The 75th Pebble Beach Concours Is Giving Japanese Le Mans History Its Own Class
Ferrari headlines the 2026 field as the diamond-anniversary featured marque, but a new class built around Mazda, Toyota, and Nissan's Le Mans campaigns says as much about where the world's most tradition-bound car show is headed as any of the six-figure restorations parked on the 18th fairway.
The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance was founded in 1950 as a companion event to the Pebble Beach Road Races, with an early show fielding around 30 cars. In 1952 it moved to its permanent home on the 18th green of Pebble Beach Golf Links, overlooking Carmel Bay, where it's been held every August since. Today it draws roughly 15,000 spectators and is widely regarded as the most prestigious car show in the world — the kind of event where Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and Rolls-Royce have chosen to debut concept and production cars rather than at a traditional auto show. Best of Show, the top prize, comes with an engraved trophy and a Rolex; J.B. Nethercutt holds the record with six Best of Show wins, and Bugatti and Mercedes-Benz are tied as the winningest manufacturers with ten apiece.
The 75th edition runs Sunday, August 16, 2026, and Ferrari is this year's featured marque, with the show's organizers focusing the spotlight on Luigi Chinetti and North American Racing Team (NART) competition cars — the cars and the importer-turned-team-owner most responsible for building Ferrari's American racing presence. Carrozzeria Alfredo Vignale is the featured coachbuilder, represented by the string of Ferrari, Lancia, Fiat 8V, and Maserati bodies the Turin house built through the 1950s.
Three new classes round out the field. Early American Speedsters covers pre-World War I sporting cars like the Stutz Bearcat and Mercer Raceabout; The Birth of the Streamliner showcases the flowing fenders and fastback tails of late-1930s aerodynamic design; and Pebble Beach Road Racing Greats honors the event's own motorsport origins, spanning the original road races run at the venue from 1950 through 1956. A fourth new class, Japanese Motorsports: The Rising Sun at Speed, is the one worth watching — it puts Mazda, Toyota, and Nissan's Le Mans entries on the same show field as pre-war Bugattis and coachbuilt Ferraris, a class built specifically to recognize Japanese manufacturers' endurance-racing history at a show that has historically organized its classes around European marques, coachbuilders, and pre-war American iron.
Gates open at 5:30 a.m. on show day, with judging running 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and awards from 1:30 to 5 p.m. General admission is $650 as of August 1 (an early-bird $550 rate expired July 31), available through the Concours' own site. The show closes out the ten-day run of Monterey Car Week, which this year also includes the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering in Carmel Valley.
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