AME Roundup and VRIC: Costs, Formats, PDAC Compared

AME Roundup and the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference (VRIC) share a city, a convention centre and most of a week, but they serve different people. Roundup is where geoscientists, prospectors, project generators and junior explorers talk about rocks, drill results, permitting and deals. VRIC is where those same companies stand at a booth and pitch to investors. If you run or advise a TSX, TSXV or CSE explorer, you will probably end up at both, and the useful questions are practical ones: which passes to buy, what a booth costs, which programmes are worth applying to, and how either compares with PDAC in Toronto. We answer those from the organisers’ own pages, checked in October 2026, and point you to our overview of gold exploration across Canada for the geology behind many of the projects you will meet there.

More than 7,500 people attended AME Roundup in 2026, and about 68% of its exhibitors sold services or supplies.

What AME Roundup and VRIC are, and who runs them

Start with the organisers, because they explain the difference. AME Roundup belongs to the Association for Mineral Exploration, which describes itself as the lead association for mineral exploration and development based in Canada. Its conference page says AME was established in 1912 and represents nearly 7,000 members. You may still see the older name, AMEBC, and the old web address amebc.ca, which now redirects to ame.ca. The conference itself lives at ameroundup.ca.

VRIC is a commercial investor event. Its 2027 tickets are sold on Eventbrite with Cambridge House International Inc. listed as the organiser, and the old Cambridge House conference address now forwards to the VRIC 2027 conference page under the VRIC Media name. The pitch on that page is short: 12,000+ investors, 500+ resource companies and two days on one floor.

So one event is run by an industry association for its members, built around technical sessions and the exhibit hall, and the other is a ticketed show built around investors and the companies courting them. That shapes everything else: who walks the floor, what a booth is for and how you should measure whether the trip worked.

AME Roundup and VRIC side by side

Dates, venues and prices from the AME Roundup FAQ, the VRIC 2027 conference page and Eventbrite listing, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre’s PDAC 2027 listing, all checked October 2026.

Who attends AME Roundup, and why the exhibit hall matters

Who actually walks the floor? The Roundup FAQ says the 2026 edition drew more than 7,500 geoscientists, prospectors, financiers, investors, suppliers, governments and Indigenous partners. It also breaks the exhibitors down by type, which is the most useful single number for a junior deciding whether to take a booth.

Chart

Who exhibits at AME Roundup

Share of Exhibit Hall exhibitors by type, approximate, AME Roundup 2026

Read that chart from the explorer’s side. Roughly two thirds of the booths belong to drillers, labs, geophysics contractors, software firms and other suppliers, and about 15% belong to explorers. That makes AME Roundup a strong place to buy services and compare contractors before the summer field season, and a fairly uncrowded place for an explorer’s booth to be seen by technical people. It is a weaker place to find retail investors, which is the gap VRIC fills.

The speaker sessions are organised in tracks: Advances in Geoscience, Regional Overviews for BC, Yukon and Alaska, Critical and Base Metals, Precious Metals, Commodities and Financial Markets, Environmental, Social and Governance, Geophysics, Technology and Innovation, The Gathering Place and the AME Policy Shop. The 2027 theme is “Minerals for Tomorrow”. The FAQ says the conference is in person only, and All Access delegates receive session recordings within three weeks, which matters if your geologists will spend most of the week at the booth.

▶ Copper and gold exploration in British Columbia, the ground most Roundup regional sessions cover. · 3:11

The exhibit hall runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Wednesday and closes at 2 p.m. on Thursday, according to the FAQ. AME hosts an Exhibit Hall Happy Hour each afternoon to pull delegates back onto the floor, which is the best window for a junior’s team to be at its booth rather than in a session. All conference pass types include the hall, but everyone needs a pass, exhibitors included.

