201701 / 05
Zelda Club opens
Vilanova i la Geltrú. The school behind the vision begins without anyone realising it.
Vol. I · 2027 EditionRotterdam — 51°53′N 4°29′E€ — Free online edition
Dossier / The founding years
Our
Story.
A small crew. Seven years in Catalonia. One conviction that the Netherlands deserves the cannabis stage it has been missing for decades. This is how CannaNova was conceived — and why Rotterdam Ahoy.
Ahoy / ZuidpleinFig. 01
Founded
2025
Edition I
10–12 Sep 2027
Ambition
15,000 visitors
Venue
Rotterdam Ahoy
Knowledge creates progress◆Rotterdam Ahoy · 10–12 September 2027◆Cannabis Expo Netherlands◆Our Story — Edition I◆
Knowledge creates progress◆Rotterdam Ahoy · 10–12 September 2027◆Cannabis Expo Netherlands◆Our Story — Edition I◆
§ Prelude
The idea for CannaNova was not born in a boardroom. It was born at a table in Catalonia, late in the evening, during a conversation that went on too long to still be polite. Why, we asked each other, does the country that once taught the world how to handle cannabis have no stage where science, industry and government speak on equal footing?
The question lingered. It travelled back to the Netherlands with us. It became a plan. Today it is an expo.
Seven years behind the same club door.
Zelda Club opened every morning at eleven. Small, discreet, with a cast-iron door that made you think of a bookshop. Guests were Catalans, French, Germans, occasionally an American sent by a friend. Spanish was spoken, sometimes Dutch, and there was constant learning.
For seven years one of CannaNova's founders worked here, first as staff and later as the person in charge. What began as a job became an education — in regulation, in responsibility, in quality control, in the patience it takes to convince authorities without irritating them.
The club was not a party. It was a laboratory. For conversations with growers from Galicia, pharmacists from Barcelona, Spannabis visitors decompressing after the fair. Everything CannaNova now treats as obvious — professionalism, hospitality, integrity — was learned there.
And every landing at Schiphol made the contrast sharper. The Netherlands — the country that invented the coffeeshop — had no venue where this sector presented itself professionally. No expo. No congress. No forum.
"
"
“You don't professionalise a sector with a certificate. You professionalise it by putting people in the same room who normally avoid each other.”
— Notebook, flight BCN → AMS, November 2024
Timeline
From club door to arena floor.
Four moments that turned "good idea" into "Edition I at Ahoy".
→ drag to read further
Portrait
Xavier Kilian.
Co-Founder — the outsider who stayed.
Q.
You didn't come from the cannabis sector. Why CannaNova, then?
"Precisely for that reason. I was looking at an industry from the outside that had a great deal to say and surprisingly few places to say it. As an entrepreneur you recognise that gap instantly. I was fascinated by the medical side, by the science, by the international tension around it — and the need for a neutral platform was obvious."
Q.
What do you want Edition I to achieve?
"That a mayor, a professor of pharmacology, a grower from Groningen and an investor from Zürich end up on the same carpet and think: this should have existed years ago. That's all I need. Everything else follows."
"CannaNova is not an event. It's infrastructure for a sector coming of age."
Manifesto
Eight
promises.
Not bullet points on a wall. These eight lines decide whom we invite, what we programme and which sponsorships we decline.
- 01
Education
Every panel, every keynote, every stand has a teachable core. Visitors leave smarter than they arrived — or they are in the wrong place.
- 02
Innovation
We give a stage to science and technology that actually moves the sector forward. Trends without evidence belong elsewhere.
- 03
Professionalisation
Hospitality, badges, sound, catering — everything at the level of Europe's leading business fairs. Without compromise.
- 04
International Cooperation
Dutch identity, European scale. We bring delegations from Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Czechia and Switzerland to Rotterdam.
- 05
Responsible Entrepreneurship
Business with regard for health, regulation and social impact. Those looking for loopholes are not welcome.
