Oman Restaurant & F&B Events Calendar 2026–2027: Trade Shows, Expos and Festivals Every Restaurant Owner Should Track

If you own, operate, or invest in a restaurant, café, or hotel F&B outlet in Oman, your calendar should have more on it than supplier meetings and staff rotas. Oman's food and hospitality events — from large-scale trade expos to seasonal tourism festivals — are where sourcing deals get signed, franchise agreements get discussed, and new restaurant technology gets tested before purchase.

Below is a fully updated, Oman-specific F&B and restaurant events calendar for 2026–2027, including two trade shows most guides don't mention: a dedicated franchise expo for restaurant investors, and the two seasonal festivals that quietly drive the biggest revenue spikes of the year for F&B operators.

Quick-Reference: Oman F&B and Restaurant Trade Show Calendar

HORECA Oman: Oman's Largest Hospitality and Foodservice Trade Show

HORECA (Hotels, Restaurants, Cafés) Oman is the country's biggest annual gathering dedicated specifically to foodservice and hospitality operations, held at the Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre (OCEC) in Muscat. Its most recent edition ran from 14 to 16 September 2026, bringing together more than 200 exhibitors showcasing over 1,500 local and international brands across more than 5,500 square metres, with over 8,000 buyers and trade visitors expected.

Why HORECA Oman Matters for Restaurant Owners

HORECA leans heavily into operations — live cooking demonstrations, the Salon Culinaire, and barista/latte-art competitions that are genuinely useful for benchmarking your kitchen and front-of-house staff against regional standards. It's also where most restaurant technology vendors, including POS, kitchen display systems (KDS), and inventory software, set up demo booths side by side.

What to Do at HORECA Oman as a Restaurant Owner

Don't just walk the floor — bring your actual pain points. If your current system can't handle split billing during rush hour, can't sync inventory across two branches, or breaks down without the internet, write those questions down before you go. This is exactly the kind of side-by-side comparison where a modern platform like Posbytz restaurant POS and ERP stands out, since it's built for multi-outlet Oman operations with offline billing, real-time stock sync, and Arabic-English bilingual receipts out of the box.

Food & Hospitality Oman (FHO) / Oman AgroFood: Oman's Premier B2B Food Sourcing Event

FHO merged with Oman AgroFood to form the Sultanate's largest agriculture-to-hospitality sourcing platform. The 8th edition, backed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries Wealth and Water Resources, takes place from 1–3 December 2026 at the Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre, positioned as Oman's leading B2B platform for the agri-food sector. It's explicitly aligned with Oman Vision 2040 goals around food security, economic diversification, and sustainable agrifood development, which means government buyers, investment agencies, and large distributors treat it as a priority event — not just a trade fair.

Why FHO and Oman AgroFood Matter for Restaurant Owners

This is where you meet the people who actually control your supply chain — seafood producers, meat and poultry suppliers, packaging vendors, and industrial kitchen fit-out companies. If you're opening a second location or renegotiating supplier contracts for next year, this is the single best three days to do it in person.

What to Do at FHO and Oman AgroFood as a Restaurant Owner

Every new supplier relationship you sign here creates a new line item to track — pricing, reorder points, expiry dates, wastage. Restaurants that walk away from FHO with five new vendor deals and still manage stock on spreadsheets usually end up with mismatched invoices by month two. A connected ERP layer (this is a core part of what Posbytz handles) turns each new supplier into an automated purchase-order and stock-in workflow instead of manual reconciliation.

The Apex Global Franchise Expo Muscat: Where Restaurant Investors Find Their Next Brand

This is the event most Oman F&B calendars miss. The Apex Global Franchise Expo takes place at the Kempinski Hotel Muscat from 26–30 March 2027, positioned as an international meeting point connecting franchise givers, franchise takers, investors, and consultants across a network spanning more than 90 countries, with services including business matchmaking, franchise certification, and investor connections.

Why the Apex Global Franchise Expo Matters for Restaurant Investors

Franchising is an active growth lever in Oman right now — the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry's national Franchise Programme is in its fifth edition, aiming to develop 26 Omani brands and build connections with over 150 international franchisors and more than 220 investors across 22 countries. If you're an investor scouting a proven F&B concept to bring into Oman, or an owner-operator with a strong local brand ready to franchise out to Sur, Nizwa, or Salalah, this expo is where those deals get initiated.

What to Do at the Apex Global Franchise Expo as a Restaurant Investor

Before signing a master franchise agreement, ask the franchisor exactly how their brand standards translate operationally — recipe costing, portion control, and centralized reporting across outlets. This is a common failure point for new multi-branch operators in Oman, and it's precisely why franchise-ready POS/ERP systems with centralized dashboards (rather than a separate till per branch) matter more here than almost anywhere else in the business.

Khareef Dhofar Season: Oman's Biggest Seasonal Revenue Window for F&B Businesses

Not every important date on an F&B calendar is a trade show. Khareef Dhofar Season — Salalah's monsoon tourism season — is arguably the single biggest seasonal demand spike for restaurants, cafés, and food stalls anywhere in Oman. The 2026 season ran through more than 100 events, 136 free stalls for home-based food businesses, and a 35,000-square-metre agri-tourism destination, with activities continuing until 21 September across Salalah and surrounding wilayats including Mirbat, Taqah, and Sadah.

Why Khareef Dhofar Season Matters for Restaurant Owners

This is a three-month window where visitor numbers from across the GCC surge into Dhofar, and full-capacity hotels and restaurants become the norm rather than the exception. It's also when the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism actively promotes food tourism initiatives, meaning demand isn't just high — it's directed toward restaurants specifically.

