House music on the rooftop of the Portuguese pavilion; a piece of the moon inside the Chinese pavilion; boats made from the fronds of palm trees in the Bahrain pavilion; and Louis Vuitton trunks seeming to fly in the French pavilion. If you visited the Expo 2025 in Osaka, you might experience some kind of Reizüberflutung, a sensory overload. Nearly 150 nations showed their music, dance, landscape, architecture, and food to win your attention. They drew millions of visitors, nearly 30 million in Osaka, with around 90 percent from Japan, waiting in line, for hours during the sweltering heat.

Step back from the queues, and a pattern comes into view. World Expos, each one since 1851, follow a specific and detailed script – the “Expo Script,” a term crafted by Jessica Gienow-Hecht: First, Expos give nation states, both large and small, a rare opportunity to appear on the global stage, try to shape their image. Second, as such, Expos provide platforms for economies and nation states, to present and market themselves through technological progress, cultural tradition, and visions of the future.¹ Third, to this end, Expo typically designates a specific theme for attending states and stakeholders. In 2025, that theme, “Designing Future Societies for Our Lives,” focused on three sub-themes: Saving Lives, Empowering Lives, and Connecting Lives”. Expos tend to be enormously popular among regional and international audiences—more than 90 million supposedly attended the world exhibition in Shanghai, in 2010. Finally, and related to all of the above, Expos try to have the cake and eat it, too: they provide a space dedicated to international competition yet also offer a miniature version of the world as it could or should be.

On that basis, Jessica Gienow-Hecht, along with Hiroo Nakajima (University of Osaka), and Nicholas Cull (USC Annenberg) organized a workshop, “The Expo Script: The Political Economy of Nation-State Image Management at World Expos”. Scholars from Turkey, Germany, Japan, the United States, China, and India gathered in Osaka to examine how nations present themselves at Expos through their pavilions. Participants engaged in discussions with each other, with staff and visitors, and with directors of several pavilions, among these from the U.S., Canada, China, Germany, Switzerland, India and Turkey. They debated, controversially, which countries manage to capture most of the attention, why some succeeded while others did not, and whether in general, liberal and non-liberal regimes, adopt different strategies of self-presentation, both historically and today.

The Liberal Expo Script

No doubt, in Osaka, there was a clear trend among liberal nations such as Germany, Switzerland, Korea, and Japan, to downplay tradition in favor of future sustainability². Numerous liberal states turned away from ancient buildings, folk costumes and overt symbols of national identity. Food, on the other hand, scored high points, as long lines testified. The German pavilion, for one, offered Bratwurst and Kalbshaxe in their restaurant. Visitors to the Pavilion enjoyed images of modern and futuristic architecture as well as visualizations leading innovations in sustainable energy from the German states. Under the telling title, “From Heidi to High-Tech,” Switzerland displayed the famous Johanna Spyri’s immortal novel pitched as a series of Japanese cartoon characters Heidi up front and at the exit, but then quickly moved on to Swiss environmental technologies and artificial intelligence. The Korean pavilion consisted almost entirely of a massive screen outside while inside, visitors were encouraged to record their voices which was then transferred into K-Pop. The Japanese pavilion, clearly one of the most original and well-developed ones, converged Hello Kitty figurines with microorganisms decomposing food waste collected throughout the Expo site for transformation into biogas, all this flanked with the claim that transformative energy saving mechanisms originated in 1000+ years of Japanese history. Osaka, that is, may not represent the biggest Expo in history. But in terms of developing future visions of health, mobility, urban planning, technology and sustainability, it tops previous ones. And the Japanese public, well familiar with expositions of a futuristic, robot-driven, digitized, and screen-driven lifestyle, responded enthusiastically, as long lines of visitors with up to several hours of waiting time per pavilion, testified (Luxemburg, for one, reported waiting for 5 hours, in early September).

Mind you, there was concern. Organizers and the government in Tokyo faced heavy public criticism to justify government spending on cultural issues. Social Media accounts in Japan admonished that the national pavilion failed to present an authentic image of traditional Japanese culture and values. Conservationists urged caution regarding how redevelopment would side with biodiversity and sustainability goals for Yumeshima island’s ecosystem. Many other countries cut their budgets for the Osaka Expo, such as Germany (still close to 60 million Euros) and Switzerland. France withdrew its Paris bid to host the 2025 World Expo due to financial risks.

As an aside, the majority of the 150+ states present—liberal and illiberal--opted for smaller, less costly outlets. Strapped for cash or interest or both many exhibitors settled for townhouse-like rows of buildings with individual units (Egypts and, yes, the EU) or barnlike settings called “The Commons,” subdivided into tiny stalls for nations from Tuvalu (“Please save Tuvalu”) over Palestine (“Made with Passion”) to Zimbabwe (“Beyond the Limits”), crammed with artefacts, frequently available for sale.

Constraints and critiques such as these, influence how states design and build their pavilions. Or, as one director put: “My budget is too small for my country!” Smaller budgets, in turn, often translate into more diffuse messaging, limited exhibition spaces or simply a reduced number of items on display.