- 06
Knowledge Sharing
Research from Erasmus MC and Utrecht University shares the stage with product launches. Neither works without the other.
- 07
Networking
Meetings are orchestrated, not left to chance. Matchmaking on purpose, not on business card.
- 08
Sustainable Growth
We build for 2037, not for 2027. Everything we put up this year must still stand next year.
2027 → 2037
The ten-year plot.
We are building for a decade. Under that ceiling sit six ambitions that all need each other. None of them survives alone.
N° 01
The largest cannabis expo in the Netherlands
An annual fixture at Rotterdam Ahoy — familiar, dependable, growing.
N° 02
International meeting place
European delegations find their Dutch counterpart here.
N° 03
Stage for innovation
Product launches and breakthroughs make their public debut here.
N° 04
Bridge between industry, science & policy
Neutral ground. Every conversation is possible, none required.
N° 05
Incentive for responsible business
Quality, ethics and compliance are visibly rewarded.
N° 06
Growing every year
Edition after edition, without losing depth. Volume without dilution.
Essay / Why CannaNova exists
4 min read
Knowledge is the only raw material that grows when you give it away.
The cannabis sector stands at a turning point that rarely repeats itself. Germany has regulated. Belgium is moving. Czechia is preparing. Portugal exports. And the Netherlands — the country that taught the world that tolerated is not the same as ignored — suddenly finds itself on the sidelines of its own legacy.
At such moments dialogue is not a luxury. It's a precondition. Companies cannot function without policy. Policy cannot function without science. And science needs industry to turn research into practice. All of these parties already exist. They simply don't speak often enough.
CannaNova is built to solve that problem physically. One roof, three days, everyone present. Not because an expo is the answer to everything, but because meetings without a reason don't happen.
Innovation rarely happens in isolation. It happens when a pharmacologist ends up next to a grower during a dinner. When a councillor hears a keynote that changes her ordinance. When an investor discovers a Rotterdam start-up among thousands of visitors.
Our job is to orchestrate that coincidence — without staging it. An expo that feels both meticulous and spontaneous. That's the difficulty we've set for ourselves.
Index / Our values
Eight principles, no slogans.
Read like a table of contents — every line is a daily choice.
01
Integrity
Promises are kept, even when it's uncomfortable. Sponsorship does not buy a stage.
02
Transparency
Programme, partners and decision-making are visible and reviewable.
03
Education
Every programme item has a teachable core — otherwise it isn't there.
04
Innovation
New is not a goal in itself. Better is. We prefer evidence to promise.
05
Collaboration
Government, healthcare, science and industry carry equal weight.
06
Professionalism
Every operational decision is measured against the best Ahoy has ever hosted.
07
Responsibility
We take positions in public debates, even when silence would be more comfortable.
08
International Ambition
Dutch at heart, European in scale — from Edition I onward.
Backstage
A small crew with a large agenda.
CannaNova is carried by a compact team of organisers, programmers and curators. Based in Rotterdam, with partners in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Barcelona and Berlin.
We promise nothing we can't deliver. And we deliver nothing we're not proud of.
- 07
- Core team
- 120+
- Partners in network
- 4
- Countries at the table
- 1
- Unavoidable ambition
Closing word — Looking Forward
This is
only chapter one.
CannaNova is not an institution yet. Not yet. Edition I is a promise we redeem on 12 September 2027 at 20:00, when the last visitor leaves Ahoy and the team is finally quiet.
Everything after that — Edition II, Edition V, Edition X — depends on who steps in now. Exhibitors who claim the front row. Partners who help build the foundation. Visitors who fill the room with conversations that would otherwise never have happened.
If you have read this far, you are probably one of those people.
01 · For companies
Become Exhibitor
Reserve a stand for Edition I. Capacity is limited.
Continue→
02 · For institutional parties
Become Partner
Help build the foundation — media, science or government.
Continue→
03 · For all questions
Get in Touch
A direct conversation with the organising team in Rotterdam.
Continue→
— End of dossier · Rotterdam, 2026 —