There are boat shows, and then there is Düsseldorf. Every January, Messe Düsseldorf becomes a huge temporary city dedicated to boats and life on the water, with around 220,000 square metres of exhibition space, more than 1,500 exhibitors and visitors arriving from over 110 countries. With more than 200,000 people attending the 2026 edition, boot Düsseldorf remains the biggest indoor boat and watersports show in Europe — and, by the organisers’ own description, the world’s largest yacht and watersports trade fair.
For BRIG, though, the scale of the show is only part of the story. Düsseldorf is one of those rare moments when almost the entire BRIG family can be in the same place at the same time. The European teams are there, naturally, but so are colleagues and partners from much further afield — Australia, the USA, Canada and other parts of the world. Different markets, different languages and sometimes very different boating cultures, all gathered around the same boats. Our stand in Hall 9 became a little BRIG meeting point throughout the nine days of the show, with a steady stream of people coming through: existing owners dropping by to say hello, future owners climbing aboard and asking the questions you only really think of when you are standing inside the boat, and dealers, distributors and business partners discussing what comes next.
And that is perhaps what makes a boat show like Düsseldorf so enjoyable. The boats are obviously the reason everyone is there, but after a while it becomes just as much about the people around them. Someone arrives because they want to compare two models and ends up talking about a boating trip. A customer comes back to show a friend the boat they bought. A distributor you’ve only known through emails suddenly appears in front of you from the other side of the world. There is always somebody you haven’t seen for a year, somebody you have never met before, and somebody who has just walked onto the stand because they happened to like the look of a BRIG from the aisle.
The international character of BRIG becomes particularly obvious when you spend a few hours on the stand. English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and plenty of other languages mix together, often in the same conversation. It is a nice reminder that although BRIG boats are designed and built in Ukraine, they have become part of people’s lives in many different corners of the world. A BRIG might spend its summer in the Mediterranean, its weekends on a Canadian lake, its season on the Australian coast or its holidays somewhere in the UK. Düsseldorf is one of the few places where all those stories briefly meet.
There was another reason so many BRIG people were in town: BRIG Global Days Düsseldorf. Our international gathering originally took place in Ukraine, where bringing the worldwide BRIG network together was the natural thing to do. We could meet at the factory, spend time with the people building the boats, discuss the business, exchange ideas and, of course, find some time to enjoy ourselves. Today, gathering everyone in Ukraine is no longer possible in the same way, so Düsseldorf has become the meeting point. In a way, it is a fitting one. Instead of asking everyone to travel to one corner of the world, we meet in the middle of one of the biggest international gatherings in boating.
Global Days is where the conversations become a little deeper. Dealers and distributors bring what they are seeing in their markets; the factory team hears directly from the people closest to customers; new ideas are challenged, shared and improved. Someone from Australia can bring an idea that makes sense in Europe. A Canadian perspective can change the way we look at a familiar product. Someone from the US can ask a question nobody else had thought about. It is exactly the sort of exchange that is difficult to create through emails and video calls — and probably one of the most valuable things about getting everyone around the same table.
By the end of the show, the numbers matter less. Yes, there were more than 200,000 visitors, thousands of boats and equipment from practically every corner of the marine industry. But what we will remember from Düsseldorf are the conversations: the owners who came to tell us how their boats are being used, the people discovering BRIG for the first time, the distributors travelling thousands of kilometres to be there, and the slightly chaotic but very enjoyable mixture of languages, ideas and stories that happens when a genuinely international team meets in one place.
So, if you are planning to come to Düsseldorf next time, you are very welcome at the BRIG stand. Come and see the boats, ask the difficult questions, tell us where you take your BRIG — or come simply to say hello. And if you hear several languages being spoken at once, don’t worry. You are probably in the right place.