Six classic car events to put in your August 2026 diary

Table of Contents

• The opening weekend has already gone
• A centenary and a sixtieth on the same Saturday
• Italy takes over Brands Hatch
• Tatton Park tries something new
• Two marque Sundays at Beaulieu
• The Gold Cup returns to its proper weekend
• Bank holiday Sunday, and the impossible choice

July was the month that tipped the calendar over. August is the month that refuses to help you pick the pieces back up. There are thirteen UK fixtures on our events page this month, and rather than spreading themselves politely across the weeks they have bunched into three enormous knots: the 8th and 9th, the middle Sunday, and a bank holiday weekend that borders on the ridiculous.

The good news is that August is the last month where the weather is broadly on your side and nobody has started talking about winter storage. Use it.

The opening weekend has already gone

As in July, the first weekend has beaten us to it. Beaulieu's Supercar Weekend filled the New Forest lawns on the 1st and 2nd, and over in Suffolk the Helmingham Hall Festival of Classic and Sports Cars had its Sunday, with well over a thousand vehicles in the grounds of a moated Tudor hall and the driveway runs putting cars back in motion rather than leaving them parked.

Mark Helmingham for next year if you missed it. Advance tickets started at £12, it pulls upwards of 8,000 visitors, and it combines serious metal with swing dancing and birds of prey without either half feeling like an afterthought. Harder trick than it sounds.

A centenary and a sixtieth on the same Saturday

Saturday 8 August is the busiest day of the month, and the clash is a cruel one. At Weybridge, Brooklands Museum marks a hundred years since Britain's first Grand Prix with roughly a hundred Grand Prix cars gathered on the ground where the 1926 race was run. We covered the centenary in full last week, including the awkward detail that Saturday sold out completely with no tickets on the day. The way in, if there is still one by the time you read this, is the Premiere Evening on Friday 7 August, which falls on the actual anniversary and is, I would argue, the better ticket anyway.

A hundred miles west, Castle Combe hosts the HSCC 60 Summer Historic Festival across the 8th and 9th, sixty years after the Historic Sports Car Club held its first race at the circuit in May 1966. The Castle Combe Racing Club home championships join in over both days, with FF1600 and GTs on the Saturday and saloons and hot hatches on the Sunday. General admission runs from £15 to £30, the paddocks are open, and Combe in August is one of the more relaxed places to spend a weekend watching old racing cars being driven properly.

If you cannot get into Brooklands, this is where to go instead.

Italy takes over Brands Hatch

Sunday 9 August belongs to Festival Italia at Brands Hatch. The Maserati Club UK is bringing a 35-car display and billing it as a double centenary, a hundred years of Maserati racing and a hundred years of Brands Hatch, which is a neat piece of arithmetic given the Tipo 26 first raced in 1926 and the Kent circuit dates its own beginnings to the same year.

The formula has not changed and does not need to. Italian racing all day on the Indy circuit, an open paddock, a free grid walk, and two sessions of Formula 1 demonstration running to remind everyone what a naturally aspirated Grand Prix engine does to the inside of your ribcage. Off track, the banking fills with several hundred Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Alfas and Fiats, brought by owners rather than dealers, which is the difference between a car show and a showroom.

Advance adult tickets are £27, teenagers 13 to 15 are £17, under-13s free. For racing, demonstrations and paddock access, that is close to the best value on the August calendar.

Tatton Park tries something new

The weekend of 15 and 16 August brings the Classic and Retro Car Revival to Tatton Park in Cheshire, its second running after replacing Passion for Power, which had held the same slot in the same parkland for more than thirty years. So there is a certain amount to prove.

The early signs are good. The remit has widened to take in retro alongside classic, heritage commercials and military vehicles are welcome, and there is a firing-up area, which is a small detail that makes a disproportionate difference to a static show. Adult tickets are £13 in advance or £15 on the gate, under-16s free. Watch the parking, though: Tatton Park charges its own vehicle entry fee of £11 on top, so budget for it rather than discovering it at the gatehouse.

Two marque Sundays at Beaulieu

Beaulieu runs its Simply series through the summer and August gets two of the better ones.

Simply Jaguar on Sunday 16 August is a full lawn of Jaguars and Daimlers of every age, with the Jaguar Enthusiasts' Club marking an unusually crowded set of milestones: thirty years of the X100 XK8, forty years of the XJ40, twenty-five years of the X-Type and twenty years of the X150. Entry includes the rest of Beaulieu, open until 6pm, and the People's Choice award is decided by public vote, which keeps everyone polishing until the last minute.

Simply Aston Martin follows on Sunday 23 August, with the Aston Martin Owners Club back as show partner and a display marking twenty-five years of the V12 Vanquish. The original Newport Pagnell car was the last hurrah of hand-built Aston, drive-by-wire throttle and paddle shift and all, and it has spent two decades quietly becoming the thinking person's modern Aston. A proper gathering of them is worth the drive on its own.

The Gold Cup returns to its proper weekend

The Oulton Park Gold Cup runs from Saturday 29 to Monday 31 August, back on its traditional bank holiday date after a spell adrift, and it remains the north west's biggest historic meeting by some margin.

The HSCC curates the racing: Historic Grand Prix cars for the Gold Cup itself, Formula 5000 and Historic Formula 2 for the Derek Bell Trophy, plus Historic Formula 3, Formula Junior and Historic Formula Fords. This year adds a celebration of Sir Jack Brabham, whose birth centenary and 1966 world title both fall due, with David Brabham doing a Q&A on the Monday. The Cheshire Concours d'Esprit returns on the Sunday, and its brief is my favourite of any concours in the country: cars that are well used and have a story, rather than cars that have been wrapped in cotton wool since 1974.

Weekend tickets are £45 online for adults, £28 for teenagers, under-13s free, single days from £15, pit walks on race days included.

Bank holiday Sunday, and the impossible choice

Sunday 30 August is where the diary gives up entirely. Knebworth Classic Motor Show runs across the Sunday and Monday in the Hertfordshire parkland, with saloons, commercials, military vehicles and classic motorcycles on static display, arena parades through the day, and the returning Decibel Duel to crown the loudest thing on site. Tickets start at £13.60 and include the gardens, playground and dinosaur trail, a useful bargaining chip if you are bringing family who do not share the affliction. Last admission is 2pm, so it is not a lie-in.

Lavenham Classics is the other end of the scale and none the worse for it: a free show on the recreation ground beside one of the best-preserved medieval villages in England, 11am to 4pm, run for the Lavenham Community Council with the money raised staying in the village. Organisers are pushing the extended 753 bus, which now runs on Sundays and bank holidays, on the sensible grounds that the village lanes were not built for this.

Brooklands American Day fills the museum with Mustangs, Chryslers, Oldsmobiles and hot rods on the same date, and CarFest runs from the 28th to the 30th at Silverstone, its first year at the circuit after more than a decade at Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire. It is a music festival with cars rather than the other way round, but it has raised more than £27m for children's charities since 2012 and the Cars at CarFest and RetroFest areas are better than they need to be.

Five events on one bank holiday weekend, and you can reasonably do two. The full calendar is on our events page, refreshed at the start of the month. Pick early, because half of these want you parked up by mid-morning.