FLIBS 2026: The Superyacht Season Sets Sail

Every autumn, just before the Caribbean charter season opens, Fort Lauderdale stops being a city with a lot of boats and becomes a city organised around them. From October 28 to November 1, the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, known to everyone in the trade simply as FLIBS, takes over the waterfront for the 67th time.

The numbers have long since stopped needing introduction. More than 1,300 vessels, over 1,000 exhibitors and a visitor count north of 100,000, nearly half of whom travel in from outside Florida. What makes the show interesting is not the scale. It is the fact that, for five days, the people who build, sell, crew, finance and charter the world's superyachts are all within a shuttle ride of one another.

That proximity is the point. FLIBS is a trade show dressed as a waterfront festival, and the most consequential conversations rarely happen at a booth.

A city built for this

Few places could host a show like this. Fort Lauderdale's network of canals earned it the nickname "the Venice of America" long before anyone called it the Yachting Capital of the World. The show itself began in 1959 as a modest local showcase and grew, decade by decade, into the largest in-water boat show on the planet.

The industry behind it is substantial. The Marine Industries Association of South Florida, which owns the show, counts more than 500 member businesses across Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, and the regional marine economy supports some 142,000 jobs. Refit yards, brokers, provisioners, crew agencies and captains all call this stretch of coast home. FLIBS is, in effect, the week the whole ecosystem opens its doors at once.

The official show

Informa Markets produce FLIBS and runs Wednesday, October 28 through Sunday, November 1, across six official sites strung along the Intracoastal: Bahia Mar Yachting Center at the centre, with Las Olas Marina, Hall of Fame Marina, Pier Sixty-Six Marina, the Superyacht Village at Pier Sixty-Six South, and the Broward County Convention Center, which doubles as the show's transport hub.

The geography matters. Bahia Mar is the public heart of the show, where the brokerage fleet and the major production builders set up. The Superyacht Village is where the largest vessels berth alongside the toys that accompany them, from helicopters and personal submarines to collectible cars. The Convention Center handles the sportfishers, center consoles, diving gear and personal watercraft that keep the regional industry running, and it is where families find The Blue Wild ocean exhibits, the FLIBS Kids Corner and Don Dingman's "Hook the Future" fishing clinics, which send young anglers home with a rod and reel of their own.

The headline hull this year is unusual. Among the superyachts confirmed for the show is the 92.9-metre Oceanco Draak. Owned by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, who also became majority owner of Oceanco itself in 2025, she has been rebuilt as a research and support companion to his 111-metre Leviathan, trading spas and lounges for cranes, dive equipment and decompression chambers. It is a fitting symbol of where the top of the market is heading: toward exploration, science and capability rather than pure leisure.

The fleet heads for the horizon

The charter debuts tell the same story. The largest newcomer is Scintilla Maris, a 45.6-metre former fishing trawler converted into an expedition yacht by Damen Maaskant, with interiors by Vripack and a range of some 9,000 nautical miles. Bering Yachts' Heeus carries a beach club and a sauna across a 5,000-mile range. Stellamar, a 35-metre Cantiere delle Marche with interiors by Francesco Paszkowski and a World Superyacht Award to her name, can cover 5,500 nautical miles between fuel stops.

Not every debut is built for the high latitudes. The 40-metre Mangusta Beachouse is an open-decked performance yacht designed for sunshine and speed, Westport's UnWined offers a shallow draft suited to the Bahamas banks, and Azimut's Penja pairs a Salvagni Architetti interior with a beach club and a floating pool. Further along the docks, the 60-metre Feadship Rock.It is the largest listed charter yacht expected at the show.

The commercial weight is considerable. Last year, roughly a third of the 187 yachts on show were available for charter, at average weekly rates above $152,000, and 444 crew were on hand to show guests what life aboard looks like. For charter brokers, FLIBS is the moment to lock in winter bookings before the fleet scatters to the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

Prizes and progress

FLIBS also hands out the trophies that builders quote in their brochures for the following year. The Best of Show award has gone to the Mangusta Oceano 50 and the Azimut Grande 36m in recent editions, and in 2024 the judges broke with tradition to name two winners. Alongside it, the Marine Research Hub Innovation and Sustainability Awards, now in their fourth year, recognise blue-green technology, sustainable design and conservation projects among the show's exhibitors.

