FLIBS 2026 Recap: 211 Superyachts, 119 Debuts, and Our Biggest Show Ever

The 67th Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show wrapped on Sunday evening, right as a storm rolled in over South Florida like the weather itself was waiting for the docks to clear. Five days, six waterfront venues, and by the closing numbers, one of the biggest editions the show has ever staged. We had twenty people on those docks all week. Here is how it went, from the water.

The show, by the numbers that exist so far

Informa Markets has not yet published official 2026 attendance figures as of this writing, and we will update when they land. For scale, the organizers' official 2025 highlights reported more than 100,000 attendees, 1,000 exhibitors, and 1,300+ vessels, and this year felt every bit of that from the docks.

The superyacht side already has a closing report. Per YachtBuyer's MarketWatch wrap, 211 superyachts attended this year against 170 in 2025, a 24 percent jump, with 119 new models and world debuts shown, up 38 percent from last year. The brokerage fleet alone carried roughly $1.7 billion in combined asking value across 174 yachts for sale. The 305-foot Oceanco Draak headlined the big-boat end at Pier Sixty-Six, exactly as the show's pre-announcements promised.

The debuts that actually happened

Pre-show lists are promises. These kept them. Viking's second-generation 70 Convertible made its world premiere at Bahia Mar with twin MAN V12X-2200s, and per YachtWay's show coverage, Viking had already sold 13 of them before the gates opened. Hull No. 1 even carried a WhaleSpotter thermal camera, a first on a sportfishing yacht. Alongside it, the Valhalla 46 Sport Yacht premiered on its double-stepped Michael Peters hull with preliminary numbers near 60 mph on quad Mercury V12 600s.

Elsewhere on the docks, per Boat International's live coverage: the Pearl 100 Hybrid had its world premiere on day three, the 172-foot Westport Endeavour was unveiled on closing day, the Princess X90 made its US premiere, and Sanlorenzo turned heads with a one-off FIAT Topolino that TIME had just named one of the best inventions of 2026. If you walked the show with our debut list in hand, almost every boat on it was floating where promised.

Our show: twenty crew, thirty-plus brands, five days

Nautical Network ran its largest show operation ever this year. Twenty team members worked FLIBS end to end, shooting professional content across more than thirty client displays, from builders like Scout Boats, Bertram, Everglades, Maritimo, Monterey, Blackfin, World Cat, Mystic Powerboats, Axopar, and Absolute Yachts, to dealers and brokerages including Galati Yacht Sales, Camper & Nicholsons, Allied Marine, Jefferson Beach Yacht Sales, and TJB Super Yachts, to marine industry names like MAN Engines and Northern Lights.

A show this size is a logistics problem as much as a production one. Twenty people, six venues, and gear that does not carry itself. A huge thank you to the team at ICON Electric Vehicles, whose electric carts kept our crews and camera gear moving safely across the show all five days. When your schedule says a 9am shoot at Bahia Mar and an 11am at Pier Sixty-Six, the ride between them matters more than you would think, and ICON EV made that part effortless.

The work ranged from full professional content shoots to micro content cut and posted while the show was still running, which is the whole point of covering a boat show in person: the boats are staged, the crews are aboard, and the audience is paying attention right now. Everything shot last week is in post now and will roll out across the channels and client feeds over the coming weeks.

The map: how the show got navigated this year

Here is the part of show week we are proudest of as a platform. The show's official digital map, the next-gen FLIBS map powered by our partner MarineSource.com as the show's exclusive marketplace partner, became the way attendees actually found their way around ninety acres of docks.

The numbers, per MarineSource's map analytics through the final evening of the show: 15,033 users opened the map 35,356 times, ran 36,310 searches, viewed boat and exhibitor detail pages 119,455 times, and started 5,898 turn-by-turn navigation trips across the show. Attendees shared map locations 536 times and sent 55 direct leads to exhibitors through it before the docks even emptied.

And because of our partnership with MarineSource and Informa, Nautical Network clients were spotlighted on that map with featured pop-ups, which meant the brands we served were not just findable, they were highlighted in the tool every serious attendee had open in their hand.

What happens now

The show ends. The watching does not. Over the next few weeks the walkthroughs, debut coverage, and client films from these five days roll out across the network, and if a boat at the show put you in buying mode, the process does not change: the buyer's playbook still applies, survey and sea trial included.

And if you exhibited this year and watched our crew work the docks around you, this is what show-week coverage looks like. The 2027 calendar is already filling.