AME Roundup formats: Core Shack, Prospectors’ Tent, Project Generators’ Hub and short courses

The booths are only part of it. Three juried programmes inside the exhibit hall are where much of the deal-making happens, and each has its own rules, costs and deadlines. If your company has drill core, a property to option or a prospector on staff, these are worth more than a standard booth.

Core Shack

The Core Shack is where companies lay out drill core from live projects. A committee picks participants using the project name, commodities and the most significant drill intercept reported, with preference for projects in the northwest Cordillera that fit the 2027 theme. Displays cover new discoveries, new geological insights, resource development transitions and ore-body insights. The booth costs nothing, but the company must be an AME corporate member. Each confirmed company gets one display space for two days and must submit an abstract. AME says that if you have not heard back by November 2026, assume you were not selected.

Prospectors’ Tent

The Prospectors’ Tent gives individual prospectors a 10 x 10 ft space for one or two days at no participation cost. Participants still need an Exhibit Hall or All Access pass and a current individual AME membership, and in-person participants receive a C$250 rebate cheque after the conference. For a junior looking for its next property, this is the most concentrated group of vendors in the building.

Project Generators’ Hub

The Project Generators’ Hub is built for companies showing maps, rocks and summaries of properties they want to option or joint venture. It costs C$950 + GST for two days, with a 6 x 6 ft counter-top table, and conference passes are not included. Selection notices go out by 7 November 2026. If your business model is to generate projects and farm them out, this table is cheaper than a booth and puts you beside your competitors, which is what buyers want.

Posters and short courses

The poster display runs all four days and is free to enter, though presenters need a pass. Student prizes are C$600, C$400 and C$200, and accepted submissions are told in January 2027. Short courses run before the main conference; the schedule lists courses on 22 and 23 January 2027. The 2027 list includes an NI 43-101 refresher, an introduction to prospecting, capital markets and project valuation, implicit geological modelling, practical data science for exploration, and a course on preparing for MTO2 and the retirement of BC’s Mineral Titles Online system in 2027. That last one is worth a land manager’s day if you hold BC claims.

▶ How a BC gold project combines DCIP, hyperspectral and lidar data: the kind of case a Core Shack display summarises. · 2:47

AME Roundup registration and exhibitor costs

AME publishes its prices in full on the Registration and Pricing page. Registration for AME Roundup 2027 opened on 15 September 2026. Early-bird prices apply before 27 November 2026, and 5% GST is added to every price. The chart compares the main passes.

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AME Roundup pass prices: early bird vs regular

Canadian dollars (C$) before 5% GST, 2027 edition; member passes need AME membership

The membership arithmetic is the first thing to check. An AME individual membership costs C$110 and can only be bought inside the Roundup registration system for 2027. A member’s early-bird All Access pass at C$600 plus that C$110 membership comes to C$710, well under the C$1,050 non-member pass, and even the regular member price of C$875 plus membership (C$985) is cheaper. AME also notes that corporate memberships do not give member pricing: the discount is tied to an individual.

Other prices worth knowing: a member All Access day pass is C$300 early or C$400 regular, the Thursday-only Explorers Pass is C$50 or C$75, and students pay C$50 or C$75 for four days. Ticketed meals such as the Capital and Partnerships Lunch, the Finance Lunch and the Reconciliation Breakfast are C$99 early or C$135 regular each, and the AME Awards Gala is C$220 or C$275. BC Night is included with every pass. Short-course fees range from C$20 to C$1,175 depending on the course and whether you are a member, a student or neither.

Use the calculator to price your own delegation. Enter the number of people, the ticketed meals each will attend and any short-course fee.

A worked example

At the default inputs, two members booking before 27 November with one ticketed lunch each pay C$1,618 before tax, or about C$1,699 with GST. The same two people booking in December pay about C$2,352, and two non-members pay about C$2,489. For a small explorer the gap of nearly C$800 is real money, and the fix is simply a calendar reminder.

