The classic car events that make September 2026 the busiest month of the year

Table of Contents

• Two concours in the same week
• Saturday the 12th is the cruellest day of the month
• Revival weekend, and the sale that swallowed the other one
• What else happens while Goodwood is on
• The last Saturday belongs to the hills
• Sunday the 27th, and a proper finish
• Nine auctions, and three of them on one day

August bunched its fixtures into knots and dared you to untangle them. September does not bother with the pretence. There are nineteen UK fixtures on our events page this month and nine auctions alongside them, and the clashes are less accidents of scheduling than an admission that this is the month everyone wants.

The weather is still holding and nobody has mentioned a battery conditioner yet. This is the peak. Plan accordingly, because you cannot do all of it.

Two concours in the same week

The month opens with the sort of fixture clash that would look like a mistake in any other discipline. Salon Privé runs at Blenheim Palace from Wednesday 2 to Sunday 6 September, its twenty-first edition, the Concours judged on the 2nd and 3rd and Supercar Saturday filling the 5th with something north of a thousand privately owned cars. Two new Concours classes arrive this year: Limited Production Supercars covering 1996 to 2026, and Hypercar Heaven for anything from 2006 on. Whether those belong at a concours is a conversation for another day, but Salon Privé has read its audience correctly for two decades and I would not bet against it.

Then, before Blenheim has finished, the Concours of Elegance opens at Hampton Court Palace on Friday 4 September and runs to Sunday the 6th. Sixty cars, invited rather than entered, judged by their owners rather than by a panel, in the gardens of Henry VIII's palace. Friday and Saturday run 10am to 6pm, Sunday closes at 5.30pm.

So for three days the two best concours in the country are open at once, roughly sixty miles apart. Choose on temperament: Blenheim is a party with a concours attached and glorious about it, Hampton Court quieter, older and a good deal more serious about the cars. The same weekend also gives you the John Haynes Classic Motor Show at Sparkford on Sunday 6 September and the Beaulieu Oak Run the same afternoon, both cheaper and neither of which will make you queue.

Saturday the 12th is the cruellest day of the month

The Beaulieu International Autojumble fills the New Forest on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September, 8.30am to 5pm both days. It is the largest outdoor sale of motoring items in Europe and has been for decades, and while the stalls have drifted towards vintage clothing and enamel signs, the parts are still there if you walk far enough. If you need something for a car nobody makes bits for, this is the weekend it exists.

At exactly the same time, Castle Combe runs the Autumn Classic across the 12th and 13th, carrying extra weight this year: the poster marks fifty years of Castle Combe Circuit Ltd and Howard Strawford's part in keeping the place alive through the 1970s. Motor Racing Legends, HRDC, FISCAR, the GT and Sports Car Cup, the Ferrari Owners' Club and Mini 7 all bring grids. Admission is £15 to £30, under-16s free with an adult.

Autojumble or historic racing. There is no version of the 12th where you get both. Combe is the better day out by a distance, but the autojumble comes round once a year and the parts are finite. Pick whichever one gets the car off the axle stands.

Revival weekend, and the sale that swallowed the other one

Goodwood Revival runs Friday 18 to Sunday 20 September, and we previewed the La Dolce Vita weekend in June. What has changed since is the shape of the racing. Friday is a proper day rather than a warm-up, with thirteen official practice sessions and two races on the Friday evening, and the RAC TT Celebration has been reimagined to close out Sunday. If you have always bought a Saturday ticket on the basis that Friday was only practice, look again.

The other change is the auction, and it matters. Bonhams has folded its Festival of Speed sale into the Revival sale, so where there were two Goodwood auctions there is now one: Collectors' Motor Cars and Automobilia, across 18 and 19 September, cars from 10.30am on the Saturday. Forty-three lots, £15,000 up to £900,000.

The headline is a 1962 Aston Martin DB4 Vantage Convertible with two owners from new at £700,000 to £900,000, followed by a 1936 Aston Martin 2-litre Speed Model at £500,000 to £600,000 and a Bugatti Type 35C Grand Prix two-seater at £500,000 to £700,000. A 1973 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS sits at £300,000 to £350,000.

When I wrote about Monterey last week I said our own test came on 19 September, and this is it. California proved the money is still there but has become extremely fussy about where it lands. Forty-three lots is a curated book rather than a volume sale, and that is how you find out whether buyers are being selective or simply absent. Two Astons at the top of it is a fair question to ask of a market whose British index has been sliding all year.

What else happens while Goodwood is on

The NSRA Hot Rod Drags take over Santa Pod from Thursday 18 to Sunday 20 September, three days of exactly what it says, and Beaulieu runs Simply BMW on the Sunday.

And in Cheshire on Sunday 20 September, the Cholmondeley Castle Classic Car Show fills the castle parkland, billed as a Festival of 1,000 Classic Cars, 10am to 4pm. Adults are £12.50 in advance or £15 on the day, children £6.50 and £7.50, exhibitor passes £8 including driver and a passenger, parking free. For a thousand cars in that setting it is one of the better value tickets of the month, and anywhere north of Birmingham it is far easier to reach than Chichester.

The last Saturday belongs to the hills

Shelsley Walsh marks 125 years of the Midland Automobile Club. This one is for members, with two ways in: runs up the hill in your own road-legal car for £60, or a commemorative road tour recreating the 2005 Centenary Run, roughly 120 miles taking in Weatheroak, Gorcott, Sun Rising and Middle Hill, the club's homes before Shelsley was. The tour is £60 per car, extra passengers £10, finishing at the hill with food and entertainment. If you are not an MAC member, this is a reasonable month to become one.

Thirty miles south, Prescott has the VSCC back for their Long Course championships and Ettores Bend, 7.30am to 5pm, under-16s free. In Yorkshire, Harewood runs the Greenwood Cup. Three great British hills all competing on 26 September. Inconvenient, obviously, but speed hillclimbing has not looked this healthy in years.

The same day, Sywell Classic: Pistons and Props opens at Sywell Aerodrome for the 26th and 27th, gates at 10am. Historic racers, hot rods, dragsters and motorcycles on the racing runway and sprint strip, aerobatics overhead, and a period dress code a surprising number of people take seriously. It is the closest the calendar comes to a Revival that does not cost Revival money.

Sunday the 27th, and a proper finish

Jaguars at Gaydon closes the month on Sunday 27 September, 9.30am to 4pm at the British Motor Museum, run as always by the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust. Hundreds of Jaguars and Daimlers on the field, museum and Collections Centre included. Adults £18, concessions £16, children £9, exhibitors £13 including the driver, gates at 7.30am and cars in place by ten.

Elsewhere on the 27th, Beaulieu runs Simply Italian and Harewood holds the Mike Wilson Hillclimb. October, for what it is worth, drops to nine fixtures. Make this one count.

Nine auctions, and three of them on one day

Beyond Goodwood, the auction diary is busy. Manor Park Classics opens at Runcorn on 5 September, then Saturday the 12th does to the salerooms what it does to everything else: WB and Sons at Killingworth, Dore and Rees at the Castle Combe Autumn Classic, and Historics with the Pace of Autumn sale at Ascot, all on one day.

Brightwells run a timed sale from Bishops Frome on the 16th, the 23rd brings Mathewsons at Pickering and H&H at Kelham Hall near Newark, and Anglia close at King's Lynn on the 26th.

That is a lot of cars crossing a lot of blocks in four weeks. After a first half in which the British market was selective rather than buoyant, September will tell us whether autumn brings the buyers back or confirms what the summer has hinted at.

Go to something. It gets dark early soon enough.