For ten days every August, a twenty-mile stretch of the California coast becomes the centre of the collector car world. Monterey Car Week is not one event — it is roughly two dozen of them, layered on top of each other across the Peninsula, from free street gatherings in downtown Monterey to a concours lawn where the entry requirement is owning a car worth eight figures.
It is also the week the market sets its prices, manufacturers launch their halo cars, and a good chunk of the world’s rarest machinery changes hands. This is our standing guide to how the week works, what each event is for, how to attend without wasting three days in traffic, and what the most recent edition actually produced.
Monterey Car Week is a ten-day cluster of collector car events held every August on California’s Monterey Peninsula, anchored by the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on the final Sunday. It takes in historic racing at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the Quail Motorsports Gathering, five major collector car auctions, dozens of manufacturer debuts and a large number of free public events in Monterey, Carmel and Pacific Grove. The 2027 Concours — the 76th — is set for Sunday 15 August 2027, with the surrounding week running from around 11 August.
There is no single organisation that runs Monterey Car Week and no master ticket. What exists is the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, running since 1950, and seventy-odd years of other events arranging themselves around it because that is where the cars and the buyers already are.
That accretion is why the week feels so uneven, and why first-timers get it wrong. Some events cost several hundred dollars and need booking months out. Others are free, happen on a public street, and are among the best car-watching of the entire week. The skill is knowing which is which before you book flights.
The other thing to understand is that Monterey Car Week runs on two economies at once. There is the judged, historical world of concours lawns, class awards and provenance research, and there is the commercial world of auctions, private sales and product launches. They share a postcode for ten days and they feed each other constantly. A class win on Sunday can add meaningfully to what the same car makes at auction the following August.
The calendar shifts by a day or two each year, but the rhythm of Monterey Car Week is remarkably consistent. Here is the pattern to plan against.
| When | What happens | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| First weekend | Downtown Monterey kickoff, pre-reunion racing at Laguna Seca | Enthusiasts. Free or cheap, open paddocks, low crowds |
| Mon–Wed | Auction previews open; cars arrive on the Peninsula | Buyers and browsers. The best time to inspect cars properly |
| Wed–Sat | Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion | Historic racing at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca |
| Thursday | Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance | Everyone. Concours entrants drive public roads — free to watch |
| Thu–Sat | The five major auctions | Buyers, sellers, and anyone who wants to see where the market is |
| Friday | The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering | Industry. The week’s densest concentration of world debuts |
| Saturday | Concours d’Lemons, Exotics on Broadway, Carmel street events | The public. Counter-programming, and genuinely good |
| Final Sunday | Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance | The crescendo. Best of Show on the 18th fairway |
If you can only come for part of it, the honest advice is Thursday to Sunday. You get the Tour d’Elegance, the auction rooms at full noise, the Quail if you have a ticket, the free Saturday events and the Concours itself. The opening weekend is lovely and relaxed, but the week’s centre of gravity is at the end.
The Concours has run since 1950 and is the reason everything else exists. Cars are invited, not entered — the selection committee builds the field around themed classes, marque anniversaries and cars that have never been shown publicly. Judging happens on the 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links on the final Sunday of Monterey Car Week, and Best of Show is announced from the awards ramp in the late afternoon.
General admission gets you onto the show field for the full day of judging. Above that sit a series of hospitality tiers — Club d’Elegance, the Concours Gallery, the Pavilion, the Patron’s Patio and Chairman’s Hospitality at The Lodge — which add catering, hosted bars and seated views of the awards ramp. Prices are not published far ahead; tickets for the following year typically go on sale in late autumn.
One practical note that saves a wasted morning: the Concours field is enormous and the light is best early. Gates open before most people arrive, the fog usually burns off mid-morning, and the cars are far easier to study and photograph before the crowd builds. By early afternoon the fairway is shoulder to shoulder.
Held on the Friday at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley, this is where the industry does its launching. If a manufacturer has a limited-run hypercar to announce, it goes on the Concept Lawn at The Quail. It is a garden party with catering and a strict cap on numbers, and tickets sell out through a lottery or waiting list every year.
The Quail also runs its own judged classes alongside the debuts. Recent themes have included the Route 66 centennial, the Lamborghini Diablo, the legacy of Japanese grand tourers and a returning Ferrari F40 class. It is the one event of Monterey Car Week where the past and the not-yet-released sit thirty feet apart.
Five houses — RM Sotheby’s, Gooding Christie’s, Broad Arrow, Mecum and Bonhams — run concurrent sales across roughly three days in the middle of Monterey Car Week. Between them they offer well over a thousand lots, and the totals have become the collector market’s annual scorecard.
The previews are the underrated part. In the days before the hammer falls, every car is on display, unroped, with its documentation folder open beside it. You can spend a morning studying cars you will never otherwise get within ten feet of, for the price of a catalogue. For the numbers themselves — totals, top sales, sell-through and which categories are cooling — we keep a running record in our Monterey Car Week auction results archive.
You can have an excellent Monterey Car Week without buying a single premium ticket, and plenty of regulars do exactly that.
The catch is logistics rather than money. Peninsula traffic during Monterey Car Week is severe, parking near the popular events fills early, and hotel rooms are booked and priced months out. Budget more time between events than seems reasonable, and consider staying inland in Salinas or Marina if Peninsula rates have gone silly.
