Five Takeaways From Opening Day at ADEX 2026

ADEX 2026 opened in Baku on September 30 with more exhibitors, more pavilions and a broader cast of countries than any edition before it. A first day on the floor, and in the organizers’ announcements, points to five themes that will shape the rest of the week and the region’s defense market beyond it.

The West finally showed up

Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, SIG Sauer, Rheinmetall, Rohde & Schwarz and BAE Systems are all exhibiting at ADEX for the first time, and Northrop Grumman sponsored the show as Country Partner. For a exhibition whose supplier base was long Turkish, Russian and Israeli, the arrival of US and Western European primes is the single biggest change of the 2026 edition. Our report on the American debut looks at why now.

Turkiye is the incumbent to beat

More than 50 Turkish companies make Turkiye the largest foreign presence, with Roketsan holding the General Sponsorship. The newcomers are competing on ground Turkish industry has cultivated since before the 2020 war, from drones already in Azerbaijani service to vehicles shown on the floor. The scale of that footprint is detailed in our Turkish pavilion report.

The host wants to sell, not just buy

Pavilion 4, given over entirely to Azerbaijan’s national exposition, is the show’s declaration that Baku intends to export. More than 1,000 military products are now made domestically, the ministry says, and a 8.7 billion manat security budget is funding the push. The distance between that ambition and an actual export order book is the subject of our analysis.

Unmanned systems are the common language

From Turkish and Azerbaijani drones to US counter-drone firms among the American first-timers, unmanned and counter-unmanned systems recur across the halls in a way no other category does. The organizers list unmanned systems, electronic warfare and C4ISR among the show’s core themes, and the 2020 Karabakh war, fought partly over this very market’s products, remains the reference point every exhibitor cites. What has changed since the last edition is the weight of the counter-drone side: after three years in which cheap drones have shaped wars from Ukraine to the Middle East, the buyers in Baku are asking about defenses as often as strike systems, a shift mirrored in programs worldwide from the US Army’s ramjet interceptor work to the Pentagon’s base-defense laser trials.

Baku as neutral ground

Fifty-nine official delegations from 39 countries attended the opening day, and the exhibitor list spans NATO members, Russia, Ukraine, China, Gulf states and Central Asia. Few venues put that mix in one building. Azerbaijan’s pitch, as host, is exactly that convening power, and the bilateral meetings happening off the floor may matter as much as the stands. It is the same convening role Baku has been playing politically since the Armenia peace process gathered pace, now translated into commercial terms: a place where a Central Asian defense minister can meet American, Turkish and Chinese suppliers in a single afternoon. The full opening picture is in our day-one report, and the country-by-country breakdown is here.

ADEX 2026 runs through October 2. Contract announcements, if they come, tend to land on days two and three.