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Glossary

What Is a Run of Show (or Run Sheet)?

2 min read
Massive crowd in a large venue with professional stage lighting and thousands of attendees.
A run of show is the internal, minute-by-minute plan of what happens, when, and who is responsible, from doors open to the final thank-you. Photo by Jibarofoto

A run of show is the minute-by-minute internal plan your team runs an event from. It lists every segment and cue in chronological order, and each line carries a time, a duration, what happens, and the name of the person responsible. It covers the day from doors open to the final thank-you.

It goes by several names. A run sheet is the same document, and so are a cue sheet, a show flow, and a rundown. The wording shifts by industry and by country more than by meaning, so if a venue or an AV supplier asks for your run sheet, they are asking for your run of show.

The document people most often confuse it with is the agenda. An agenda is attendee-facing: 9:00 welcome, 9:30 keynote, 10:15 break. It gives general time blocks and rarely changes once published. A run of show sits underneath that, breaking the same day into minutes and cues, and it keeps changing right up to showtime. Your agenda tells the room the day starts at 9. Your run of show tells the lighting tech to bring the spot up at 9:01:30 when the emcee walks on. That is why the run of show is built for your crew and never handed to attendees.

A workable run of show has one row per segment, with a clock time, a running time, a duration, the segment or cue, a named owner, and a short notes field. Bigger productions add a location column and on-site contact numbers. The detail that separates a sheet that survives event day from one that does not is the owner column: every line belongs to a person, not to the team.

For the full build process, see how to build a run of show. If you want a structure to fill in, start from the free run of show template, and for filled-in versions of a keynote, a conference, a webinar and a gala, see the run of show examples.

One thing no template solves: the sheet cannot be finished until every speaker's slides, video, and walk-on detail are actually in your hands. Submitto collects those files through one link, renamed and sorted by session, and tracks who is still missing.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

What is the difference between a run of show and a run sheet?

There is no difference. A run sheet is the same document as a run of show, and so are a cue sheet, a show flow, and a rundown. Which name you hear depends mostly on the venue and the crew: broadcast and theatre teams tend to say rundown or cue sheet, and event and production teams in the UK and Australia more often say run sheet. If a vendor asks for your run sheet, send them your run of show.

Who writes the run of show?

Usually the event manager or producer builds it, then walks it through with the AV team, the emcee, and anyone with a cue. On the day it has one owner, often called the show caller, who keeps the master copy and calls each cue. Assign that person before the event rather than during it.

How detailed should a run of show be?

Detailed enough that someone who has never seen your event could follow it under pressure, and short enough to read at a glance. One row per segment, with a clock time, a duration, the cue, and a named owner, is the working minimum. If a line takes more than a few seconds to parse on event day, it is too long.

Sources

Built from the best run-of-show resources, including:

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