The Billion-Dollar Car Show Is Back at the Wynn

LAS VEGAS

First: what a concours actually is

Start with the word, because the word is the whole point. Concours d'elegance is French for "competition of elegance" — pronounced con-KOR. It began in 17th-century France, where aristocrats paraded their finest horse-drawn carriages through the parks of Paris on summer weekends, each trying to out-dress the next. When the automobile replaced the carriage, the parade became a judged contest of cars — and it stayed serious.

A concours is not a regular car show. Trained judges examine every car and score it on authenticity and originality — correct parts, correct finishes, the car as it truly left the factory or coachbuilder. They score condition, component by component. They score provenance: the documented story of who built the car, who owned it, what it raced and what it won. And they score elegance — the design, the presence, the way the whole machine hangs together. Only cars that are perfectly original, or very nearly so, are eligible for the trophies. A Best of Show win works like a Michelin star for a car: it lifts the car's standing, and its value, among collectors overnight.

The benchmark is the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, running since 1950. Wynn's version keeps the old-world judged field on a golf course — and then remixes it with hypercars, manufacturer world debuts, a DJ'd rooftop supercar night and a seven-figure auction. White gloves meets Las Vegas nightlife. As duPont REGISTRY put it on the event's own homepage, in four years the weekend "evolved from a regional gathering into a world-class automotive spectacle."

The weekend, day by day

Thursday, Oct. 29 opens the weekend window. The official schedule lists no separately ticketed public event for Thursday — the public program runs Friday through Sunday.

Friday, Oct. 30 is the warm-up, twice over. The Welcome Reception takes over Intrigue from 6 to 8 p.m. — chef's stations, a hosted bar, and a room full of entrants and exhibitors. At 7 p.m., Night Shift GT opens on the roof of the Wynn parking garage: a supercar and hypercar showcase under the lights until 10 p.m., DJ playing, Strip views behind the cars. The photograph at the top of this story is that rooftop, from a prior edition.

Saturday, Oct. 31 is the whole show in one day. The Broad Arrow Las Vegas Auction starts at 9 a.m. in the Latour Ballroom, more than 70 collector cars crossing the block through 2:30 p.m. The main event — the Concours exhibition and judged competition — runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. across the Wynn Golf Club fairways. That night, the class winners and Best of Show winners gather at La Cave for the invite-only Winner's Circle Reception, where the weekend's top honors, the Helene Awards, are celebrated.

Sunday, Nov. 1 belongs to everybody. At 8:30 a.m., the Tour d'Elegance sends the winning cars and other design standouts down Las Vegas Boulevard, driven by their owners with a Las Vegas Metro Police escort. No ticket, no ropes, no dress code — you stand on the Strip and a billion dollars of automotive history rolls past you. It is, by some distance, the best free seat in American car culture this year.

What's on the grass

The field is organized under four pillars — Concours d'Elegance, Artistry, Speed, and Hypercars and Supercars — into 11 specialty classes. Nine are judged: Pre-War European 1925–1939; Post-War European 1947–1967; Wind in Your Hair European Sports Cars 1950–1975; American Grace and Luxury, in open and closed classes, 1920–1942; American Muscle 1953–1980; Super Car Pin Ups from the '70s, '80s and '90s; Classic Recreations, covering restomods, reimagined cars and continuations; and Production-Built Turbocharged Cars 1960–1990. Two more are shown without judging: a GT1 Class for 1995–1997 racers, and a 40th-anniversary celebration of the Porsche 959. The marques Wynn names for the show field read like a private vault unlocked: Pagani, Bugatti, McLaren, Czinger, Rolls-Royce, among others.

