Attending Eurobike is a tradition here at BikeRadar. Alongside the Tour de France, it’s one of the main events we have firmly blocked out in our calendar.
Why? Well, taking place at the Messe Frankfurt, one of the world’s largest exhibition centres, Eurobike spans five hangar-sized halls, and it’s a congregation of cycling’s great and good, as well as being the prime place to spot what’s to come in the world of bike tech.
Yet this year’s show, which wrapped up last weekend, had a different feel to it. The world’s largest cycling trade show felt a tad smaller. Whereas the Messe’s halls have felt rammed in previous years, there were a lot more sofas and chairs filling the empty spaces that had, in years prior, been occupied by brands showing off their wares.
A drop in attendance
Eurobike’s official stats confirm the anecdotal chatter we heard from brands and other attendees. This year, there were 31,720 trade visitors compared to 35,080 in 2024. And 30,420 members of the general public showed up, compared to more than 33,000 in 2024.
These numbers are also a far cry from when Eurobike was in its previous location, Messe Friedrichshafen, and saw 43,700 industry visitors – although only 20,500 bike fans – back in 2013.
One aspect of Eurobike’s reduced size could be the cost of exhibiting. No trade show is cheap. There is the price of getting there, the expense of all your staff attending, a display to think of and a fee to pay. One mid-size brand told us that it might not return next year because the show would cost around $100,000 all-in. This is money the brand felt could be better spent running an event focused solely on their brand.
Hunt Wheels has attended the show for several years without a booth, instead accosting journalists like me with a wheelbag on the fly – although Hunt booked a meeting to show me its new gravel wheels this year.
Many other brands took a similar approach to Hunt. Scott, for instance, used to have a large presence, showing off its bikes and the more outlandish creations of Dangerholm. This year, it didn’t have a booth, but its team was there.
A contact at another large brand explained to me that it had also taken this approach because of the cost, and because Eurobike is mostly valuable for B2B business. For that, you don’t need a booth, and it’s probably more valuable to visit the trade shows in Taipei and elsewhere in Asia anyway, where you can speak to manufacturers.
Mixed ambitions
One issue could be how Eurobike really has mixed ambitions. E-mobility and commuting bikes are big at the show, but that doesn’t necessarily rub well with performance brands. One particular company said it was miffed that its new Grand Tour bike was next to an electric town bike. It could also be why performance brands now rave about Velofollies.
Combine the price of attendance and the desire to control any messaging decisively, and it’s not surprising that some of the biggest brands don’t attend Eurobike. The likes of Specialized pulled out of Eurobike years ago, but alongside Scott, SRAM no longer had its sprawling booth this year and Merida was absent, too.
Canyon doesn’t have a booth either, but relies on its new products – such as a handlebar that can be made in a minute and a new town bike – being on display at other companies' stands.
These companies, however, can almost guarantee they’ll have people’s attention. So maybe when it comes down to it, there’s no need for them to plug their goods, and they’ll already have the ear of manufacturers through their sheer size.
There’s still value in the show
This takes us to where Eurobike is still valuable. Many smaller companies benefit from the attention they receive from other potential business partners and the press. E-mobility companies also use the show to discuss how regulations are changing and what to do about it in their rapidly developing field.
For me, it’s also a valuable opportunity to get one-on-one time with these people and get a sense of where things are headed.
One thing I could piece together from Eurobike 2025, for instance, is the growing choice of electronic wireless groupsets. That would have been possible from my desk, maybe. But the value of speaking to people buried far behind marketing managers can’t be overstated – especially when they let slip that they have a whole new groupset on the way.
A change of direction
Eurobike isn’t naive to these problems. Fairnamic, the show’s organiser, says there will be a new trade fair for light electric vehicles next year, called Mobifuture. Fairnamic says the aim is to “better meet the diverse requirements of both the sporting bicycle and pedelec segments, as well as the dynamically growing micromobility marke”.
“With the move to Frankfurt and the expansion towards ecomobility, Eurobike has grown significantly in recent years. At the same time, its sporting origins have receded somewhat into the background,” said Stefan Reisinger, Fairnamic's managing director.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this is enough to entice performance brands back. But either way, there is one thing we can be certain of. Eurobike is a litmus test of the cycling industry. Following the industry’s turmoil in the post-Covid years and the impending tariff trade wars, it’s no wonder the show has changed. And maybe we’d all be better off devoting our energy to e-mobility, anyway.
