There will be a Brussels Motor Show in January 2026

Sector federation Febiac, the organizer of the Brussels Motor Show (BMS), has officially announced that the 2026 edition (the 102nd) will be held next January from the 9th to the 18th at the Brussels Expo premises.

“We are happy to announce today that Febiac will organize the 102nd Motor Show,” says Freddy De Mulder, Febiac’s President. “Our team will shape the new BMS with our members/exhibitors in the coming months.”

“These are challenging times for the car industry, and the Brussels Motor Show will be, more than ever, an essential podium for our sector toward policymakers, the press, and the general public. This will be meaningful for Belgium and the rest of Europe,” he adds.

We will soon have more details about the concepts and themes of the next show, as well as the detailed results of the one in January 2025.

Slight hesitation

This year, some 300,000 visitors were counted on the Brussels Expo premises, and surveys indicated that approximately one-third of them had a car-buying intention. The BMS can still be necessary for car retail in Belgium, especially for individual buyers.

Nevertheless, there’s a slight hesitation among important BMS participants. Exhibitors like D’Ieteren, BMW, and maybe others apparently prefer a motor show every two years, and it’s still unclear if they will participate next year. Febiac will have to persuade them in the coming months.

If important exhibitors like D’Ieteren (which occupies an entire hall at the BMS) or Stellantis hesitate to come, the 2026 BMS will be in danger.

Almost all of Stellantis’ top brass attended the BMS press day this year, which can be a good sign. When we talked to them, other important participants like Renault and Mercedes-Benz favored an annual show.

Also, the award ceremony for the Car of the Year (COTY) 2025 attracted quite a lot of foreign press, which is good for BMS’s prestige in Europe.

Will the future tell?

But in the end, it’s the exhibitors who have to pay, and although many of them halved the surface of their stand in 2025, they still had to pay the same amount to Brussels Expo because the price per square meter almost doubled.

Some of them have also learned that the annulment of the BMS in 2021 and 2022 (because of Covid-19) and in 2024 (because of the absence of too many essential exhibitors) didn’t affect their sales as much as they feared, also because the professional market is so crucial in Belgium.

In these latest months, however, the equilibrium between the professional and individual markets seems to be returning, and perhaps the BMS in 2025 has played a significant role in this.

So, there are many factors to consider, and undoubtedly, the evolution of the Belgian car market in the coming months will play a significant role in this.