The 76th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance falls on Sunday 15 August 2027. The organisers have published the surrounding schedule, which is the firmest anchor you can plan Monterey Car Week around.
| 2027 event | Dates |
|---|---|
| Pebble Beach Motoring Classic | 2–11 August |
| Pebble Beach Auctions | 11–14 August |
| Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance | 12 August |
| Concours Village | 12–15 August |
| Pebble Beach Classic Car Forum | 12–14 August |
| Pebble Beach RetroAuto | 12–15 August |
| 76th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance | 15 August |
Book accommodation before you book anything else. Peninsula rooms for Monterey Car Week are gone, or triple-priced, by the spring. Flights into Monterey Regional are limited and expensive that week; San Jose is a comfortable drive and usually far cheaper.
The 2026 edition ran 7–16 August and was, by most measures, the biggest in the event’s history. Here is what it actually produced.
Best of Show at the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance went to a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster — pre-war American coachwork taking the top honour at the anniversary edition, which is about as on-brand as Pebble Beach gets.
To mark 60 years of the Miura, Lamborghini gathered 43 examples at Pebble Beach — by the company’s own account the largest assembly of Miuras ever brought together anywhere. The display needed the 3rd fairway, opened for the first time because the 18th had been running at capacity for years. Fewer than 800 Miuras were built across seven years, and they are scattered across private collections worldwide, which makes the logistics more impressive than the number suggests.
The Miura matters beyond nostalgia. Engine behind the driver, beauty as standard equipment, scarcity as strategy — that formula is the template the entire exotic market still runs on, and it was written in 1966.
Lamborghini also showed a Revuelto Miura 60° Homage, a 99-car run in nine colours drawn from the original Miura palette, and gave the Urus SE Performante its Monterey Car Week outing.
The 2026 auctions totalled roughly $756 million by Hagerty’s count, up about 73% on 2025 and past every previous record. Eleven cars sold for eight figures. A 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe made $42,905,000, the most expensive American car ever sold at auction, and the first production Ferrari Luce made $40,000,000 in a charity lot for the Ferrari Foundation. The full breakdown — including which categories went backwards in the same week — is in our auction results archive.
Most of the collector car market has no public price. Cars trade privately, between dealers and collectors, at numbers nobody publishes. Monterey Car Week is the one moment each year when a meaningful slice of that market transacts in the open, with catalogues, estimates and hammer prices anyone can read.
That is why the ripple lasts all year. Insurers reset agreed values against it. Lenders adjust what they will advance. Private sellers anchor their asking prices to it, sometimes long after the numbers have moved. And manufacturers time their limited-run announcements to it, because the buyers for a 64-car V12 are all standing on the same lawn that Friday.
The trap is treating one week’s headline as a valuation. A record total is not the same as broad appreciation, and in 2026 it very clearly was not. If you are working out what your own car is worth, our guide to which exotic car values are actually appreciating and our collector car documentation guide are better starting points than any Monterey Car Week headline.
Our family has been in the car business for more than a century, and Monterey Car Week is still the one week we clear the calendar for. It is the best education in this market that money can buy, and a surprising amount of it is free.
If the week has you thinking about your own garage, browse our inventory or list your car with us. New to this end of the market? Start with our first-time exotic car buyer’s guide.
A ten-day cluster of collector car events held every August on California’s Monterey Peninsula. It is not one organisation or one ticket: it takes in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, historic racing at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the Quail Motorsports Gathering, five major auctions, dozens of manufacturer debuts and many free public events across Monterey, Carmel and Pacific Grove.
The 76th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is on Sunday 15 August 2027. The published Pebble Beach schedule runs the auctions 11-14 August, the Tour d’Elegance on 12 August, and Concours Village and RetroAuto 12-15 August. Other Monterey Car Week events set their own dates around that anchor.
It ranges from nothing to several thousand dollars. The Tour d’Elegance, the downtown Monterey kickoff, the Carmel and Pacific Grove street events, Exotics on Broadway and Concours d’Lemons are all free. Pebble Beach Concours general admission is ticketed, with hospitality tiers above it, and The Quail is capped and sells out. Accommodation is usually the largest cost.
The 75th Pebble Beach Concours gave Best of Show to a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster. Lamborghini gathered 43 Miuras for the model’s 60th anniversary, the largest assembly ever. The Quail saw debuts including the Bugatti Destrier, Lamborghini Revuelto SV, Aston Martin Valen and Gordon Murray Special Vehicles S1. The auctions set a record at roughly $756 million.
Yes, and arguably more so. The auction previews let you inspect cars unroped with their documentation open, for the price of a catalogue. The Tour d’Elegance is free and shows the cars being driven rather than parked. The free street events in Carmel, Pacific Grove and Seaside are among the best car-watching anywhere.
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is one event, held on the final Sunday, and it has run since 1950. Monterey Car Week is the whole ten-day cluster that grew up around it: the auctions, the racing, The Quail, the street events and everything else. The Concours is the anchor, not the whole week.
Owning an exotic car is not about speed or luxury- It’s about embracing an experience, where the road becomes your canvas and the car, your masterpiece.
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