The Concours of Elegance, begun inside Windsor Castle in 2012, returned sixty invited historic cars to the Fountain Court gardens at Hampton Court Palace in September 2026.
The Concours of Elegance brought sixty invited cars to the Fountain Court gardens of Hampton Court Palace in East Molesey, Surrey, from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 September 2026.
Thorough Events staged the first edition inside the walls of Windsor Castle in September 2012, sixty historic cars drawn up as a tribute to the Diamond Jubilee. It moved to the garden of St James’s Palace in 2013 and reached Hampton Court in 2014.
The form is older than the motor car. The concours d’élégance began in seventeenth-century France, where the aristocracy paraded ornate carriages through the parks of Paris.
A concours differs from a car show in two ways. The cars are invited rather than entered, and the owners judge one another rather than a panel. Most of the sixty asked each year have never been seen in Britain.
The Grand Départ, the field’s convoy exit through the crowd, has run since the 2013 edition at St James’s. In 2026 the sixty invited cars stood alongside hundreds more shown by car clubs, manufacturers and private collections.