The 2026 Motorhome and Caravan Show drew 95,816 visitors to the NEC from 13 to 18 October. NCC Events says the turnout reaffirms the sector’s strong appeal. Look at the number next to last year’s and it reads differently.

In 2025 the show pulled 96,149 visitors, up 0.9% on 2024. This year is down about 330 on that. Three years running, the gate has held around 95,000 to 96,000.

That is not decline. It is a plateau. And a plateau is a signal worth reading, because the show did all this in a soft market.

What 95,816 Visitors Actually Tells You

Footfall at the UK’s biggest leisure vehicle show has stopped growing. The event is mature. It is not going to hand you a bigger crowd next October.

Set that against the backdrop. The NCC has acknowledged that touring caravan retail sales have been falling. Towsure, back at the show after six years, said plainly it was happy with sales “in a subdued market”.

That is the honest read on 2026 trading, and it matches what the numbers have been telling dealers all year.

So here is the thing that matters. Attendance held flat, yet exhibitors reported solid trade. Coachman put sales up over 25% on last year. MiRiDER reported around 15% up. PJ Outdoors, around 10%. Several said they beat their 2025 results.

Treat those figures as a direction of travel, not audited results. They are the exhibitors’ own numbers, gathered for the organiser’s round-up. The pattern across them is still worth something.

Flat footfall, steady trade. That tells you the people walking the halls are not browsers. They are buyers who have done the homework and arrived ready to commit. In a soft market, the casual visitor stays home. The one who turns up means it.

The organisers have leaned into footfall for a while, booking names like Kelvin Fletcher and Helen Skelton to pull crowds through the doors. That push for consumer footfall works for the venue.

For a dealer, the celebrity on the stage is not the point. The buyer standing on your stand is.

What It Means for UK Dealers

If you treat this show as a footfall event, you will flatten with it. The gate has levelled off. Chasing a bigger crowd next year is chasing a number that is not moving.

The win is not the gate. It is the leads behind it.

Hillside Leisure said it left with quality leads to follow up. PenPod Overland, at the October show for the first time, talked about a huge volume of leads and deposits taken.

That is the asset the show produced. Most of it converts in the weeks after the halls empty, not on the day.

So this month, not next quarter:

  • Follow up every show lead inside five working days. Interest cools fast once a buyer is home and back on Google.
  • Brief your sales team on what actually drew interest. Swift’s new Merlin and Carrera campervans and the Swift Conqueror 565. Bailey’s Unicorn family and the Ascent 69-4TS. Auto-Trail’s new Adventure coach-built range. These are the models buyers will be searching for by name.
  • Check what your website does when one of those buyers lands on it. A researched buyer who met you at the NEC will look you up before they call. If your stock pages hide specs in a PDF, you are losing the sale you just earned.

The show put warm, qualified buyers in front of you. Turning them into sales is your job, not the organiser’s.

The Battle Is Shifting From Footfall to Follow-Up

For years the measure of a good show was the gate. Bigger crowd, better year. That era is closing. The crowd has levelled off and it is likely to stay level.

The dealers who win the next few years will not be the ones counting visitors. They will be the ones counting conversions: how fast they followed up, how well their website sold, how many of those researched, serious buyers they closed while the competition was still admiring the attendance figure.

The next test comes soon. The Caravan, Camping and Motorhome Show returns to the NEC from 16 to 21 February 2027.

Before then, look at your last show’s leads. How many did you actually convert? That answer, not the gate, tells you how 2027 is going to go.