Wooden Toy Trade Fairs and Toy Exhibitions: Buyer’s Calendar

Toy fairs are where a wooden toy range is decided: a buyer picks the puzzle up, checks the edge sanding and works the mechanism, and a factory meets the person who actually places the order. This page is the working calendar of the fairs that matter for wooden toys, with dates taken from the organisers’ own websites on 8 October 2026.

Toy trade fairs and toy exhibitions: the dates that matter

A toy fair is not a showroom. It is the one week in the year when a buyer can pick the product up: feel the edge sanding, work the mechanism, check whether the paint has been cut back or laid on thick, and put the question that matters to the person who runs the line. Photographs never answer that, which is why the fairs below still decide ranges rather than catalogues.

Two of them carry most of the wooden toy business. Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg in February is where European ranges are fixed for the following Christmas. The China pair — China Toy Expo in Shanghai and the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, both in October, two weeks apart — is where the export-facing Chinese supply base is present and where a factory visit is easiest to add to the same trip.

Every date in the calendar below was read from the organiser’s own website on 8 October 2026. Fairs move, opening hours change, and a fair that runs annually can still shift a week from one year to the next. Confirm the dates with the organiser before you book flights.

Toy fairs and toy exhibitions: dates verified with the organisers on 8 October 2026

Which toy fair should a wooden toy buyer attend?

Attend the fair your customers attend, not the biggest fair. In practice:

• Selling into the UK or Ireland. London Toy Fair in January. Trade-only, compact, and the buyers who walk it are the ones who place UK retail orders.
• Selling into Europe, or building a distribution network. Spielwarenmesse in February, and Kind + Jugend in September if the range is for babies and toddlers.
• Selling into the United States. Toy Fair New York in February. It is also where you will be asked for a Children’s Product Certificate, so it pays to have the test documentation ready before you travel.
• Sourcing rather than selling. China Toy Expo and the Canton Fair in October. Both put you in the same city as the factories. A shortlist of three or four suppliers can be met in two days and the plant visits added to the same trip.
• Japan and wider Asia. The Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair in January is the traditional entry point, and Japan’s own toy show is run by the Japan Toy Association.

If the trip is about sourcing, treat the fair as the shortlisting exercise and the factory visit as the decision. A stand tells you what a factory wants to be seen making; the plant tells you what it can actually repeat at volume.

Toy events worth watching beyond the main calendar

Three more events come up often enough in wooden toy conversations to be worth tracking, but their dates are set year by year and should always be taken from the organiser:

• Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair and Hong Kong Baby Products Fair (HKTDC, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, traditionally January). The gateway fair for Asian manufacturers and international buyers, and often the first appointment of the year.
• Tokyo Toy Show (Japan Toy Association). Japan is a large wooden toy market with its own safety regime and its own retail structure, and the show is the fastest way to see what Japanese buyers expect.
• Spiel Essen (board and card games, Germany, traditionally October). Not a toy fair in the Nuremberg sense: it is the world’s largest public board game event, and it is where a wooden chess set, mancala board or cribbage board meets its end customer.

Regional and national shows also exist in most markets, usually run by the local toy association. They are cheap to attend and useful for market intelligence, but they rarely change a supply decision.

Working a toy fair into a wooden toy order, and adding a factory visit

A fair is a deadline, and the arithmetic around it is unforgiving. Work backwards from the day you need goods on a shelf:

• Samples first. Custom sampling takes about ten days; catalogue items are usually dispatched within 48 hours. If you want samples in your hand at the fair, ask two to three weeks before you travel.
• Then production. Our published lead time is around 30 days after order confirmation, subject to complexity, material and quantity. A fair in early February is therefore the right moment to confirm a spring order, not a summer one.
• Then freight. Add your forwarder’s sea transit time on top of the production window. The carton size and quantity per carton decide what the shipment actually costs, so collect that data at the same time as the price — the container loading table on this site shows what we publish per item.
• And Chinese New Year. The plant closes for the Spring Festival and reopens into a backlog, so anything due in the first quarter has to be confirmed before the cut-off, not after. We publish the 2027 factory dates and order cut-offs separately.

If you are travelling to a fair in China, add the factory visit to the same trip. Buyers are welcome by appointment, and a visit usually covers the woodworking, sanding, painting, assembly and packing areas. Tell us the dates you are travelling and the items you want to see, and the samples and documentation can be arranged in advance so that the visit answers questions rather than raising them.

What to ask a wooden toy factory at a fair

Price is the least useful question on a first meeting, because it cannot be compared until the rest is known. These are the questions that make two quotations comparable, and any factory that can answer them from its own specification sheets is worth a second meeting:

• What is the carton size, the quantity per carton, and the gross and net weight for this item?
• How many pieces fit in a 20 ft and a 40 ft container, and is that loose-loaded or palletised?
• What is the MOQ for this item in stock, and what changes it for OEM or private label?
• What is the production lead time after order confirmation, and what is the sample lead time?
• Which test reports can you issue — EN71 for the EU, ASTM F963 and CPSIA for the US, and can third-party inspection be arranged before shipment?
• What wood is this actually made from, and is there FSC chain of custody?
• What paint system is used, and how many sanding rounds happen before it?
• What is the sample cost, and is it credited against the bulk order?
• Can the packaging be retail-ready, and who owns the artwork and tooling?
• Can I visit the factory, or see the lines that would run this item?

Answers to the first four questions are published for our own items on the wooden toy container loading table and the product pages, so they can be checked before a conversation starts rather than after a quotation arrives.

Related: Wooden toy carton sizes and container loading table · Wooden toy lead times: from sample to shipping · Planning the sourcing calendar for wooden toys · Chinese New Year 2027 factory dates and order cut-offs · Wooden toy FAQ: MOQ, OEM/ODM, samples and lead times · Our factory in Yunhe, Zhejiang · Contact and quotation