Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance 2026

“The cars that show up to Pebble Beach are not…”

For one Sunday morning, the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach becomes the most beautiful parking lot on earth: roughly 200 of the finest collector automobiles in history, side by side on grass overlooking Carmel Bay, a 1930s Duesenberg parked next to a 1960s Ferrari racing prototype parked next to an early American speedster most people have only seen in a history book.

The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is one of the most celebrated automotive events in the world, and the 2026 edition is the 75th anniversary - the most historically significant in its run. It serves as the capstone of Monterey Car Week, a ten-day celebration that turns the Monterey Peninsula each August into the automotive capital of the world; auctions, road tours, race events, and manufacturer debuts all lead to this Sunday centerpiece, where each car is judged on historical accuracy, technical merit, and provenance. The crowd is a mix of serious collectors, first-time attendees who do not know a thing about cars but felt pulled to come anyway, and journalists who have covered this for twenty years and still find something new - reverent but not stuffy, because the cars earn the quiet. It is worth attending even if you cannot tell a coachbuilder from a coupe. The 75th anniversary class features Ferrari as the primary marque, with special tributes to NART competition cars and the storied coachbuilder Vignale, plus new classes for Early American Speedsters, Classic Streamliners, and Japanese Motorsports spanning more than a century of design.

What first-timers get wrong is arriving late. The show field opens to credentialed spectators at 8am; judging begins at 1:30pm. Come early, let your eyes lead you, and allow at least four hours to walk the full field. The 1st Fairway will be dominated by more than 100 Ferrari cars for the 75th anniversary, so plan your time accordingly. Tickets are digital and emailed in mid-July - print or save to your phone - and the event sells out. This earns its place not because of the cars, extraordinary as they are, but because of what it represents: a genuine pilgrimage for a global community of people who believe the automobile is one of the great objects of the 20th century. The 18th fairway, the ocean behind it, the fog that sometimes rolls in from Carmel Bay - there is no other setting like this anywhere. Tickets and information: pebblebeachconcours.net.