Tara Dougal Welcomes You to CPHI Frankfurt 2025

CPHI Frankfurt, which will be held Oct. 28–30, 2025, is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s largest events. This year more than 62,000 professionals from the bio/pharmaceutical industry are expected to attend as the conference celebrates its 36th year. The three-day event will feature six content theatres, more than 2000 exhibitors, and expanded content and exhibitor zones that reflect diversification in the industry, such as bioproduction, finished dosage formulation, drug delivery, and packaging, in addition to the usual coverage of APIs (1). To learn more about what can be expected at this year’s event, Pharmaceutical Technology® spoke with Tara Dougal, Event Director for Pharma at Informa Markets.

PharmTech: Can you please tell us about yourself?

Dougal (Informa): My name is Tara Dougal. I'm the event director for pharma at Informa Markets, and I'm responsible for the CPHI Europe event, which is coming up very soon at the end of October. So, we'll be hosting the show this year in the lovely city of Frankfurt from the 28th to the 30th of October. This year is actually going to be my 10th CPHI. I joined Informa, or UBM, as it was then, 10 years ago. I was originally the content director, looking after all of our content and our conferences that you find on site. And as of January this year, I moved into the event director role, which is really exciting new opportunity for me, and has given me the chance to lead one of the biggest farmer events globally. So yeah, very excited for the upcoming edition of the show.

PharmTech: What can you tell us about this year's CPHI Frankfurt? What's new this year, and are you seeing any specific trends?

Dougal (Informa): For this year's CPHI, it's going to be a bigger addition than ever before. We're looking forward to welcoming 62,000 attendees from over 166 different countries worldwide, and 2400

exhibitors. So, it's going to be the biggest edition of CPHI Europe as yet. What's new for this year? So, beyond the show floor, getting bigger and better, we have six content theaters this year covering the entire supply chain, so giving you a huge opportunity to update your knowledge, hear from thought leaders, really on all the market trends through from ingredients and formulation all the way to packaging and drug delivery. So, I'd really advise anyone coming to the show to check out the agenda and already start bookmarking the sessions.

If you'd like to join pre-show, we also have a brand new leadership summit for this year. This is open to our leader pass holders and above. This is going to be really, really interesting session held on the morning of the first day of the show, the 28th of October, bringing together C-suite speakers from a number of Big Pharma countries to really talk about the big picture outlook for pharma and to touch on some of the geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges and opportunities that we've seen in the market this year. So, really excited for all of that.

Of course, we have our awards ceremony on the first night of the show as well the CPHI celebration. This is a really, really exciting evening where we give out trophies across 14 different categories. And it's also an amazing opportunity for networking and connecting on site, whether you're nominated for the awards or not. [I’m] really looking forward to seeing who takes home the trophies this year.

PharmTech: What should attendees be taking away from the event this year?

Dougal (Informa): I think one of the major takeaways this year is really something that's always been at the heart of CPHI, and that's the ability to partner across the supply chain. I think the strength of the show has always been uniting the pharma community and really uniting the end-to-end supply chain from across the globe. And I think in the past year, we've seen a lot of challenges in pharma, particularly on the other side of the pond, around potential tariffs, and I really think that that's made partnering and being able to get in front of your customers and your clients and your suppliers more important than ever before, to renew those relationships, but also potentially to find and source new partners.

I hope that anybody coming to the show this year will go home with a sense of meeting great people, connecting with existing partners, but just renewing those relationships. I think CPHI is that very, very important annual touch point where we can really bring the entire community together. I would be very happy if I felt that people were going home feeling that they'd achieved that.

PharmTech: What makes Frankfurt an ideal city to host?

Dougal (Informa): It's always nice to be in Frankfurt. You know, Frankfurt has been home to CPHI many times over the years. And I think a few of the reasons for that are that one, it's a very well-located hub. As I mentioned. We do have attendees and exhibitors coming from all over the world, more than 166 different countries. Logistically, it's very important to us to have somewhere that is easy to connect to, and has good transport links, and that's definitely something that Frankfurt delivers on.

We also have a fantastic partner in the Frankfurt Messe. You know, we've had a long-standing relationship over the years, and the Messe really gives us great facilities, great experience, and also the room to grow as the show has grown significantly, since the very first edition, which was in Frankfurt, 36 years ago. And also, I think it's very important to mention that Germany has a thriving life sciences industry, and Frankfurt is home to many biotechs and pharma companies. So, it's really nice to be able to host the show in such a strategic location.

PharmTech: And do you have any advice for attendees this year?

Dougal (Informa): My advice to anybody coming to CPHI, if you are a veteran or you're a first timer, I would suggest just planning ahead. It's a huge show. You're going to be doing a lot of walking over three days, so bring comfortable footwear. Make sure you plan your schedule way in advance. And I would really recommend everyone taking a look at a lot of the activities that we have beyond the show floor … the content, the networking opportunities, such as the awards, CPHI celebration that I mentioned, and our happy hours that we have on days one and two. These are open to anybody attending the show. They're free to attend. So, make sure you join and you take part in what are going to be great networking opportunities. There's so much happening at the event, and you can really just scrape the surface if you don't plan ahead. Our event app is a really, really great tool for that. You have the full agenda on there. You can already have the exhibitor list, and you can start reaching out to prospective meetings already through the app, getting a bit of a head start at your time the show.

Watch the video version of this interview here.