NEC Classic Motor Show 2026 opens in Birmingham on 13 November

Dates, venue and tickets

The Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show opens at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday 13 November and runs to Sunday 15 November 2026. It is organised with Lancaster Insurance as headline sponsor and Iconic Auctioneers as the auction partner, and it fills seven halls of the NEC with more than 3,000 classic cars and motorcycles, over 320 car clubs and more than 450 specialist traders and autojumble stalls, according to the show's own site. Advance tickets are sold through necclassicmotorshow.com, with single day and three day passes and family tickets, and the show closes online advance sales the night before it opens.

The show is a fixture that this desk's beat already reports on every year. Octane's report on the 2025 edition recorded nearly 73,000 enthusiasts over the three days, which Jaguar Drivers' Club put at an exact 72,738, a show record at the time.

What's new on the show floor

The headline debutant for 2026 is the Jaguar XJ13, the one off, never raced Le Mans prototype from the 1960s, on loan from the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust and brought to the NEC by Tyrrell's Classic Workshop. Magneto, which has covered the show's build up, reports the car's value at £30 million, making it the most valuable car on the floor. It will be shown alongside Jaguar's own XJ220 concept prototype, marking 30 years since the XJ220 production car and the XK8.

Other debutants named by show reporting include a 1921 Standard SLO, a Jaguar XJ40 fire tender, the TVR Tuscan S used in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, a 1991 Mazda MX-5 Le Mans Edition and a heavily rebuilt 1967 Morris Minor.

The auction floor: Hailwood's Honda and Clarkson's cars

Iconic Auctioneers runs its sale across the weekend, with 160 cars going under the hammer on the Saturday, 212 cars and 250 motorcycles on the Sunday, and a combined estimate of more than £16 million. The motorcycle headline is Mike Hailwood's 1966 works Honda RC173, the bike he rode to the 350cc world championship that year, which Iconic Auctioneers lists with a public estimate and which several specialist titles have reported as running into six figures.

On the car side, television presenter Jeremy Clarkson is consigning three cars with no reserve on the Saturday, including a 1982 Lancia Montecarlo Spider used in the final episode of The Grand Tour, a 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6 and a 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V, both from later Clarkson, Hammond and May films. For comparison, last year's Iconic sale at the same show raised £11 million in total, led by a 1990 Ford RS200 S at £382,500 and a Jaguar record of £157,500 for a 1978 Jaguar XJC V12.

Following it from India

There is no Indian leg of the NEC Classic Motor Show and no ticketed livestream for overseas readers. For Indian enthusiasts, the practical way to follow it is the same as for most of this desk's beat, through the detailed show floor reports that Octane and Magneto file during and after the weekend, and through the auction results Iconic Auctioneers posts once the hammer falls on the Sunday. Those reports are also the record this desk and Indian clubs will cite when the show's debutants and sale prices come up at home.

Sources

• Classic Motor Show 2026 official site
• NEC Classic Motor Show returns on November 13-15, 2026, with a £30 million Jaguar XJ13, Magneto
• Giant Classic Motor Show is declared best for years, Octane Magazine
• Record attendees at NEC Classic Motor Show, Jaguar Drivers' Club
• NEC Classic Motor Show 2026: the debutants, Clarkson's cars and a £16m sale, classiccarclubs.uk