Then there are the cars nobody has seen yet. Per Haute Living, Pagani brings a global debut to the fairways, alongside the first-ever presentation of the entire Huayra 70 trilogy parked side by side. Aston Martin has a world-exclusive reveal planned. McLaren gives its McL 6GT its first public debut (the model name as Haute Living prints it), Hennessey debuts the Blackbird globally, Gunther Werks unveils a Brundle Edition Turbo, and Lanzante's Tag Turbo Championship car and the Apollo EVO make North American debuts. Classic Recreations reveals its Shelby GT500CR Carbon and its newest Boss 429 on the grass Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

The auction: an Enzo, a Gullwing, and seventy of their friends

Saturday's Broad Arrow sale is the auction house's second annual Las Vegas auction, and the early highlights are the kind of cars that usually trade in private. The headliner is a 2003 Ferrari Enzo certified by Ferrari Classiche — the factory's own stamp that the car is what it claims to be. Beside it: a low-mileage 2021 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster in a rare Ad Personam specification, and a matching-numbers 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Coupe with a five-speed manual — the Gullwing being, seven decades on, still the silhouette half the supercar world is chasing. More than 70 cars cross the block in all. For scale: Broad Arrow's first Las Vegas sale at last year's Concours raised $13.7 million, per Octane.

How it got here

The Las Vegas Concours d'Elegance began in 2019 at DragonRidge Country Club in Henderson. COVID cancelled 2020; the show landed at Las Vegas Ballpark in 2021, then moved to Wynn Golf Club in 2022 — 250-plus cars, Jay Leno as Grand Marshal, the Ferrari F40's 35th anniversary on the grass. The 2023 edition opened Race Week for the first Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. And 2025 was the breakout: more than 600 vehicles valued at more than $1.1 billion (Forbes independently estimated the display at over $1 billion), nearly 7,000 attendees, 44 Paganis with Horacio Pagani himself unveiling the Huayra Codalunga Speedster, and the largest assembly of Bugattis in history — 60 cars gathered for the Veyron's 20th anniversary.

Last year's two Helene Awards — the Best of Show trophies, one Pre-War and one Post-War — went to a 1929 Mercedes-Benz 680 S Barker Tourer and a 1951 Ferrari 212 Export, both past Pebble Beach winners. The trophy itself is modeled on Hélène Rother, General Motors' first woman automotive designer, hired in 1943 — a nice piece of the culture honoring its own. The weekend's host is Le Mans winner Justin Bell, who also hosts Wynn's Drive to Wynn interview series, and the event's charity partners are the Petersen Automotive Museum's education program and Conquer Paralysis Now.

A note on the video below, in the interest of saying exactly what things are: there is no official Concours highlights film — no recap reel of the fairways exists to embed. What Wynn does have is its own Drive to Wynn conversation with Bell, the man who emcees the weekend; his Concours segment starts at 2:45. It's a host setting the table, not footage of the show — and it's worth your four minutes before the real thing takes over the Strip.

The ticket situation: sold out, all of it

Here is the part to read before you make plans. As of Wednesday, every standalone ticket to the 2026 Concours is sold out. General Admission was $145 — gone. The Sip and Savor Experience, admission plus hosted drinks along the fairway, was $280 — gone. Chairman's VIP, with chef's stations and an open bar at the Event Pavilion, was $795 — gone. Night Shift GT on Friday was $95 — gone. The Welcome Reception Dinner was $315 — gone. The hotel packages went too: Hosted Food and Beverage plus Accommodation at $1,568 and Chairman's VIP plus Accommodation at $2,598 are both sold out. All prices carried fees on top, and tickets were non-refundable.

One paid door remains: Wynn has just re-released an Exhibition plus Accommodation package at $1,668 — two Concours tickets and a two-night stay at Wynn Las Vegas — listed as limited on the official tickets page. If you want Saturday on the fairways and money is not the object, that is the way in.

And if money is very much the object, remember Sunday. The billion dollars parks behind ropes on Saturday. On Sunday morning at 8:30, the winners drive themselves down the Strip in the open, and the ticket price is standing there. That is the most Las Vegas sentence in car culture this year — the most exclusive car weekend in America ends with a free parade — and it's the part of the Concours we'll be watching for.