The seminar programme runs in parallel, from general boating and fishing clinics to the RefitX series aimed at owners and captains planning major yard work. Refit is quietly one of South Florida's biggest marine businesses, and these sessions are where many of next year's projects begin.

The economic case is made without much modesty. Organisers put the show's annual impact at an estimated $1.79 billion, supporting more than 100,000 jobs across the region.

Off the docks

The show closes at 7pm most nights. Fort Lauderdale does not.

The Concours. Friday night belongs to the Fort Lauderdale Concours, the show's one genuinely social set piece. Classic cars, fashion, fine and pop art and live music are staged against the superyachts, with an open bar for those who bought the add-on to a Windward VIP ticket. It is where the boat crowd and the car crowd overlap, and it is the closest FLIBS comes to a Monaco evening.

The VIP geography has shifted. The Windward VIP Club stays at Superyacht Village, but its second outpost, the Cabana Club, has moved to Bahia Mar. Chefs Ryan O'Sullivan of Hell's Kitchen and Dave White of Below Deck cook across both. Nearby, Goslings Island Bar returns to the water between Docks C and D, serving the show's official rum. Expect the cabana to become the show's unofficial meeting room.

The crew economy. The most telling addition this year is a floating pickleball court at Las Olas Marina, with a tournament open only to yacht crew. Crew are the show's invisible workforce and, increasingly, its most connected audience. They know which owners are buying, which captains are moving and which yards are behind schedule. A space built for them is a small signal that the industry has noticed.

The brokerage circuit. Much of the real business at FLIBS runs on appointment. The large brokerage houses arrive with curated yacht lists, private viewings and their own partner events, several of which are only announced to clients. Superyacht Village has also traditionally hosted an evening chef competition for yacht cooks, one of the few places where onboard talent is on display.

The city as venue. Show week fills Fort Lauderdale's beachfront hotels, from the redeveloped Pier Sixty-Six to the Conrad, the W and the Ritz-Carlton, and the Las Olas dining strip runs at full tilt. The aft deck dinners, broker cocktails and owner receptions that happen in and around those addresses are where FLIBS does much of its deciding.

Who shows up, and why it matters

FLIBS draws an audience that is unusually hard to find in one place. Owners and buyers. Captains and crew. Shipyards from the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Charter brokers, designers, financiers and the service economy that keeps a superyacht running. Nearly half arrive from outside Florida.

For brands outside marine, that mix is the opportunity. Luxury automotive already treats the show as home turf through the Concours. Spirits, fashion, watches, wellness and private aviation sit naturally beside it. The brands that do well at FLIBS tend to show up where the conversations happen, at the cabana, on the aft deck, at the Friday night event, rather than at the end of a long dock.

The show is also a calendar signal. It follows the Monaco Yacht Show by a month and hands the season over to the Caribbean charter shows in December. Closer to home, it sets the tone for the South Florida run that continues through Art Basel Miami Beach and on to the Miami and Palm Beach boat shows in spring. What is said on the docks in Fort Lauderdale tends to echo for months.

If you go

Tickets are sold online only at flibs.com, with no box office on site. Wednesday is the preview day and the quietest on the docks, which makes it the best day for serious viewing. Active military members and veterans can request a complimentary general admission ticket for Sunday.

Parking at the Convention Center is a flat $40 a day, and from there shuttles and golf carts link the sites free of charge. The water taxi runs $15 a day and is the most scenic way between marinas, while Brightline is the easiest way in from Palm Beach or Miami. Book hotels early: show week is the peak of Fort Lauderdale's year.

FLIBS will always be sold on its boats. But the most valuable hours of the week happen between the docks, after the gates close, in the rooms most visitors never see. That is the show worth showing up for.