About BlachReport

BlachReport

BlachReport is the German-language business-to-business publication for event marketing, promotions, and sponsoring, published by AktivMedia GmbH in Uetze-Dedenhausen near Hanover. In its 28th volume in 2026, it appears 26 times a year — three of them as double issues — making it the event industry's highest-frequency trade medium. The magazine informs the MICE business — meetings, trade fairs, incentives, congresses, events — with the news, the background, and the rankings that structure the industry: the annual Event-Kreativranking (22nd edition in 2026) and the readers' vote for the favorite players of the German event industry. Under editor-in-chief Peter Blach, the title combines the print fortnightly with the daily-updated portal blachreport.de and the sister portal StageReport for the event-production technology.

Overview

The event industry is the live-communication economy: the agencies conceiving the brand experiences, the caterers feeding the arenas, the locations hosting the congresses, and the technicians producing the shows. BlachReport addresses this industry's professionals with the B2B publication's program: the event marketing, the promotions, and the sponsoring — the news of the agency business, the location and catering markets, and the live-marketing trends. The 26-issue frequency — the fortnightly rhythm with three double issues — makes the print title the industry's continuous companion: the news in print, the background in the features, and the rankings as the industry's scoreboard.

The readership is the event industry's professional core: the agency managers, the corporate event planners, the location and catering operators, and the suppliers. The subscription costs 93 euros a year for the digital subscription and 290 euros for the print subscription (plus VAT, including shipping). The Uetze-Dedenhausen publishing location tells the German trade-press story: the specialist publisher thriving far from the media metropolises — the small town near Hanover housing the event industry's leading B2B publication. The AktivMedia model — the lean team of the editor-in-chief, three editors, the external advertising marketer, the production freelancer, and the local printer — is the efficient specialist-publishing machine: the low overhead funding the 26-issue frequency that the metropolitan publishers could not sustain. The sister portal StageReport — the event economy, the media technology, the event production — extends the brand from the marketing into the production: the MICE business and the Veranstaltungswirtschaft under the one Uetze roof. The fortnightly rhythm — the industry's fastest print cycle — is the competitive moat: no other German event publication appears as often. The mediaboard.one media kiosk bundles the group's digital offerings.

History

BlachReport's 28th volume in 2026 dates the founding to the late 1990s — the event-marketing boom years when live communication became the marketing mix's growth discipline. The publisher AktivMedia GmbH — Zum Bahnhof 10, 31311 Uetze-Dedenhausen — built the title as the namesake editor Peter Blach's B2B publication: the fortnightly for the event industry, published from the small town near Hanover with the national industry's reach. The editor-in-chief Peter Blach leads the editorial team of Gabriele Stolte, Elke Bartels, and Marco Raupach; the advertising marketing is handled by Medienmarketing Sanders (Ulf-Gundo Sanders); the production by Sandra Fink; the printing by Druckpunkt Langer in Uetze.

The title's development tracked the event industry's cycles: the growth years, the 2008 crisis, the digitalization, and the pandemic — the events cancelled, then returning as the live encounter proved irreplaceable. The Event-Kreativranking deserves its institutional portrait. The German event creativity ranking — 22nd edition in 2026 — honors the special achievements in live marketing and live communication through the systematic evaluation of the event-specific categories of national and international competitions: the agencies' award-winning work aggregated into the industry's creative scoreboard. The 2026 edition's climbers — like the Erlangen creative agency SCHACHZUG jumping eight places to third on the strength of its 13 MUSE Creative Awards from the USA — show the ranking's mechanics: the international competition successes newly flowing into the evaluation. For the agencies, the ranking is the reputation currency: the new-business argument, the recruitment magnet, and the peer recognition. For BlachReport, it is the brand's flagship product: the annual moment when the whole live-communication industry looks at the publisher from Uetze-Dedenhausen. The online portals — BlachReport for the MICE news, StageReport for the production technology — extended the fortnightly into the daily.

Coverage and Content

The fortnightly print issues cover the event industry's agenda. The agency coverage treats the live-marketing business: the agency news, the creative work, the awards, and the rankings — the Event-Kreativranking as the industry's creative scoreboard. The location coverage addresses the venues: the congress centers, the arenas, the special locations — and the destination rankings, with Cologne's repeated top position. The catering coverage follows the event gastronomy: the arena caterers like Aramark, the catering companies, and the event-catering trends — from the DFB-Pokalfinale to the Oktoberfest Seoul. The supplier coverage treats the event equipment: the furniture, the decoration, and the technology.

The portal's daily news — on blachreport.de, updated with high topicality — carries the current developments between the print issues: the caterer contracts, the agency personnel, the location openings, and the event announcements. The StageReport portal covers the production side: the event economy, the media technology, and the event production. The readers' vote — the annual ballot for the favorite players of the German event industry — is the brand's community institution. The readers choose their favorites among the industry's actors: the event destinations, the locations, the caterers, and the decorators. Cologne's repeated triumph — the cathedral city's event industry topping the destination ranking, with the Deutsches Sport & Olympia Museum as the favorite location, the Seepavillon, the Schokoladenfabrik, the Flora, and the XPost among the top venues, and the Lemonpie, Kaiserschote, and Kirberg caterers among the favorites — shows the vote's marketing power: the winners advertise the readers' love, the city markets its event destination. The vote engages the whole industry in the annual campaign: the locations mobilizing their clients, the caterers their guests — the BlachReport brand at the center of the industry's self-celebration.

Organization and Ownership

BlachReport is published by AktivMedia GmbH, Zum Bahnhof 10, 31311 Uetze-Dedenhausen (near Hanover). The editor-in-chief is Peter Blach; the editorial team: Gabriele Stolte, Elke Bartels, and Marco Raupach. The advertising marketing: Medienmarketing Sanders (Ulf-Gundo Sanders); the production: Sandra Fink; the printing: Druckpunkt Langer, Uetze. The ISSN is 1611-8308.

Commercially, the publication follows the B2B model: subscriptions from the event industry's professionals — 93 euros digital, 290 euros print per year — and advertising from the industry's suppliers: the locations, the caterers, the agencies, and the equipment providers. The online portals — BlachReport and StageReport — offer the banner and combination advertising; the mediaboard.one kiosk bundles the digital reach. The rankings — the Kreativranking and the readers' vote — generate the industry attention that sustains the brand.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is blachreport.de — "BlachReport | Live-Kommunikation | Live-Marketing | Live-Events" — the daily-updated portal carrying the MICE news with high topicality: the catering contracts, the agency news, and the event announcements. The StageReport portal (stagereport.de) covers the event economy, the media technology, and the event production. The mediaboard.one media kiosk presents the group's digital offerings.

The digital strategy follows the B2B publication's logic: the print fortnightly for the curated industry reading — 26 issues a year — the portals for the daily news, and the rankings for the community engagement. As the event industry's fortnightly — from the late-1990s founding through the pandemic to the 28th volume — BlachReport operates as the live-communication industry's medium: the news, the rankings, and the background — fortnightly in print, daily on blachreport.de and stagereport.de.