Canton Fair 2026 Dates: Turning Them Into a Trip
· Updated August 21, 2026 
The Canton Fair dates look simple until you try to build a trip around them. Three phases, five days each, three days apart — and every one of those numbers changes what you should book. This page gives you the confirmed dates for the 140th session and then does the part most date pages skip: turning them into an actual plan.
Phase 1 October 15–19, 2026 · Phase 2 October 23–27, 2026 · Phase 3 October 31 – November 4, 2026
The 140th Canton Fair schedule
Two things about this schedule are worth noticing straight away.
The phases do not start on the same weekday. Phase 1 opens on a Thursday, Phase 2 on a Friday, Phase 3 on a Saturday. If you are used to assuming a fixed weekly rhythm, check the actual day before booking flights — a Monday arrival is the last day of Phase 1 but a week early for Phase 2.
The whole run spans three weeks. From the opening of Phase 1 to the close of Phase 3 is 15 October to 4 November. Anyone telling you “the Canton Fair is in October” is giving you a three-week window, not a date.
Which dates are yours
Booking flights before you have confirmed your phase is the most common and most expensive planning mistake with this event.
A few categories sit where instinct would not put them — furniture in Phase 1 rather than Phase 2, powered kitchen appliances in Phase 1 rather than with kitchenware. The full lookup, including the ones that catch people out, is in the guide to the three phases.
Working backwards from your dates
Once you have a phase, everything else is a countdown. Some of these have hard external deadlines and some do not, and knowing which is which prevents most trip disasters.
1. Confirm your phase — first, before anything else
Everything downstream depends on it, and changing it later means rebooking flights and hotels at short notice. Use the official exhibitor search to confirm your exact product rather than reasoning from the phase name.
2. Start the invitation application — this is the long pole
The official invitation supports your visa application, and a visa is the one item in this whole trip you cannot speed up by spending more money. Start it as soon as your phase is fixed.
3. Book flights and hotel — earlier than feels necessary
Fair weeks are the busiest period in the Guangzhou hotel calendar. Both price and availability move against you as the dates approach, and the phases are close enough together that demand stays high across the whole three weeks.
4. Apply for the buyer badge
Separate from the invitation and separate from the visa. This is what gets you through the door on the day, and it is easy to overlook because the other two feel more official.
5. Build your product list and shortlist exhibitors
The last step chronologically and the one that decides whether the trip works. Arrive with specifics: target price band, quantity, packaging requirement, and what you will not accept.
The full detail on steps 2 and 4, including what each stage asks of you, is in the registration and visa walkthrough.
How many days to book
A phase is five days. That does not mean you should book five.
The most common error is booking exactly the five fair days with a flight landing on the morning of day one. You will spend your first and best day tired, lost, and queueing for a badge instead of walking your sections.
If your products span two phases
The three-day gaps make this a much bigger decision than it looks on a calendar.
Those are real costs in flights, hotels and your own time. Four ways buyers handle it:
Pick one phase. Attend for your main category and handle the other through a permanent market, an existing supplier, or the year-round online platform. The usual choice, and usually correct for a first visit.
Send two people. Each prepares one phase properly rather than both being spread thin across three weeks.
Split across sessions. The fair runs every spring and autumn. Take one phase this session and the other next, with a properly prepared visit each time.
Stay through and use the gap. Covered below, and the option I recommend most.
The three days between phases
If you are staying through a gap, those three days are the highest-value time in your whole trip — and most people waste them.
You are already in the region. You have just met suppliers face to face, this week, and they remember you. That is a completely different position from emailing a factory cold from another country, and it is the moment when a factory visit is easiest to arrange.
1. Visit the factories of suppliers you just met
The single best use. Seeing the production behind a stand tells you more than any number of conversations at the stand itself, and the ask is far easier to make while the meeting is fresh.
2. Walk Guangzhou’s permanent markets
They are in the same city. Comparing fair pricing against market pricing on similar goods, while both are fresh, is information you cannot get any other way.
3. Do your follow-up while it is still useful
Writing to suppliers three days after meeting them, from a hotel in the same city, gets far better response rates than an email sent two weeks later from home.
