How Austin’s Convention Center Expansion Will Flex the Texas Capital’s Meetings Muscles

A longtime meetings favorite due to its world-class live music scene and thriving technology industry, Austin is taking a giant leap forward with a massive convention center expansion that will rewrite the book on the Texas capital’s conventions offering.

Also in the works is a $4 billion expansion of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport that will add more than 20 gates and result in the destination providing the third-most airlift in the state by the end of 2030.

“There are so many great things afoot here right now that are going to change the city dramatically in the next five years—the whole destination that we’re selling is going to be completely different,” said Tom Noonan, president and CEO of Visit Austin. “Austin’s always been a hot destination. We’re going to be that next hot destination again.”

[Related: These Group Offsites and Activities Can Only Be Experienced in Austin, Texas]

Noonan also mentioned the expansion of the University of Texas football stadium, a new soccer stadium and basketball arena, and various public infrastructure projects that will reshape an already very desirable destination into one of the hottest in the U.S. after the convention center reopens at the end of 2028.

He added that Austin’s downtown hotel offering has also grown exponentially, with as many as 17,000 rooms available  following the  convention center expansion, the result of a decade of hotel additions in the previously rooms-challenged destination.

“Hotel rooms is not our need,” he joked.

Austin Convention Center Expansion Details

Noonan said the $1.6 billion Austin Convention Center expansion is on track to be completed in December 2028 and welcome its first piece of business—the city’s massive South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, which can draw upwards of 80,000 attendees—in March 2029.

“We’ve already started tearing down the building and I think we’re a week ahead already,” Noonan said during a mid-May interview, adding that another major factor that bodes well for on-time completion was the decision to buy the project’s steel package early,  a cost-saving measure that seems all the more savvy in the current era of tariff threats.

The project is also recycling a lot of the old building’s cement and steel to use in the new facility, resulting in what is expected to be the first Zero Carbon Certified Convention Center in the world.
Other sustainability accolades will include LEED Gold Certification, with 100% of its electrical power supplied by wind turbines as part of Austin Energy’s GreenChoice program, as well as diverting 50% of  the center’s waste away from landfills through its recycling, reuse and composting program.

The facility has also achieved Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) STAR certification for its stringent cleaning, disinfection and infectious disease prevention protocols.

The finished product will culminate in the 35th largest convention center in the U.S.—up from its current ranking of 61st—span six blocks and boast the following superlatives, according to the facility:

• Total rentable space of 620,000 square feet, up from the current 365,000
• Four exhibit halls with 336,000 square feet of column-free space
• Four ballrooms totaling 47,000 square feet of space
• 28 loading docks
• $17.7 million in art
• 70,000 square feet of outdoor space

Noonan particularly likes the way the new convention center will leverage the unique personality of the destination in its design.

“The ballroom has kind of a Texas dance hall theme to it—you won’t see another ballroom like it anywhere in our industry—so there’s the music call-out to it,” he said. “And then the middle section is where the swing hall and all the breakout rooms are—it’s really heralding our technology sector here. And then if you look at the other side, the third pad, that’s the outdoor venue­, so that’s the festival side of Austin’s economy—South by Southwest, the Austin City Limits (Music Festival) and all those things. So, it really talks about our music scene, our tech scene and our festival scene here in Austin.”

[Related: 6 Storied Texas Music Venues for Special Events]

Austin’s recent triumph of having 44 of its restaurants included in the inaugural Michelin Guide Texas—the most of any in the state—will certainly play large in both current and future promotion and in the convention center.

“Culinary is always going to be a big part of what we’re doing, so we’re going to tell that culinary story more than we’ve had in the past, during the closure years as well as when it reopens,” Noonan said, noting the revitalization of Sixth Street, a six-block stretch of bars and restaurants near the convention center. “You have all these really great entertainment districts within walking distance that are really close to the convention center, so it’s really just the right time to build this building in all these different neighborhoods.”

How an Offline Convention Center Will Impact Meetings

Knowing the Austin Convention Center will be offline until 2029, Noonan said the destination has taken a number of proactive steps, including creating a Tourism Public Improvement District (TPID) to make sure meetings held before its completion will enjoy their stay. In fact, upcoming Austin meetings may get a unique experience that leverages some of the city’s existing charm.

“We’re booking more in-house business and we’re going to go after what we’re calling ‘many-wides’ versus citywides,” Noonan offered. “Why not get a piece of business that spills into three or four hotels and doesn’t have to use the convention center, and incentivize groups to use that opportunity? There’s additional sports bookings that are going to come to Austin in all the new sports venues we have, and we’re going to be encouraging that as well…You can come to Austin and you can do Austin differently, and we’re going to give you a new experience you’ve never had before.”

Noonan added that groups that desire a larger space can utilize venues such as downtown’s turn-of-the-century Brazos Hall or Austin City Limits’ facilities for offsite gatherings that leverage the city’s phenomenal music scene. 

SXSW has bought into the concept and is returning every year before the convention center reopens, using hotels and other spaces in a campus-style effort with shuttle buses. Destinations International also used three different hotels and a museum during its February 2025 Marketing & Communications Summit.

Austin's Natural Lures

Besides all of the concrete and steel, attendees immersed in the downtown facilities will also enjoy an environment inspired and surrounded by nature.

Next door to the convention center, Palm Park is set to open before the facility in 2026. Part of the Waterloo Greenway project, which runs from the University of Texas (UT) campus to the Waterloo Amphitheater, the new greenspace will allow attendees to move around without having to cross streets.

“You can literally walk out of the convention center, get on the trail, go all the way down to Rainey Street [historic entertainment district] and do all that, or go all the way up to UT,” Noonan said. “So, we’re taking a convention center and we are literally dropping in a park setting, even though it’s got its own 70,000 square feet of outdoor space.”

A New Competitive Set

While Austin’s core destination competitors have always been its in-state rivals such as Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, the new convention center will allow it to  keep up with key out-of-state competitors that are also undergoing major convention facility upgrades: Nashville and New Orleans.

“We’ve always competed with Nashville, and we’ll continue to do so and actually have a bigger building. And we can compete with New Orleans—we’ll continue to do that and we’ll be more competitive there,” Noonan said, adding that the new facility will be close in size to another major competitor, Denver. 

“There are just a lot of shows that just couldn’t meet here that are already reaching out to say, ‘We want to be in your new building,’” he added, noting larger medical association shows that tend to book further out will now be a target. “So, it’s going to give us the opportunity to get some bigger shows we’ve never had before, plus the opportunity to do overlapping shows, so that’s going to make us more competitive, for sure.” 

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