An event is a state that occurs in the course of the business process. Events influence the process flow. Normally, they represent triggers or effects within the processes. Depending on when an event occurs, it is either a start event, an intermediate event, or an end event. The three event categories are represented by their own symbols in BPMN:

These categories are broken down into specialized subcategories. Additional symbols are added to the symbols of the three event categories when the Event type attribute is specified, as shown in the following three examples:

All attributes relevant for the Event object type are combined in the BPMN attribute type group.