What is the Canton Fair? A plain explanation for buyers

The short version

Think of the Canton Fair as three consecutive trade shows sharing a building. Phase 1 is electrical and industrial: electronics, appliances, lighting, machinery, vehicles, tools. Phase 2 is the home: building materials, bathroom, furniture, kitchenware, ceramics, decor, gifts. Phase 3 is people: toys, baby, clothing, shoes, bags, textiles, stationery, health, food. Each phase runs five days, then the halls are cleared over three days and a different set of exhibitors moves in.

A buyer registers online, collects a badge, walks the halls, talks to factories, collects price sheets and samples, and places orders in the weeks afterwards. There is no entry fee. The cost of going is the flight, the hotel, and the days.

Where it came from

The first session opened in April 1957, when the People’s Republic had almost no other channel for selling to the outside world. For thirty years it was the place where China’s state trading corporations met foreign buyers twice a year, and it ran without a break through everything the country went through in that time. After 1978 the exhibitors changed from state corporations to factories and, later, private companies; the buyers changed from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand. The fair moved from the old Liuhua complex in the city centre to the purpose-built Pazhou complex between 2004 and 2008, adopted the three-phase format in 2008, went online only for the 2020 to 2022 sessions, and has been back in person since April 2023. The session in October 2026 is the 140th.

How it is organised

The fair is run by the China Foreign Trade Centre, an arm of the Ministry of Commerce. That is worth knowing because it explains most of the fair’s habits. It is not a commercial show that sells floor space to whoever pays. Booths are allocated through provincial and municipal trade delegations on a quota, with weight given to a company’s export record, brand, patents and product quality. Walk any aisle and the sign overhead names the delegation: Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong. A factory that has held a booth for ten sessions has been exporting for at least that long.

Within each phase, exhibitors are grouped by product section: 50-odd sections across the three phases, from “Household Electrical Appliances” to “Cases and Bags”. Our catalogue uses the same sections, which is why the categories page looks the way it does.

A separate International Pavilion hosts foreign exhibitors, a few hundred companies per session, mostly food, consumer goods and machinery from Asia and Europe selling into China. Overseas buyers can ignore it unless they are looking for a non-Chinese supplier.

Who exhibits, and how they get a booth

About 32,000 companies exhibited at the 139th session, of which around 3,900 were showing for the first time. The great majority are manufacturers. Trading companies exhibit too, particularly where a province’s export trade runs through them, but far less than on the online marketplaces, and it is normally clear from the catalogue which is which.

The organisers single out about 3,000 “brand exhibitors” per session: companies with registered brands, high export volumes and, in most cases, their own factories. Their stands are the large ones. The label is a useful filter for a buyer looking for a capable factory, and a useless one for a buyer looking for the cheapest price.

Who attends

314,000 overseas buyers came to the spring 2026 session from 220 countries and regions, a record. Roughly two thirds were from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, where the fair is the default place to source; a third from Europe, North America and Oceania. Domestic Chinese buyers are admitted as well, so the halls are fuller than the overseas number suggests.

The overseas crowd is mostly importers, wholesalers, distributors and retail buyers, with a visible and growing share of e-commerce sellers. Most are trade professionals on their fifth or fifteenth visit. First-timers are welcome and easy to spot: they are the ones carrying eleven catalogues at 11 in the morning.

What the Canton Fair is not

• Not a wholesale market. Yiwu, and the markets around Guangzhou’s railway station, sell from stock in small lots. The fair sells production capacity in container lots. The last afternoon of a phase, when samples are sold off, is the only exception.
• Not a verified-supplier list. Having a booth means a delegation put a company forward. It does not mean the company has the factory it describes, or that the certificate on the wall is for the product on the table. That checking is on you, or on someone you pay; see finding suppliers.
• Not cheap to attend, despite free entry. Hotels within reach double or triple for the fair weeks. A five-day trip from Europe or North America costs from about US$3,000 by the time you are home; from India, Southeast Asia or the Gulf, less than half that. See the budget guide.
• Not the only way to reach these factories. The same companies list on Canton Fair Online all year, and we index about 20,000 of them with prices and landed costs. The fair is the fastest way to meet many of them at once; it is not the only way to buy from them.

Is it worth going?

Yes, if at least one of these is true: you buy in container quantities; you need to develop a private-label product and want to meet the factory; you buy across several categories and want to compare many suppliers in a week; you have been burned by a supplier you never met. A single trip usually pays for itself in the price difference on one container, because the quotes you get with three competing factories in your notebook are different from the quotes you get by email.

No, if you are testing a product idea with a US$3,000 order, or you sell a single SKU and already have a supplier who performs. In that case the money is better spent having someone on the ground check the supplier and collect quotes for you, which is what our desk exists to do.

Exhibiting as a foreign company

Foreign companies exhibit in the International Pavilion, which is run by a separate office (the Canton Fair International Pavilion, cief.cantonfair.org.cn). Booths are sold per 9 m² standard unit, with a package that includes the shell scheme and a listing; the office publishes rates each session. The audience for a foreign exhibitor is Chinese distributors and importers, plus overseas buyers passing through. If you are reading this as a buyer, you do not need it.