stands, controlled from a digital console with a digital stagebox, and positioned to carry speech to the seated audience without spilling across the marketplace. Every stage feed was also sent to our silent disco headphone system, covered below.
The main stage mic package included:
A lectern microphone on the glass lectern
Two Sennheiser wireless handhelds for the host, Q&A and panel sessions
Two Sennheiser wireless headset systems for speakers who wanted to move
A fifth wireless channel held in reserve, with paddle antennas for reliable coverage across the hall
Lighting
Lighting was designed to hold its own against daylight while keeping speakers well lit for photography and video. Profile fixtures provided front key light on the stage, LED uplighters washed the drapes in blue, and LED light-up cubes added detail around the set, programmed and controlled live on an Avolites console.
The second stage
Running alongside the main programme, the second stage had its own complete production: a 3m x 2m LED video wall at 2.9mm pitch on a ground-stacked base, a 3m x 2m stage, a dedicated PA with Electro-Voice speakers and a digital mixer, wireless handheld and headset microphones, a lectern mic, a vision mixer and bi-colour LED panels to light the speakers. With its own processor, power distribution and technician, it ran completely independently of the main stage.
Silent disco headphones for both stages
Two stages running at the same time in one open hall is a real audio challenge. Sound from one stage carries into the other, and both have to compete with the noise of a busy marketplace.
To solve this, we supplied silent disco headphones for delegates, with each stage broadcast on its own channel. Audience members could put on a headset, select the stage they were watching and hear every word clearly, whether they were in the front row or standing at the back of the crowd. It also let delegates switch between stages at the press of a button, and meant we could keep the PA levels lower so the stages did not drown each other out or overwhelm the exhibitors.
Registration and the marketplace
Beyond the stages, we supplied two 65" touchscreen displays with media PCs for delegate registration, plus 55", 65" and 75" display screens on stands for exhibitors.
Delivery and technical support
The full build took place on Tuesday 15 September, with four AXL technicians on site from 9:00am. On show day, four technicians ran both stages from doors at 8.30am through to the close, before the derig from 2pm. Two LED walls on the main stage, a third on the second stage, two PA systems, a multi-channel silent disco headphone system, a full lighting rig, drapes, staging and display screens across the marketplace, all delivered, operated and packed down by our own team.
The result
The Festival of Business 2026 looked and felt like a flagship event from the moment delegates walked in. The LED arch gave the main stage a scale and presence that matched the size of the room, the layered second wall kept content fresh behind every speaker, and the silent disco headphones meant both stages could run side by side, with every delegate hearing their chosen session clearly over the buzz of the marketplace.
It was a pleasure to return as AV partner for one of NI Chamber's biggest days of the year, and to add another major production to a strong year working with the Chamber. We look forward to the next one.
Planning a large-scale business event, conference or exhibition in Belfast or anywhere in Ireland? AXL delivers full-service event production for organisations who care about the details. Get in touch with Team AXL.
Find out more
Relevant case studies - NI Chamber Momentum, Galgorm, 2026, NI Chamber Annual Lunch 2026
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