Reform UK’s party conference will last barely more than 30 hours this weekend, but its rivals fear the glitz and political noise are going to be hard to beat.

“We’re the only party conference to have our own pyrotechnics budget,” says one Reform insider with pride.

The party says more than 12,000 people are scheduled to attend across the Friday and Saturday, with hundreds of businesses – from Heathrow to TikTok and JCB – turning up to get a taste of the political atmosphere around the UK’s current poll leaders.

In a sign of how the political landscape has shifted, with Nigel Farage’s party no longer on the fringes, two big-name former Tory cabinet ministers will also be in attendance: Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Gove, once an architect of David Cameron’s government and now the editor of the Spectator, is scheduled to interview Reform’s efficiency chief, Zia Yusuf.

Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, has repeatedly ruled out joining Reform after losing his seat as a Tory MP. But he is to join a panel entitled “How can Reform succeed in office? Saving British democracy and lessons from Trump” alongside the rightwing historian David Starkey.

Farage will address his supporters inside the huge Birmingham National Exhibition Centre (NEC) on Friday at 4pm, preceded by a 10-minute speech from a mystery special guest. The Conservatives fear a big-name defection but Reform watchers note that Farage does not like to be outshone at his own events.

Ahead of the conference, Farage was in the US embracing more openly hard-right rhetoric by calling the influence of Islam in the UK “literally catastrophe”, and praising Donald Trump’s mass round-up of migrants in the US.

Migration had fundamentally changed the UK, he told Fox News, speaking before he gave evidence to a congressional inquiry on “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation”.

“You said to me once, you went through parts of London, you didn’t even recognise it to be England,” he told the host, Sean Hannity. “So, please, America, take the warnings. Recognise why President Trump is brave and true and right to control the southern border and to make sure you keep your American culture.”

While immigration will undoubtedly be a major focus back in Birmingham, the official theme of the conference is a bland one, with Reform saying it will focus on “the next step” in its own growth. Since last year’s event, it has expanded from 80,000 to nearly 240,000 members, rising from 19% to 30% in the polls, and securing 900 councillors across 12 local authorities.

With Reform having led the polls for around six months, the Tories and Labour are both nervous about the level of business and lobbying attention the party is likely to attract.

Heathrow is sponsoring a lounge, while the housebuilder Thakeham, which has previously given almost £1m to the Tories, is advertising in the party’s conference brochure.

The crypto industry, which Farage has pledged to deregulate, will also have a prominent presence. Yusuf will be in conversation with Stani Kulechov, the Finnish founder of a company called Aave Labs, while another firm called Zebec Technologies is hosting an event on “strengthening the rule of law” as well as “improving economic competitiveness” through encouraging cryptocurrency and blockchain.

The party is also welcoming a tobacco firm, Japan Tobacco International, as host of an event on “revitalising the great British high street”.

Climate change sceptics will be out in abundance, with one fringe session on “climate realism” led by the Heartland Institute and attended by former deputy Ukip leader Lord Christopher Monckton.

For the first time, there will also be a substantial number of fringe events hosted by thinktanks, charities and others, plus a diplomatic presence from the embassy of Israel and the government of Gibraltar. The party has been selling a “diplomatic guest” pass for £500 a head.

Among those confirmed to be attending was the embassy of Albania, whose prime minister has engaged in an online spat with Farage. The Reform UK leader eventually accepted an invitation to visit the country on condition that he would discuss the return of Albanian prisoners.

Alongside the more overtly ideological rightwing outfits including the Adam Smith Institute, the Taxpayer’s Alliance and the Institute of Economic Affairs, there will be several non-aligned or centrist organisations.

The Institute for Government (IFG), typically a major presence at other party conferences, will this year host a fringe event entitled: “From protest to power: How can Reform’s locally elected leaders govern effectively?”

Speakers will include the IFG’s director, Dr Hannah White, along with the Reform leader of Kent county council, Linden Kemkaran, and Gawain Towler, Reform’s former head of press who now sits on the party’s board.

Towler said the board had “a responsibility” to hold a successful conference to demonstrate that it could be seriously trusted with power.

“You have to register that we have to get much, much more serious. We can no longer be the disrupters. We have to be the next government. People will rely on us not to make a hash of things, so what greater task is there than to be those responsible for the next government? And it is a task that we take with the utmost seriousness,” he said.

Towler instanced the demand for Reform spokespeople. He had been asked by Sky News to “top and tail” their coverage of Farage’s keynote speech on Friday evening while also appearing on a range of panels on the same day.

“It will be different this time. We will have motions put forward by branches, there will be an extensive fringe. It doesn’t have to mean we have weakened our radical zeal, but it means we are happy to engage with people and corporate Britain.”

More in Common, the thinktank founded after the murder of MP Jo Cox that aims to dissuade politicians and others from pursing so-called “culture wars”, will also be releasing polling of Reform UK supporters and hosting a fringe event.

Those taking part include Professor Anand Menon, the director of the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe.

“This is a party which is ahead in the polls and setting the political weather. Why would we not go?” he said. “The key thing for Reform will be to have a conference that makes them look professional, a party of government, and also makes money for them. But, rather than us, the key indicator of how they are doing will be how many businesses turn up. Businesses tend to have a good nose for who is heading for power.”

With that in mind, Reform is working to ensure the conference appears as professional as possible and avoids the kind of chaos rearing up over the past year, with the party already having lost its former deputy leader Ben Habib, London mayoral candidate Howard Cox and MPs Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock.

Yusuf also had a major public falling out with the party, quitting as chair and saying it was not worth his time, before being persuaded back by Farage.

Yusuf will now receive major billing on the Friday of the conference before Farage’s own speech, showing his continuing importance. Lee Anderson, the unpredictable former Tory deputy chair and now Reform MP, also gets a Friday speaking slot, while the deputy leader Richard Tice and MP Sarah Pochin are speaking on the Saturday.

The mood of the conference would be “celebratory but not complacent” and above all aiming “to avoid unforced errors”, says one senior party figure. With newly elected councillors, mayors, rising stars and a panoply of big egos in the party all jostling for attention on the stage and at the fringe, that will not be easy.