QR codes for an event, from invitation to the door

14 August 2026 · Free QR Pro

Events are where QR codes are most useful and most fragile. Four hundred people arriving at once is a stress test for anything involving a phone camera.

Before: the invitation

A calendar QR code puts your event straight into someone's phone — title, date, time and place, in one scan. It saves them typing it, and more usefully it means the details in their calendar are the ones you wrote rather than the ones they remembered.

Put it on the printed invitation and on the confirmation email. On screen it needs to survive being scanned from another screen, which is harder than paper — keep it large and do not put it on a busy background.

At the door: check-in

One code per attendee, each containing their reference, is the standard approach. Generate them from your attendee spreadsheet in one pass rather than one at a time.

The thing to plan for is the desk, not the code. Two people scanning with phones will process a queue more slowly than one person with a list and a pen, unless whatever reads the codes is fast and the lighting at the desk is good. Test the whole flow with ten people before assuming it scales to four hundred.

The failure nobody plans for

Venue WiFi collapses when a few hundred people arrive, and mobile signal in a basement conference room is often worse.

This matters because a QR code pointing at a web page is useless without a connection. A code containing the information itself — a calendar entry, a contact card, a WiFi password — works with no signal at all, because the phone reads it directly off the paper.

Where you can, choose the kind that does not need the internet. Where you cannot, have a printed fallback.

Around the venue: WiFi and signage

A WiFi code on the table cards saves your staff reading out a password forty times. Use the guest network rather than the one your payment terminal is on.

For signage, size is the whole game. A code on a pull-up banner read from three metres needs to be about 30 cm across. The rule is one tenth of the reading distance, and rounding up costs nothing.

After: feedback and photos

A code on the way out, pointing at a feedback form or a shared photo album, catches people while they still remember the evening. This is the one place where a link is clearly the right content, because the destination is genuinely online.

Label it. "How did we do?" gets scanned; a bare square next to the exit does not.

Printing the set

Badges, table cards and signage all come from the same spreadsheet if you set it up once. Put the attendee list in a CSV, generate the codes as a batch, and lay them out with the print-sheet tool at the size the badge holder needs.

Print one, put it in an actual badge holder, and scan it through the plastic before you print the rest. Glossy badge sleeves reflect light straight back at the camera, and that is a discovery best made the day before rather than at the door.