A personal perspective on the 2026 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, from the concours lawns on Lake Como to the Broad Arrow auction at Villa Erba.

This year, your author made what appeared to be a perfectly reasonable decision. Rather than staying somewhere around Lake Como, the plan was to drive in from Milan. On paper, the journey takes little more than 50 minutes: an easy drive north, followed by a short final stretch towards Cernobbio and Villa d’Este.

That optimism lasted until the end of the A9. From there, progress became measured less in kilometres than in metres, with the final stretch between the motorway exit and Cernobbio completed centimetre by centimetre. Finding somewhere to leave the car proved to be the equally ambitious second part of the exercise. By then, a hotel in Como suddenly seemed like an excellent idea.

Eventually, though, the traffic disappears behind you. The lake comes into view, you pass through the entrance of Villa d’Este, and the inconvenience of getting there is replaced almost instantly by something rather different. Waiting near the entrance in almost unapologetic red were the Capricorn 01 Zagato “Tutto Rosso” and the Kimera K39, two very contemporary expressions of automotive emotion positioned at the entrance to an event fundamentally concerned with history.

From there, Villa d’Este begins to feel strangely familiar. Not because the cars are ordinary, quite the opposite, but because the simple reality of dealing with automobiles this rare is that there are not suddenly more of them every year. Over time, certain chassis become familiar faces, reappearing at concours, collections and events in different parts of the world, often accompanied by an equally familiar group of collectors, designers, photographers and people from across the automotive industry.

As a result, the short walk from the hotel entrance towards the media centre has a tendency to take considerably longer than its actual distance would suggest. A few steps turn into a conversation, another car demands a closer look, and someone familiar appears across the lawn. What should take only a matter of minutes gradually becomes part of the event itself.

Then there is the lake. Looking past the hotel, the polished wooden boats resting at the small harbour form one of those scenes that have become inseparable from Villa d’Este: mahogany, chrome and water on one side, some of the most significant automobiles ever created on the other. It would be very easy for all of this to become theatrical, yet somehow it does not. That may be one of Villa d’Este’s greatest qualities.

More Than a Concours

For the 2026 edition, held from 15 to 17 May, 54 automobiles from 13 countries were assembled across eight competition classes under the theme “Future needs Heritage.” The selection stretched across more than a century of automotive history, combining pre war machinery, post war grand tourers, competition cars, significant Ferraris and vehicles preserved in unusually original condition.

On paper, that sounds like the description of a particularly good concours. In person, the distinction is subtler. Villa d’Este is not simply about assembling rare automobiles in one place. It is about the context in which they are seen, and the way that context alters your perception of them.

Some cars demand attention because of provenance or competition history. Others are important because they introduced an engineering idea, established a new design language or represent a particular moment in the history of a manufacturer. Then there are cars whose significance becomes almost secondary once you stand in front of them. The proportions are right, the surfaces make sense, and very little explanation is required.

That mix is what makes walking the lawns so compelling. The event does not feel like a linear journey through automotive history. Instead, different periods, philosophies and ideas are placed alongside one another, creating a conversation between engineering, design and culture.

When the Setting Changes the Cars

Villa d’Este is more than an attractive background. It changes the way the cars are perceived.Architecture, gardens, boats, people and machinery exist within the same visual environment. A car that might feel isolated on a show stand becomes part of a much larger scene. Even automobiles encountered before at other events can suddenly appear different when placed against the lake or beneath the trees surrounding the hotel.

For someone accustomed to seeing automotive imagery every day, this slower way of looking may be one of the greatest luxuries of the event. So much of modern car culture is consumed in seconds through screens and social feeds. Villa d’Este encourages the opposite: walking around a car, returning to it later, noticing a detail missed the first time and allowing an object to hold your attention for longer than an algorithm normally permits.

Perhaps that is also why seeing familiar cars again rarely feels repetitive. The surroundings give them another context, and context has a remarkable ability to change the way an automobile is understood.

From Villa d’Este to Broad Arrow

A short distance away at Villa Erba, Broad Arrow Auctions returned as the official auction partner of BMW AG. Getting there, naturally, meant crossing the lake in one of the beautiful old wooden boats moored in front of Villa d’Este. There may technically be other ways of reaching Villa Erba, although I cannot say with certainty. In any case, this is quite obviously the correct one.

The short crossing offers one last look back at Villa d’Este from the water before the atmosphere changes on the other side. Broad Arrow assembled 70 cars for its two day sale, attracting bidders from 31 countries and recording a 71 percent increase in bidders compared with 2025. Among its headline consignments were a 2018 Pagani Zonda Unica, a 2023 Ferrari Daytona SP3 and a 1990 Ferrari F40.

An auction inevitably introduces numbers into the conversation. Estimates matter and eventually a price determines where each car goes next. Yet walking through the selection at Villa Erba also raises a more interesting question: why do certain cars remain desirable decades after they were created?

A Zonda and an F40 belong to entirely different moments, but both developed identities strong enough to transcend their original purpose. They became cultural objects as much as automobiles. The market eventually places a financial value on that distinction; the weekend at Villa d’Este provides some insight into where that value originates.