Car Culture Festival

Car Culture Festival refers to a large-scale public event centred on automotive culture, bringing together vehicle exhibitions, motorsport competitions, interactive experiences, cultural exchanges, and lifestyle entertainment. It serves as a vital platform for automotive culture to transition from niche enthusiast circles into everyday public life. By pairing static vehicle displays with dynamic, hands-on activities, it provides car enthusiasts, owners, and the general public with an accessible space to experience the appeal of automobiles up close and share the joys of car ownership. Driven by the upgrading of China's automotive industry and supportive policies for automotive aftermarket consumption, car culture festivals are evolving from informal car meets into high-impact, branded cultural fixtures.

Main Event Activities

Car culture festivals are typically structured across two core dimensions—static displays and dynamic experiences—catering to both hardcore petrolheads and the general public.

In terms of static displays, classic and vintage cars offer the deepest sense of heritage. The China Auto Carnival, for instance, showcased vehicles once used by prominent historical figures such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, alongside royal carriages and vehicles of Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Puyi, weaving vehicle showcases into historical storytelling across two main themes: "Red Memories" and "Impressions of the Late Qing Dynasty". Modified car showcases remain the primary draw for younger crowds; the 2026 Guangxi Auto Culture Festival gathered over 200 stanced performance cars, hardcore 4x4 off-roaders, and bespoke builds, making it the centrepiece of the event. Meanwhile, new model and new energy vehicle (NEV) showcases highlight the industry's cutting edge; the 2026 Beijing International Auto Culture Festival featured a dedicated NEV and intelligent vehicle zone, offering hands-on experiences with fully electric (EV), hybrid, connected vehicle, and Level 2 to Level 3 autonomous driving technologies.

On the dynamic front, motorsport events and driving competitions serve as headline attractions. The Guangxi Auto Culture Festival introduced popular aftermarket challenges such as stance slalom runs, extreme camber battles, and exhaust decibel rev-offs, turning spectators from passive showgoers into active participants. Similarly, the Greater Bay Area (Zhuhai) Auto Culture Festival featured dynamic highlights including car limbo contests, drift demos, and cross-country off-road challenges.

Interactive experiences and lifestyle integration have emerged as key innovations in recent years. The Changchun Auto Expo introduced its first urban satellite venue under the banner of "Auto Culture Life Season", integrating vintage car displays, campervan and RV camping setups, and car boot markets into city leisure spaces. The Shanghai Auto Culture Festival tied in with the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix by introducing signature programmes such as the "Chequered Flag Carnival", the OCR car meet festival, and vintage car convoys, whilst partnering with local hotels and attractions to launch curated tourist routes.

Major Representative Events

China has established several influential automotive culture festival IPs.

Shanghai Auto Culture Festival, established in 2011 and held annually in Jiading District, works in close tandem with the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix to create a seamless "festival-and-race" synergy. In 2026, under the theme of "Accelerating into the Future in Jiading, Shanghai", the festival ran for 54 days spanning the F1 race weekend and the May Day holidays, rolling out 30 themed activities across four core segments.

Xmeeting Car Fans Gathering, founded in 2012 by Xcar, was conceived as China's first dedicated carnival for car enthusiasts. The festival features classic car displays, Harley-Davidson motorcycle challenges, drift demos, and six themed experiential zones inspired by Woodstock, Goodwood, Mount Haruna (Akina), and others, where visitors complete activities to collect stamps and redeem merchandise. The event has since grown from a biennial gathering into a biannual fixture, expanding its footprint from Beijing to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, and beyond.

GAC Honda Dream Festival, held annually since 2019, is a prime example of an OEM-driven owner culture festival. Built around owner co-creation, the event showcases cutting-edge automotive tech, racing heritage, and lifestyle trends, drawing over 20,000 attendees, including owners and leading automotive content creators nationwide. Praised for its "pure, open, and co-created" ethos, it is widely celebrated for capturing the true grassroots spirit of the car community.

Greater Bay Area (Zhuhai) International Auto Culture Festival, running since 2018 at the Zhuhai International Airshow Centre, combines two major static showcases—a trendy stance/custom car expo and a motor show—with dynamic events like off-road trials and drift shows, having successfully completed six consecutive editions.

Policy Background and Industry Value

The momentum behind car culture festivals is strongly aligned with national policy directives. In 2025, the General Office of the State Council released the *Work Plan on Accelerating the Cultivation of New Growth Points in Service Consumption*, explicitly calling to "advance automotive culture, encourage the organisation of related competitions and events, and foster cross-sector integration across automotive, tourism, cultural, and sporting sectors". In 2026, the *Notice on Several Measures to Cultivate and Expand Automotive Aftermarket Consumption*, jointly issued by nine government bodies including the Ministry of Commerce, provided further institutional backing for automotive culture events.

Liu Yan, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), noted that establishing sustainable car culture festivals requires two essential foundations: a well-established automotive industrial history and a sufficiently large vehicle parc. With China holding the world's largest vehicle population and over seven decades of automotive manufacturing history, the prerequisites for a thriving automotive culture are firmly in place. As an event format that brings automotive passion to the forefront, car culture festivals do more than just popularise car culture; they also channel footfall to surrounding commercial districts, serving as an important catalyst for automotive aftermarket spending.