What a booth costs

The Exhibit Hall page lists a four-day 10 x 10 ft booth at C$4,300 + GST and a two-day booth (Monday and Tuesday, or Wednesday and Thursday) at C$3,100 + GST, in Canadian dollars. Each exhibiting company must hold an AME corporate membership, invoiced separately. The FAQ adds that a four-day booth includes four Exhibit Hall passes and a two-day booth two, and that two Exhibit Hall passes can be traded for one All Access pass. Booth and membership invoices had to be paid by 31 October 2026, or the booth may be surrendered.

That cost per included pass is the number to compare against simply sending people with All Access passes. If the point of the trip is meeting suppliers and sitting in technical sessions, passes alone are cheaper. A booth pays off when you have something physical or visual to show, such as core, maps or a target model, and people who will stand there for four days.

PDAC 2026 counted 32,155 attendees from 141 countries; one in three came from outside Canada.

VRIC: what the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference offers investors and companies

VRIC is simpler to describe and harder to measure. The conference page lists 24 and 25 January 2027 at the Vancouver Convention Centre West, Halls A, B and C, with 12,000+ retail investors, 500+ resource companies, two days on one floor and one-to-one institutional meetings. The Eventbrite listing gives hours of 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and a refund policy of up to 30 days before the event.

For attendees, general admission is free and, in the organiser’s words, “it stays free”. It covers the show floor, the Speaker Hall and the workshops on both days. The paid VIP Experience, listed at CA$1,400 on Eventbrite in October 2026, adds a breakfast and a lunch with selected speakers, reserved seating, a meet and greet, a VIP reception and priority access. Sales end on 24 January 2027.

For companies, the exhibit page lists booths on the main floor, presentation slots on the speaking stages, a Deal Room with 10 or 20 pre-booked institutional meetings, and sponsorship tiers. Prices are not published; you request a package. Ask what each option includes in writing, and compare the Deal Room’s cost per meeting with what your IR firm could set up in Vancouver that week anyway.

▶ Canadian critical minerals and the technology behind new targets, a theme that dominates investor stages in Vancouver. · 2:25

Who is VRIC for, then? It suits companies that already have a story retail investors can follow: a discovery hole, a resource, a permit milestone or a well-known backer. A grassroots explorer with no drilling yet will get fewer serious conversations there than at Roundup, where technical people can judge early-stage ground on its geology. In our view the strongest plan for most juniors is a focused VRIC presence, such as a presentation slot or a few Deal Room meetings, and a technical team at Roundup.

AME Roundup vs PDAC: which one should a junior pick?

The honest answer is that they do different jobs. The PDAC 2026 statistics show 32,155 attendees, 33.4% of them international, from 141 countries, with 3,431 self-identified investors, 1,193 trade show booths from 863 exhibiting organisations, 474 Investors Exchange booths from 423 organisations, 263 sessions and 812 presenters. PDAC also runs its own Core Shack (40 exhibitors in 2026) and Prospectors Tent (20 exhibitors).

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How big is each event?

People, as reported by each organiser (PDAC: 2026 official count; VRIC and Roundup: stated minimums)

On attendance, PDAC is about four times the size of AME Roundup. The PDAC site confirms the 2027 convention runs 7 to 10 March 2027, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre lists the same dates. We could not confirm PDAC 2027 registration fees when we checked, so look them up on pdac.ca before you budget.

Where Roundup wins is focus. With most regional sessions on BC, Yukon and Alaska, a Core Shack that favours the northwest Cordillera, and January timing just before winter programmes are finalised, it is the better room for a company whose ground is in western Canada and whose next step is a drill contract or a joint-venture partner. PDAC wins on breadth: foreign governments, majors’ business development teams and international investors are all in Toronto. A sensible pattern for a western Canadian junior is to use January in Vancouver to line up the technical side and March in Toronto to talk money.