Guangzhou’s own market clusters are mapped out in the guide to the city’s wholesale markets. If the co-ordination of factory visits during a fair week sounds like a job in itself, that is roughly what a local agent does at this time of year — the honest version of when it is worth paying for is in whether you need a Guangzhou sourcing agent.
Where you stay changes your working day
This is a dates question, not a comfort question. Fair weeks put the whole city under pressure, and the choice you make here decides how many usable hours you get.
The venue is fixed. Every session runs at the China Import and Export Fair Exhibition Hall on Yuejiang Zhong Road. That is helpful for planning: unlike a city with several venues, you know exactly what you are travelling to and from before you book anything.
Commute time is the real cost. An hour each way is two hours a day, which across five days is a full working day lost. On a trip where the whole point is time in the halls, that is expensive. Judge a hotel by how long it takes to reach the venue during fair-week traffic, not by how central it looks on a map.
Book before the crowd. Fair weeks are the busiest period in the Guangzhou hotel calendar, and because the three phases sit close together, demand stays high across the whole three-week run rather than easing between them. Availability tightens first, price follows.
One practical note on transport: Guangzhou traffic is heavy for most of the day and the metro network is extensive. A journey that takes fifty minutes by car often takes half that underground, and — more usefully during a fair week — you can predict it. Being able to say “I will be there in twenty-five minutes” and be right matters when you are scheduling supplier meetings back to back.
Planning the five days themselves
Having the dates is one thing; using them is another. A shape that holds up:
Day one is for walking, not talking. Cover your sections end to end, collect cards, photograph stand numbers. You are building a price range and a shortlist. Serious conversations on day one are wasted because you have no sense yet of what normal looks like.
Day two is the second pass. Return to the shortlist and ask the real questions: minimums, lead times, customising, certification, what happens if a batch is faulty.
Day three is samples. Narrow to a handful and get sample arrangements agreed in writing, including who pays and where they go.
Day four covers what you rushed. Sections you skimmed, plus anyone a supplier recommended. Referrals within a section are often the best leads of the trip.
Day five is loose ends and note-sorting. Do this before you fly, while you can still match a business card to a conversation.
The wider version of this — including what to do in the fortnight after you land, which is where orders actually get placed — is in the complete Canton Fair guide.
Future sessions
The fair has been held every spring and autumn since 1957 and has now run 139 sessions, so the twice-yearly rhythm is dependable even though exact dates shift.
Useful things to know when planning ahead:
Tell me what you buy and I will confirm your dates
Send your product list and I will tell you which phase holds it, how many days to book, and whether your range spans two phases — before anything is non-refundable.
Send an enquiryCommon questions
What are the Canton Fair 2026 autumn dates?
The 140th session runs in three phases. Phase 1, Advanced Manufacturing, is 15–19 October 2026. Phase 2, Quality Home Life, is 23–27 October. Phase 3, Better Life, is 31 October to 4 November. Each phase lasts five days with a three-day gap in between while the halls are rebuilt.
How long does the Canton Fair last?
Each phase runs five days, but the full event spans about three weeks from the opening of Phase 1 to the close of Phase 3. Most buyers attend one phase, so the practical answer for planning purposes is five days plus travel.
How many days should I book?
For a first visit or a broad list, book the five fair days plus a day either side. The early day covers jet lag, badge collection and finding the venue without pressure; the late day gives you revisits and time to organise notes. Three days can work if your list is narrow and you have been before.
Why is there a gap between phases?
Because the halls physically change over. Each phase holds completely different exhibitors, so the three days between phases are used to strip out one set of stands and build another. It is not a rest period, which is why the venue is not open during it.
Can I attend two phases in one trip?
Yes, but budget for around 13 days on the ground for two consecutive phases, or three weeks for Phase 1 and Phase 3. Many buyers instead pick one phase and handle the other category another way, or use the gap productively for factory visits and permanent markets in the region.
When is the spring Canton Fair?
The fair runs every spring and autumn in Guangzhou, and has done since 1957. Exact dates are confirmed per session, so check the official site for the session you are planning. The three-phase structure and the category split stay consistent between sessions, which makes repeat planning straightforward once you know your phase.
Questions & Comments
We read every one and reply within 24 hoursWorking out how many days to book, or what to do with the gap between phases? Ask below. Tell me your category and where you are flying from, and I will give you a straight answer on how long the trip needs to be.