About Baselworld 

Baselworld is the most important experience platform for the global watchmaking, jewellery, gemstone and related industries. Building on a tradition started over a century ago, Baselworld has become the annual must-attend trade show where discerning buyers, influential media and savvy connoisseurs unite as a community to discover and experience new trends and innovations showcased by top brands first-hand and share these globally. Now under new management of Michel Loris-Melikoff and his team, Baselworld is poised to become a global event brand that is building a new year-round dynamic - digitally, socially, experientially - for these industries around the world.
Picture of the Baselworld Corridors in 2017

Facts

 Six days.
82,000 visitors.
Over 3,500 journalists.
One show: Baselworld.

Get to know Managing Director Michel Loris-Melikoff and his ideas about the future of Baselworld
Show Management

What’s your guess: how many people work behind the scenes at a show like Baselworld? Five? Fifty? Five hundred?
Team

Impressions

Pictures of Journalists and medias at a party during Baselworld 2015
Picture of the Stand of Rolex in Hall 1.0 taken during Baselworld 2013

Baselworld celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. The show was born in 1917 as part of the Basel Mustermesse (muba) with 29 Swiss watch and jewellery brands. It took place independently of muba for the first time in 1984 and it has been called “Baselworld – The World Watch and Jewellery Show” since 2003. You can find out more about the show’s history here.
Michel Loris-Melikoff CEO of Baselworld

Michel Loris-Melikoff

Show Management

Michel Loris-Melikoff has been Managing Director of Baselworld since July 2018. He is an event professional who, among his other activities, served for several years as president of the Zurich Street Parade and afterwards set up and managed his own international event agency. He became Managing Director of the St. Jakobshalle in Basel in 2010. He joined the MCH Group in 2014 as Director of Third-Party Events and became Managing Director of MCH Beaulieu Lausanne SA in 2015.

Get to know him and his ideas about the future of Baselworld in the video series “One minute with ...”.

Team

What’s your guess: how many people work behind the scenes at a show like Baselworld? Five? Fifty? Five hundred? The truth is: we really can’t give you an exact number. Because in addition to our permanent Baselworld team, a large number of stand constructors, architects, security and cleaning staff, hostesses and couriers, flower couriers and chauffeurs, programmers and photographers, cutters and designers, cooks and speechwriters, and many other people contribute toward ensuring that Baselworld is a high-class and unique event year after year. Each of these individuals makes their own personal contribution. Each cogwheel meshes with its neighbour.

The Messeturm in the heart of Basel is where all the threads come together. This is the command centre from which the Baselworld team choreographs all the large and small components that combine to form the big picture: from the Commercial team, which looks after all the exhibitors’ needs, to the new Hospitality team, which assures that exhibitors and visitors feel welcome and at ease from the moment of their arrival in Basel and successfully negotiates with partner hotels and restaurants; and from the Logistics team, which must know and plan everything that takes place in the exhibition halls and how the exhibits and the exhibition stands get into and out of those halls, through the Event team, which plans and organizes every detail of all events from the opening press conference to the final cocktail, to the Communication and Marketing team, which assists the numerous journalists from around the globe and assures a consistent image for Baselworld.

They all share one goal: to make Baselworld a success for exhibitors and visitors alike.