▶ Gold exploration in Ontario, home to many of the companies that fill PDAC's Investors Exchange in Toronto. · 2:53

A third option sits between them: sending one person to all three. The cost of a single member pass at Roundup, free entry at VRIC and one PDAC pass is modest next to a drill program, and the week in Vancouver often decides who you meet again in March. What matters is that each person has a clear job at each event, whether that is sourcing contractors, pitching, or finding a partner.

Planning the Vancouver week: dates, travel and deadlines

The calendar runs from September to January, and most of the money-saving decisions happen before Christmas. This is the sequence for AME Roundup 2027, taken from the organisers’ pages.

Infographic

The Vancouver exploration week, step by step

1. 1RegisterAME Roundup registration opened on 15 September 2026.
2. 2Apply to showProject Generators’ Hub, Prospectors’ Tent and Core Shack answers come by November.
3. 3Beat 27 NovemberEarly-bird prices end; Indigenous aid and student travel support close on 20 November.
4. 4Short coursesPre-conference courses run on 22 and 23 January 2027.
5. 5VRIC24 to 25 January 2027 at the Vancouver Convention Centre West.
6. 6AME Roundup25 to 28 January 2027 at the Vancouver Convention Centre East.

Travel deals are on AME’s travel and accommodation page. Air Canada offers up to 12% off eligible fares with AME’s promotion code for travel between 18 January and 4 February 2027 (basic economy excluded), and Air North offers 10% off selected fares. The partner hotels near Canada Place were listed as more than 60% to more than 95% sold out in October 2026, so book now if you need a short walk to the venue. AME’s room-block contact handles groups of 10 or more.

VRIC’s page notes that the Canada Line runs from Vancouver International Airport to Waterfront Station in about 25 minutes, and both buildings are a short walk from there. If you are coming from outside Canada, check entry rules early.

▶ A Canadian critical-minerals exploration case from Manitoba, the type of story told at Roundup's technical sessions. · 2:38

Bringing satellite targets to AME Roundup and VRIC

What do you put on the table? At the Core Shack it is core; at the Project Generators’ Hub it is maps; at VRIC it is a story that fits on one slide. For many early-stage properties, a satellite target map is the missing piece in all three, because it shows a buyer or investor where the work should go before any drill holes exist.

That is the job our satellite-based mineral detection does. You send the claim or licence boundary as coordinates, KML/KMZ or a polygon, with the target mineral. We process multispectral or hyperspectral data to flag alteration zones, structures such as faults and fractures, and patterns linked to mineral deposits, then deliver a report with prospectivity heatmaps and georeferenced GIS files, usually in 5 to 20 business days depending on size and mineral complexity. The Premium+ report adds TargetMax drilling intelligence, with suggested drilling angles and interactive 3D subsurface models, like our satellite-driven 3D prospectivity mapping sample.

The approach can cut early exploration from months to days and lower early-exploration cost by up to 80 to 85%, with no ground disturbance at the screening stage. We have scanned more than 100,000 hectares across 20+ mineral types in 25+ countries. Be clear with your audience about what it is: the outputs are exploration targets ahead of any resource estimate, not resources or reserves, and they are not NI 43-101 disclosure on their own. In northern Canada, snow cover, forest and glacial till limit what any satellite sees, so targets there need field checks such as mapping, till sampling and geophysics, as our guide to BC Geological Survey and other free geology data explains.

If you want a target map ready before January, Map Your Mining Site with the boundary of your property, or get a quote for a full report. For the next steps after the show, see our guide to exploration drilling methods and costs.

AME Roundup and VRIC: frequently asked questions

Authored by: Farmonaut Research & Content Team · Reviewed by: Farmonaut Mining & Mineral Exploration Team · Updated October 2026

General information only, not legal, tax or investment advice; confirm with your advisers and the exchange. Dates, prices and programmes change; check the organisers’ sites (ameroundup.ca, vricmedia.com, pdac.ca) before booking. Farmonaut is not affiliated with AME, VRIC or PDAC, and is not a broker, licensing agent or investment adviser. Satellite targets are exploration targets, not resources or reserves.