What to Do During Khareef Dhofar Season as a Restaurant Owner

If you operate in or near Salalah, Khareef season is when under-provisioned kitchens lose money to stockouts and overstaffed slow days cost you elsewhere. You need real-time sales and inventory visibility that updates by the hour, not the week — plus the flexibility to run a temporary stall or pop-up counter on the same system as your main outlet. This is where a cloud POS with offline resilience (network drops are common at outdoor festival venues) pays for itself in a single season.

Muscat Nights: Winter Festival Season and Food Truck Opportunities in the Capital

Muscat's winter answer to Khareef is Muscat Nights (the modern evolution of the Muscat Festival), typically running from 1 to 31 January across an expanded eight-venue programme. Beyond the cultural performances, venues like Seeb Beach and Wadi Al Khoudh feature food trucks and specialty cafés run by young Omani entrepreneurs, offering fast food and winter beverages that draw strong youth demand for open-air dining. Muscat DailyOman Observer

Why Muscat Nights Matters for Restaurant Owners

If your brand can operate a mobile or pop-up format, Muscat Nights is a month-long, high-footfall marketing and revenue opportunity that costs a fraction of a permanent second location. It's also a genuinely useful low-risk way to test a new menu concept before committing to a full outlet.

What to Do During Muscat Nights as a Restaurant Owner

Muscat Nights runs a full month, so treat it as a campaign, not a one-off event. If your brand can operate a food truck or pop-up counter, apply for your vendor permit through Muscat Municipality early — prime spots at Qurum Natural Park and Seeb Beach fill up well before January. Use the month to trial a smaller, festival-friendly menu rather than your full outlet menu; fast-moving items that travel well in an open-air, high-footfall setting outperform anything plate-heavy or slow to prepare.

It's also a low-risk way to test a new concept before committing to a second permanent location — if a pop-up format sells well across all eight venues for four weeks straight, that's a strong signal to act on for the rest of the year.

Practical tip: Run your pop-up on the same POS system as your main outlet rather than a separate cash tin or standalone till. With a month-long, multi-venue event, you want one dashboard showing which location, menu item, and time slot actually drove sales — that data is what tells you whether to repeat the pop-up next winter or scale it into something permanent. A mobile-friendly, offline-capable system like Posbytz makes this straightforward, since outdoor festival venues don't always have reliable connectivity.

How to Turn Oman's Event Calendar Into Restaurant Revenue

Treat this calendar as a planning tool, not just a list of dates to attend:

• Pre-book B2B meetings for HORECA Oman and FHO/Oman AgroFood through their buyer-matchmaking portals weeks in advance — walk-in meetings with serious suppliers rarely happen on the show floor.
• Separate sourcing trips from technology trips. Go to FHO/AgroFood to negotiate ingredients and equipment; go to HORECA to evaluate software, POS hardware, and staff training.
• Staff up before Khareef and Muscat Nights, not during them. Seasonal demand in Salalah and Muscat spikes fast, and understaffed kitchens during festival weeks lose repeat customers permanently.
• Use franchise expos to vet, not just sign. Ask for unit-level P&L data from at least three existing franchisees before committing capital.
• Track everything centrally. New suppliers from FHO, a new outlet from a franchise deal, seasonal stalls during Khareef — each adds operational complexity that a single connected system handles far better than five separate spreadsheets.

What to Look for in a Restaurant POS and ERP System Before Expo Season

If HORECA Oman or any of these events puts new technology in front of you, evaluate it against what actually matters for running a restaurant in Oman:

• VAT-compliant, bilingual (Arabic/English) invoicing — non-negotiable for local compliance
• Multi-branch and multi-outlet inventory sync, especially if you're expanding via franchise or opening a seasonal stall
• Offline billing mode for venues like Salalah's festival grounds where connectivity isn't guaranteed
• Integrated recipe costing and wastage tracking, so new supplier deals from FHO actually improve your margins instead of just changing your invoices
• Real-time, centralized reporting across all locations from one dashboard, not one login per branch

This is the exact gap PosBytz Restaurant POS and ERP is built to close for Oman-based operators — a single platform covering billing, inventory, multi-branch management, and VAT-compliant reporting, designed to hold up whether you're running one café or a five-outlet franchise. If you're heading to any of the events above, it's worth seeing the platform in action first so you know exactly what questions to ask every vendor on the show floor.

FAQs: Oman Restaurant and F&B Events

When is the next HORECA Oman?

The most recent (5th) edition ran September 14–16, 2026. The organizers have not yet confirmed exact 2027 dates — check HORECA Oman's official channels closer to the date rather than relying on older projected schedules.

What's the biggest B2B sourcing event for restaurant supplies in Oman?

Food & Hospitality Oman (FHO) / Oman AgroFood, running December 1–3, 2026, is Oman's largest ministry-backed sourcing platform for ingredients, kitchen equipment, and hospitality supplies.

Is there a franchise-specific event for restaurant investors in Oman?

Yes — The Apex Global Franchise Expo runs at the Kempinski Hotel Muscat from March 26–30, 2027, focused specifically on franchise investment and brand expansion.

Do seasonal festivals like Khareef Dhofar actually matter for restaurant revenue planning?

Significantly. Khareef Dhofar Season (roughly late June through September 21 in Salalah) and Muscat Nights (January in Muscat) are the two biggest tourism-driven demand windows in Oman's F&B calendar, and both require different staffing, inventory, and even POS setups (mobile/offline) than normal operations.

Does Posbytz work for multi-branch or franchise restaurants in Oman?

Yes — Posbytz is built for exactly this use case, with centralized inventory and reporting across multiple outlets, VAT-compliant billing, and offline functionality for pop-up or seasonal locations.