Osaka – – September 15, 2026 -- EFM, an ICAT Company, managed more than 100 shipments and moved an estimated 300 to 400 metric tons of air freight for Saudi Arabia's pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, a logistics operation that began with site surveys in late 2024, months before the pavilion's April 2025 opening.
Pavilion draws 3 million visitors and wins Gold Award for Architecture
The Saudi pavilion attracted more than three million of the 28 million total visitors to Expo 2025 Osaka during its 184-day run, which closed on October 13, 2025, and took the event's Gold Award for Architecture and Landscape.
Gallery program required 50 tonnes of art movements across 12 rotations
EFM's scope covered air, sea and road freight, ATA Carnet formalities, roughly 1,000 square meters of warehousing in Osaka, pick and pack, specialist art handling and on-site installation, extending to a fully fitted coffee shop. The hardest element was a gallery program running 12 artwork rotations over six months, accounting for an estimated 50 tonnes of movements. Teams collected pieces in Saudi Arabia, wrote condition reports, built custom crates, flew works to Osaka and stored them there, with a dedicated art-handling team installing and re-packing collections overnight between rotations.
Limited wide-body lift into Kansai forced freight staging via Riyadh and Dubai
"What made Osaka uniquely challenging was capacity and cadence," said Marcel Meyer, Global VP Events, EFM. With limited wide-body lift into Kansai International Airport and a single daily connection on key routings, EFM staged freight via Riyadh and Dubai, throttled releases to match aircraft space, and mirrored operations across time zones with teams in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Australia. Meyer noted that early ground surveys in Osaka, conducted months before the first shipment moved, were the reason the twelve-rotation gallery program held its dates.
Belgrade's 93-day window will compress logistics further for 130-plus pavilions
Applying the Osaka timeline to Expo 2027 Belgrade, a May 2027 opening means the first survey window falls as early as this winter. The Belgrade site, a 25-hectare footprint in Surčin, is expected to hold 130 or more national pavilions inside a 93-day window, compressing the inbound build and outbound strike at both ends of the event. Every participating country will compete for the same finite lift into the same gateway within the same few weeks.
EFM worked with the Saudi Ministry of Culture and its production partners in Osaka and separately supported pavilion logistics for Brazil, Serbia, Peru and Ecuador. "Our customers operate where failure is not an option, and Osaka showed what's possible when planning starts early and experienced teams are in place to execute from day one," said Jake Blount, EVP of Sales, ICAT Logistics.