The Concours
Beyond the Lawn

(Showtime) The tradition behind the Concours d’Elegance has its roots in 17th-century France. Long before the advent of the automobile, the aristocracy would parade their ornate, horse-drawn carriages, partly to enjoy them but mostly to show them off. Eventually a system for judging them was developed. The horse gave way to the internal combustion engine, but the ritual survived. In those pioneering years of motoring, manufacturers produced rolling chassis with an engine and a drivetrain rather than complete cars. The owner would then visit a carrossier, who transformed that foundation into something very personal: a touring car, a roadster, or a cabriolet often in a style never seen before. The only limitations were money, engineering, and imagination. It was the golden age, from which the Concours as we know it today was born. But as cars became safer, more complex, and more difficult to customize on leaving the factory, the era of commissioning unique automobiles came to a close, and elegance competitions evolved to celebrate something different: custodianship.

Today, these events are no longer simply competitions among automobiles. They are some of the last places where craftsmanship, collecting, diplomacy, and national identity intersect in public, with each Concours revealing a different idea of luxury according to where it takes place. For this reason, Concours events have become genuine soft-power venues. Increasingly, governments, manufacturers, and royal households all recognize the peculiar influence these gatherings possess. A Concours offers something few cultural events can, namely a place where collectors, designers, diplomats, and industrialists mingle under the apparent innocent pretext of admiring beautiful machines. A Concours is a low-friction, diplomatic space: apolitical on the surface but full of the same status-signaling, relationship-building, and cultural projection that takes place at any major summit. A country hosting a world-class Concours is making a statement about its taste, its wealth, its openness to global collectors, and its claim to a seat at the table of design culture, much the way hosting the Olympics or a biennale does, only with a more focused, wealthier audience. In that sense, the Concours d’Elegance has evolved from a niche ritual into something closer to a traveling congress on taste, where craftsmanship is the shared language, but notions of luxury, heritage, and worth are established and upheld according to the setting, be it a royal residence or a Buddhist temple.

This May, as the fog shrouding Lake Como finally lifted and the sun hit the manicured lawns and gravel driveways of Villa d’Este, guests gathered for the Concorso d’Eleganza were treated to an almost overwhelming array of vintage vehicles. All maintained in a historically correct, unmodified state, of course, or precisely restored as per the original specifications. Modifications are only accepted if they occurred during the car’s historical operational period, with a 1937 BMW 328 Mille Miglia Roadster “Bügelfalte” taking the “Trophy BMW Group—Best of Show.” This year’s theme of “Future Needs Heritage” could apply to any of the world’s grand Concours. Villa d’Este continues to set the bar—and the tone—for the genre.

The other destination on the global map is Pebble Beach. What began in 1950 as an afterthought to a road race through a California forest, a modest gathering on a practice tee outside the Del Monte Lodge, has possibly become the single most consequential hour in the collector-car calendar on the 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links each August. Since the 1970s, tradition has held that the Concours Chairman (Sandra Button, who has held the role for 40 years and is stepping down this October) personally receives each car as it crosses onto the show field, a small ceremony that perfectly captures the event’s ethos.

Across the Atlantic, the UK’s Concours of Elegance moved among Britain’s royal residences since its inception in 2012—Windsor Castle, St James’s Palace, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh—before settling for good into Hampton Court Palace, the former seat of Henry VIII. The Tudor architecture and the world’s oldest hedge maze provide a suitably grand setting for the historical cars on show. Concours Patron Prince Michael of Kent has been known to actively participate, once taking the legendary 1933 Napier-Railton Special for an impromptu spin. The Isles also play host to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where elegance has been measured in decibels since 1993: The driveway of Goodwood House serves as the racetrack for what is known as the Hillclimb, with drivers encouraged to steer their vintage motorcars “in anger.” Participating vehicles also vie for attention with artist Gerry Judah’s monumental sculptures, seeing as a new one is commissioned each year. This year’s main attraction was a collaboration with Singer Vehicle Design, an American company that specializes in restoring and modifying Porsches, turning three 911s—Classic, Classic Turbo, and DLS—into a gravity-defying work of art.

The Concorso d’Eleganza Japan takes a more restrained approach. The venue there is the Yakushiji Temple in Nara, which was founded in 680 by Emperor Tenmu and today is a UNESCO World Heritage site. “Best of Show” in 2026 was awarded to the 1928 Rolls-Royce prototype sports model Phantom ‘17EX’, once owned by the Maharaja of Kashmir (it also won at the Valletta Concours d’Elegance in Malta in 2024). This February, the Concorso Italiano UAE returned to Dubai for its fourth edition; as the name suggests, only Italian cars compete. The newest addition to the global calendar is Sweden’s Aurora, launched as recently as 2024 by Filip Larsson and Christian von Koenigsegg. The Scandinavian Concours is staged in the coastal town of Båstad each June. Here, hypercars are treated with the same reverence that Villa d’Este bestows on pre-war one-offs, although classic cars are also in attendance.

The south of Spain has always attracted people who enjoy exceptional cars, and the Concurso de Elegancia expands on the fantasy of what driving on the Costa del Sol means: pulling up outside a chic hotel, leaving the coast behind, disappearing into the hills, and finding the sort of road on which an engine can clear its throat while it accelerates toward the red line. Andalucía is well suited to this. It moves quickly from sea to mountains; its roads rise and fall through olive groves and cork forests, and its long relationship with motorsport means the region has several serious circuits on which cars can be understood rather more completely than they can from behind a velvet rope, in this case, Ascari. So, what are the highlights this year? On the final day, competing cars will travel to Gibraltar International Airport, where drivers can do laps right on the runway beneath the famous Rock. The setting is dramatic enough before a car even turns a wheel; once an engine gathers speed on the runway, it becomes something else entirely. One of the awards will recognize the best-sounding car, which is perhaps subjective, certainly unnecessary, and absolutely worth arguing about. Like any Concours d’ Elegance.