However, the 2018 event, set to showcase art, design and innovation, will not be the first in the region.
In 1929, the North East Coast Exhibition was opened by the Prince of Wales in Newcastle amid great fanfare.
So, will organisers take inspiration from the grand event, which attracted four million visitors?
Responding to the Newcastle and Gateshead announcement, the North East Chamber of Commerce said: "The Great Exhibition looks set to be the launch pad of real growth in our regional economy."
The Prince of Wales - later King Edward VIII - opened the 1929 event and said: "The industries of the North are not yet knocked out of the ring.
"They are fighting back gallantly with a good Northern punch."
And the "northern punch" included cutting-edge technology, such as a cow milking machine, a telescope brought down from Edinburgh University, and the local newspaper using a newly-designed electric sign to flash out the latest news items.
Industry and consumer items were represented, some of them household names that remain, such as Hoover vacuum cleaners, Singer sewing machines, and Pyrex glass ovenware.
Andrews Liver Salts showed off its brand with a 15ft "fountain of health".
For entertainment there was an amusement park, a Himalayan Railway, and an African village.
More than four million people passed through the turnstiles between May and October that year, including King Alfonso of Spain and the Sultan of Zanzibar. Each millionth visitor was presented with a gold watch.
When the exhibition ended, the pavilions were dismantled and the area reverted to a public park.
Unfortunately, that "northern punch" would fall victim to the economic depression a few years later, in the 1930s.
One of the reasons the Great Exhibition of the North was awarded to Newcastle and Gateshead was because of the "ambition" of  organisers.