Three days in one building
The American Dental Association’s 2026 Scientific Session runs Thursday 8 October through Saturday 10 October at the Indiana Convention Center. The venue event page forecasts 4,000 attendees and states the session runs alongside the Indiana Dental Association Center for Excellence program. The organiser dates the meeting 8 to 10 October and records the meeting’s former name, SmileCon.
Thursday and Friday carry the full programme. The Exhibit Hall runs 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday. Clinical education runs 9:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, and the Indiana Dental Association’s Center for Excellence program holds a 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. block Friday in the same building. Saturday closes early, with registration and the Exhibit Hall both ending at 1:30 p.m.
The week around it
Every date from 4 October to 10 October carries at least one event on the venue calendar. The week opens with the Gas Machinery Conference, running 4 to 7 October, holds the ISBA/IAPSS Annual Conference on 5 and 6 October and the Emerging Leaders’ Summit on 7 October, then runs straight into the dental meeting.
Two further groups start inside the same window. The FullScale Symposium holds Sagamore Ballroom 1-7 from 8 to 10 October on a forecast of 1,000, and the ABC Health & Fitness Expo takes Exhibit Hall A on 10 October alone with doors from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and a forecast of 2,000. Saturday 10 October therefore carries three published forecasts in one building.
The venue calendar lists 16 events between 22 September and 15 October 2026. Five dates inside that window are free: 23 and 24 September, 2 and 3 October and 11 October.
The day-use product and its windows
hotelSlots sells day-use rooms in four windows from its own page: Morning 6AM to 12PM, Afternoon 12PM to 6PM, Evening 6PM to 12AM and Overnight 12AM to 6AM. Its day-use guide describes the room as a block of about six to eight hours, sold with the same room types and amenities as an overnight stay.
Two windows answer this week. The Afternoon block covers the stretch between Saturday’s 1:30 p.m. close and an evening departure. The Morning block covers a delegate who lands early, walks the exhibition floor and takes a room before the hotel’s own check-in opens.
The rate the desk works from
Dayuse publishes an average price of $87.43 for a day room in Indianapolis. Engine publishes a $128 average nightly rate for the city across 1.2 million public rate observations from May 2024 to April 2026, with October at $134, and ranks Indianapolis 39 of 50 major markets.
hotelSlots states on its day-use rates guide that a room selling for $180 a night might be offered as a day slot for roughly 40 to 60 percent of that figure. On the $134 October average, that band runs from $53.60 to $80.40. The platform’s home page puts day-use rates at 30 to 75 percent less than the nightly rate at the same hotel, which runs from $33.50 to $93.80 on the same figure. The published Indianapolis day-room average of $87.43 sits above the first band and inside the second.
The inventory behind the windows
The venue footer gives downtown Indianapolis 7,100 hotel rooms, with 4,700 of them connected to the convention center by skywalk. Its facility guide publishes a second pair for the same network: pedestrian skywalks connect 4,717 of downtown’s 7,200 rooms, and the guide splits the campus link into five downtown hotels reached by skywalk and seven more through the Circle Centre complex.
A forecast of 4,000 is 56.3 percent of the downtown count and 85.1 percent of the skywalk-connected count. Day-use inventory comes out of that same downtown count. The Signia by Hilton Indianapolis takes reservations from 1 February 2027, so this October’s daytime rooms sit in the existing stock.
What the venue does not publish
The venue publishes no arrival hour and no room assignment for the dental meeting. The 4,000 figure is its own forecast, and no organiser count from a prior edition is published for comparison. Confirm the day schedule and the hall with the organiser before pricing a window against it.