Paris Reopens With 60-Plus Brands, a Third of Them Chinese

If you have seen two different sets of dates for the Paris Motor Show floating around this week, both are sort of right. The official Mondial de l'Auto site lists the 91st edition as running 12–18 October 2026 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, with Monday the 12th marked presse uniquement — press only. The public gets in from Tuesday the 13th through Sunday the 18th. The show spreads across halls 4, 5.1, 5.2/3, 6 and 7.1, and the organisers are advertising more than 60 world premieres.

"I didn't want a Chinese pavilion." — Serge Gachot, director of the Mondial de l'Auto, to L'Argus

Serge Gachot, the show's director, told L'Argus he has more than 60 manufacturers confirmed and expects the number to creep toward 70, filling 85,000 m² of ground with 70,000 m² of it indoors, and drawing something in the order of 500,000 visitors across the six public days. Those are the kind of figures Paris used to post before the European show circuit started hollowing out. The more interesting number is the one underneath: more than 20 of those brands are Chinese, against fewer than ten at previous editions.

The single genuinely unknown car in the building is a Citroën. The brand has been teasing an electric concept inspired by the 2CV, due to be revealed on the evening of 11 October — the night before press day — and L'Argus reports it previews a production city car for 2028, built at Pomigliano d'Arco and aimed at a price under €15,000. That sits inside Stellantis' E-Car programme for cheap, European-built small EVs. Citroën itself has so far released nothing but partial images and a promise of, in Stellantis' own phrasing, a surprise drawn from its own history. Treat the €15,000 figure as a target, not a price list.

It lands in a hall that has suddenly filled up with affordable electric hatchbacks, which is the real story of this show. Renault's Twingo E-Tech is already on sale from €19,490 in Evolution trim, with a 60 kW (82 hp) motor, a 27.5 kWh pack and up to 263 km WLTP. Volkswagen's ID. Polo starts at €24,995 with 37 kWh LFP or 52 kWh NMC batteries and up to 454 km, the ID. Cross SUV follows at around €28,000, and the Cupra Raval — the same MEB+ hardware, built alongside the Polo at Martorell — opens near €26,000. Škoda brings the Epiq. Dacia brings a second-generation Spring. Four years ago this segment barely existed in Europe; now it is the busiest part of the floor.

The premium side of the ledger is not thin, just more predictable. Auto Express lists Mercedes bringing the CLA, the VLE, new-generation GLC, GLB and GLA, and the electric AMG GT four-door — a car that runs AMG's own AMG.EA architecture with three axial-flux motors, 860 kW (1,169 hp) in GT 63 form, 0–100 km/h in 2.1 seconds and up to roughly 700 km WLTP from a 106 kWh net pack. Audi's A2 badge returns on an MEB-based electric hatch with 52, 61 and 84 kWh batteries, 170 to 326 hp, a 0.24 drag coefficient and a claimed 401 miles (about 645 km) WLTP in 190 hp guise, from roughly €38,200 in Germany. DS launches the N°7, whose 97.2 kWh front-drive Long Range version is quoted at 740 km WLTP, with prices opening at €43,900 for the 145 hp hybrid and €46,990 for the entry E-TENSE.

Stellantis is treating Paris as a home fixture. The group has booked a 5,340 m² stand in Hall 4 for eight brands — Alfa Romeo, Citroën, DS, Fiat, Lancia, Leapmotor, Opel and Peugeot — with more than 60 vehicles and nine concepts, roughly double what it brought in 2024; Jeep sits separately in Hall 7.1, and Peugeot alone takes close to 1,300 m². Lancia gives the Gamma its French premiere, a Melfi-built fastback crossover offered as a 143 hp hybrid LX, an electric LX and a 370 hp HF Integrale. Alfa Romeo shows the Cuorerosso concept. Opel brings the STX, a Sports Tourer eXperimental estate study. Fiat puts the Grizzly and Grizzly Fastback on the stand — compact crossovers under 4.5 m on the Smart Car platform shared with the Grande Panda, Citroën C3 Aircross and Opel Frontera, built in Kenitra, Morocco — though both were already unveiled back on 3 June, so Paris is their show debut rather than a reveal.

The Chinese contingent is the one that will make the trade press nervous. CarNewsChina counts 20 brands — 212, Aito, BYD, Changan, Chery, Denza, Forthing, Foton, GAC, Geely, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Li Auto, Lotus, Lynk & Co, Maxus, Omoda, Smart, XPeng and Zeekr — with seven global premieres between them. The spread is the point: Smart's #2 is a 2,764 mm city car with a 60 kW motor and a 35.8 kWh LFP pack, while XPeng's G9L is a 5,120 mm SUV with 430 kW in all-wheel-drive form, and Zeekr's 9X runs 660 kW in its dual-motor version. Gachot deliberately refused to put any of it in a separate hall. "Je ne voulais pas d'un pavillon chinois" — I didn't want a Chinese pavilion — he told L'Argus, arguing visitors should be able to walk from a European car to a Chinese rival and compare them directly, because that is what they are already doing in dealerships.

He is not wrong about the dealerships. ACEA's August 2026 figures put Chinese-owned brands at 10.8% of the European new-car market, up from 6.6% a year earlier, while battery-electric registrations rose 62.7% year on year and BEV share climbed from 17.8% to 27.7%. Those two trends are linked in a way European policymakers may not love: EY's Constantin M. Gall, speaking to Euronews about the same data, argued that "Current subsidy measures in European countries are disproportionately benefiting Chinese manufacturers and Tesla." Paris is where that argument gets a physical floorplan.

The conspicuous gap is German. BMW and Mini confirmed for Paris early in the year, then cancelled in July, a few weeks after a profit warning; the official line was a shift in priorities, and BMW has said it remains committed to a selective presence at shows. Group deliveries fell 4.2% to about 1.15 million cars in the first half of 2026, driven largely by China. Volvo, meanwhile, returns for the first time since 2014. Make of that trade what you will.

The honest caveat is that a lot of this metal is not new. The AMG GT four-door was revealed in May, the Fiat Grizzlys in June, the Audi A2 e-tron on 7 September, the DS N°7 in the spring, and the Twingo had a price list last December. A trade-press read from Auto Infos has already called the 2026 lineup a revival with sparse novelties, and that is a fair characterisation — Paris is functioning less as a reveal venue than as the biggest showroom in Europe. The rumoured Peugeot E-T16, a reported electric reinterpretation of the 205 Turbo 16 that L'Argus traces to a trademark filing and some pointed social-media teasing, remains exactly that: unconfirmed, with Peugeot saying only that it is bringing two concepts. If you want one car to judge the week by, it is the 2CV concept — because an affordable European-built small EV that actually lands near €15,000 is the only answer anyone here has to the 20 brands parked next door.