A Non-Liberal Expo SCRIPT

In contrast, authoritarian states such as China, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan faced fewer limitations: Their object – the illiberal state complete with restricted societies and deplorable human rights records across the board – may be a tough sell in liberal Japan. But if their pockets are deep and they manage to circumvent sensitive political themes, they can spend millions of dollars in the service of a better PR, without any fear of domestic backlash. Saudi Arabia, for one, featured one of the most popular and expensive pavilions at the Expo (USD 100 mio., according to some rumors): an imitation of a Middle Eastern village complete with an attractive female DJ, working the crowds. The Turkmenistan pavilion – a colorful corner building with a gigantic screen and a total immersion digital experience inside, featuring horses, history, nature – presented an unabashedly overt glorification of its totalitarian leadership duo, son and father Berdimuhamedow³.

Meanwhile, China’s pavilion, a tall wooden palace spanning three floors and 2000+ years of history, offered a powerful vision of a future “Green China” (rather than a perpetual polluter). All this, so the message went, guaranteed by fast-paced central decisions regarding factory clean-ups, urban renewal and freshwater ways. That last point seemed to have gone lost on much of the duly enthusiastic public: Seeking to up international standing, autocratic regimes’ efforts at “greenwashing” -- such as China’s implementation of greening and sustainability measures -- operate much faster and without onerous public debates on unemployment, practicability, and other social costs.

On a footnote, not every illiberal state was invited to participate in the Expo script: While Russia had commissioned a number of remarkable architectural designs for a pavilion (including a gigantic bowl resting on two poles 27 meters above the ground), the national delegation pulled out of the preparations in November 2023, due to “insufficient communication” from the Japanese Expo organization. As Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, put it, Expo was meant to foster values such as compassion, respect and cooperation – all principles questioned by the invasion in Ukraine. Meanwhile Ukraine, short of cash, staged a two-colored, sparsely equipped yet impressive stall staffed by young Ukrainians, announcing up front: “Not For Sale.”

Copyright: Jessica Gienow-Hecht

The Expo Script: An Ideal World

When the house music stopped on the rooftop of the Portugal pavilion, on October 13, when the visitor gates were closed and preparations for demolition began, observers, directors, and staff may have wondered to what extent nation states succeeded in convincing visitors of their best version and vision. Some say the Arabs – notably Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE- “won” the Expo with their luxurious, crowd-drawing displays. But at the end of the day, world exhibitions are not about winning. Instead, the Expo Script, diverse as is, invites us to imagine what a utopian world might look like.

To make the Expo Script work, nations and spectators have to be present onsite. Unlike mega-events like the Olympics or the World Cup, which rely on mass media for global outreach, Expos work primarily for onsite visitors. While the former projects the host country’s image to the outside world, at Expos, nations visit and talk, mostly, to the people of the host country⁴. Visitors need to see, hear, taste, and touch, to experience what each pavilion wants to communicate about their country: e.g., a Turkish woman, dressed in a kaftan (an Ottoman long sleeveless over-robe), weaving a carpet inside the Turkish pavilion linking today’s Turkish identity to Ottoman traditions, or a waterfall in an Indonesian jungle, flanked by chirping birds. Some of these impressions may be immortal: A rock taken home from the moon, at the U.S. pavilion, at the 1970 Expo, also in Osaka (a moment many Japanese still remember today) manifesting U.S. superiority in space during the Cold War. Such memorable moments underscore the cultural and political appeal of Expos but also point to a deeper dimension of the Expo Script: All pavilions present an idealized image of national identity inside an ideal world built from scratch. As one of the German organizers remarked, that’s what she does, every five years: packing her suitcase to live in a perfect world, for six months. See you in Riyadh, in 2030. 

¹ Jessica Gienow-Hecht, “Meet Me at the Expo: Soft Power, Nation Branding und Megaevents,” Special Issue „Soft Power,“ Internationale Politik, Deutsche Gesellschaft für auswärtige Politik https://internationalepolitik.de/de/meet-me-at-expo-nation-branding-und-kampf-der-systeme; Nicholas Cull, "Looking for God at the Osaka Expo", CPD Blog (Sep 15, 2025) https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/looking-god-osaka-expo (accessed 12.10.2025); Gienow-Hecht, “Mega! Nation Branding at World Expos, 1851-2025,“ Zentrum für Liberale Moderne, Libmod, Zentrum für Liberale Moderne, forthcoming.

²César Corona, Japan’s Message to Itself at Expo 25 Osaka, (Aug 29, 2025) https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/japan’s-message-itself-expo-2025-osaka (accessed 12.10.2025)

³President of Turkmenistan from 2006 to 2022, Gurbanguly Mälikgulyýewiç Berdimuhamedow entered into a power-sharing relationship with his son, Serdar Gurbangulyýewiç Berdimuhamedow, after he stepped down. He continues to wield political power as Chairman of the People’s Council (Halk Maslahaty), much empowered by his son who succeeded him, in 2023.

⁴César Corona, Diplomacy and Public Diplomacy at Expo 2025 Osaka, LinkedIn article (Sep 12, 2025) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/diplomacy-public-expo-2025-osaka-cesar-corona-k16rc/?trackingId=r4u%2FlNgLS5adobAT6cO10Q%3D%3D (accessed 12.10.25)