Which languages should your Expo 2027 page speak?

Less than you might hope. The organisers report about 140 international participants and expect more than four million visits, but they publish no split of visitors by country or language, and neither does anyone else we could find. What they do publish is a partial list of participating countries. That list tells you who will build pavilions and send delegations. It does not tell you who will walk past your stand, so treat it as a hint about business contacts, not as a visitor forecast.

The countries named on the official participants page include Algeria, Japan, Slovakia, South Korea, Monaco, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, China and Türkiye, along with several countries from Africa and the Pacific. The page introduces them with "including", so the full list is longer. If your sales targets include any of these markets, the presence of their pavilions and delegations is a reason to consider their language. If they do not, a pavilion alone is not a reason to translate.

Use three questions for each candidate language. Do we want to meet people who read it? Can someone on our team answer a message in it, every day of the Expo? Can a native speaker check the page before it goes live? If any answer is no, leave the language out for now. A page in a language you cannot answer in starts conversations you cannot finish, which is worse than an English page the visitor reads a little more slowly.

Two or three languages done well beat six done thinly. Each version needs the same stand number, dates and contact details, and each needs updating during the three months, so the cost of a language runs until 15 August 2027, not only until launch.

English first because it is the common language of an international event, and because every other version is translated from it. Serbian matters for a different audience: the people who live in Belgrade and visit the Expo, Serbian companies you may partner with, and local media. Serbia's Constitution puts the Serbian language and the Cyrillic script in official use; Serbian is also written in Latin script, and which script suits a marketing page is a question for a native speaker in your target audience.

Give each language its own address, such as /de/ or /zh/ under your domain, and connect the versions with hreflang links so search engines show each person the version in their language. Google documents the method in Tell Google about localized versions of your page (opens in a new tab). Add an x-default version, usually English, for everyone else.

• One address per language. Do not swap the text in place with a script, because crawlers then see one language only.

• Do not redirect visitors by location or browser language. Google advises against automatic redirects between language versions and against adapting content by IP address.

• Put a visible language switcher on every page, with each language written in its own script.

• Translate the whole page, including buttons, form labels, error messages and the thank-you message, not only the headline.

• Set the page language in the HTML (the lang attribute), so screen readers and browsers handle it correctly.

Our web design and development work sets this up, and our SEO and GEO service checks that each version is indexed. The page itself is covered in the event landing page checklist.

As a first draft, often yes; as the published page, only after a native speaker has checked it. Machine translation is fast and has improved, and for a short page it gives a reviewer a useful starting point. The risks are specific: a product name translated as a common word, a tone that is too casual or too stiff for the market, a date or number in the wrong format, and form messages left in English. A reviewer catches these quickly; a visitor notices them in seconds.

Search engines are not against translation either. Google's spam policies name automated translation as one technique of scaled content abuse, but the target is many pages produced mainly to rank, with little value for users. A reviewed translation of a page that serves real visitors is a different thing. The practical rule is the same for both: publish a language only when someone who reads it has checked it.

We build multilingual pages and sites with separate addresses, hreflang and a switcher, help you decide which languages are worth it, and leave time in the schedule for a native speaker to check each version. See how this fits the rest of your preparation on our Expo 2027 page, read the full plan in digital marketing for Expo exhibitors and the facts in Expo 2027 Belgrade for companies, or tell us your markets on the quote page.