Anyone looking north through the water will already see it: the Kromhout Hall, a sturdy factory hall that once housed the engines of shipyard ’t Kromhout and now offers over 5,000 square meters of event floor space on the Gedempt Hamerkanaal. The hall has been in use as an event venue since 2012, following a redevelopment of the site that began in 2009. In those ten-plus years, the property has grown into one of North's busiest cultural and business addresses.
The biggest name on the calendar this year is the Formula 1 Exhibition, on display in the hall from April 17 through September 7, 2025. Interactive display, iconic racing cars, helmets and artifacts from Formula 1 history scattered across that huge floor. That's exactly the kind of exhibition you need this hall for: you can't put it anywhere else in this city. In addition to the F1 exhibition, the Affordable Art Fair Amsterdam is a regular annual guest, an art fair that draws crowds that normally don't necessarily bike to Noord but do so anyway, because the space works.
That space is the story. Steel structures, high ceilings, industrial details that were preserved when the hall was given its new purpose. The Goedkoop family founded the shipyard ’t Kromhout in the 18th century, and you can still see that past in the interior. Manager Aan De Overkant B.V. deliberately chose to leave that industrial atmosphere intact. The combination of monumental construction, location on the IJ and programming that runs from art fair to Formula 1 exhibition makes this a place that, as an Amsterdammer, you just know.
The combination of monumental construction, location on the IJ, and programming that runs from art fair to Formula One exhibition makes this a place that, as an Amsterdammer, you just know.
North has been keeping up with the rest of the city in terms of cultural weight for years, and the Kromhout Hall plays a role in that that is bigger than many people realize. The building is completely flexible in layout, which means that the setup for a trade show looks completely different from that for a convention or gala dinner. If you don't know it yet: the F1 Exhibition runs until September 2025 and is a good time to change that.