Dear Melbourne, We’ve Been Together for 30 Years

We’ve changed the way people experience events, helped move industries forward, welcomed world leaders and cultural icons, pushed what sustainability can look like at scale, and turned food and beverage into something people actually talk about long after the event ends.

Thirty years is a long time to know a city.

Long enough to grow together. Long enough to see each other evolve. Long enough to realise this has never just been about a building on the river. It’s been about our relationship.

We met on Valentine’s Day in 1996.

And you’ve been meeting here ever since.

In our opening year, we were awarded the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture. A strong start, and a sign of things to come.

As Melbourne’s ambition grew, so did ours.

In 2005, we launched the Club Melbourne Ambassador Program, backing the city’s brightest minds to bring the world to the city. Twenty years on, those ambassadors have helped secure hundreds of international events and delivered more than a billion dollars in economic impact for Victoria.

In 2009, together we set a global benchmark, becoming the first convention centre in the world to achieve a 6-Star Green Star environmental rating. Sustainability wasn’t a trend then. It was a commitment. One we’ve continued to build on through EarthCheck Platinum certification and ongoing action to reduce our environmental impact.

In 2018, we expanded to around 70,000 square metres, officially becoming Australia’s largest convention and exhibition centre. More space for ideas. More space for culture. More room for the kinds of events we do best together.

Over the years, you’ve trusted us with moments that shaped global conversations.

The Melbourne Commonwealth Games 2006. The International AIDS Conference in 2014, where the Melbourne Declaration helped influence global HIV response. The world’s first Malaria World Congress in 2018, committing leaders to malaria elimination by 2030. The Eradicate Cancer World Congress. The International Congress of Genetics in 1998 and again in 2018, not once but twice, twenty years apart, brought the Olympics of genetics back to Melbourne and opened science to the public in powerful ways.

PAX arrived from the US in 2004 and quickly became part of Melbourne’s creative fabric. Arnold Schwarzenegger took the stage in 2019. World leaders, artists, performers, gamers and fans filled our spaces, often all at once. We’ve hosted immersive public experiences, large-scale exhibitions and moments that blurred the line between entertainment, art and event.

From Jurassic World: The Exhibition to Melbourne Art Fair , Melbourne Design Fair, Oz Comic-Con and the Good Food & Wine Show, MCEC has welcomed live experiences that bring culture, creativity and community together under one roof.

Very Melbourne. Very us.

When the city needed us in different ways, we shifted with it.

During the pandemic, we hosted Australia’s first indoor drive-in cinema. Our venue became one of Victoria’s largest vaccination hubs, administering more than 280,000 doses. We opened our doors to film productions as production returned to Victoria in a big way, including the $43 million action thriller Blacklight starring Liam Neeson, alongside other major international projects using advanced LED screen technology. Our spaces also became home to guide dog training and essential community services that helped keep the city moving.

Then came the BIG return.

From 2021 to 2025, THE LUME Melbourne transformed our space into an immersive art experience at architectural scale, welcoming more than 850,000 visitors and proving that large-scale creativity belongs right here. BBC Earth Experience followed, with MCEC as the only place in Asia-Pacific audiences could experience it. Alongside it came KAGAMI as part of Asia Topa, Skyline Melbourne set up outside our doors in, family-focused festivals, and shared public moments that brought people back together.

At the end of 2025, with our finger firmly on the pulse of what Melbourne loves, we welcomed the Asia-Pacific debut of the Formula 1 Exhibition to MCEC, transforming our spaces into ahigh-energy motorsport experience that pulled fans right into the action.

Through it all, our community has always come first. For more than a decade , we’ve opened our doors to the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal, raising millions, baking thousands of hot cross buns, and gathering Melbourne around kindness, care and collective good.

It’s the Feeling

Last year alone, we welcomed hundreds of events, hundreds of thousands of delegates, and generated hundreds of millions in economic impact for Victoria. But numbers have never been the point. The point is the feeling. The buzz as Melbourne shows up. The hum of voices spilling through the foyer. The lights going down, the room leaning in. The applause that lingers, and the conversations that start here and ripple out into the city, the state, the world.

So, this is our love letter to you, Melbourne, our dear friend of 30 years.

Thank you for meeting here.

For trusting us with your biggest ideas and your hardest moments.

For calling us many names and making them all ours.

For filling our spaces with curiosity, culture and heart.

Thirty years in, and we’re still excited. Still curious. Still ready for what’s next.

Always yours,

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre