Fort Lauderdale 2026: 211 Superyachts, Average Ask Down 16.8%

How many superyachts came to Fort Lauderdale in 2026?

Fort Lauderdale hosted 211 superyachts from 28 October to 1 November 2026, according to YachtBuyer's closing report. That is 24.1% more than the 170 it gives for 2025.

YachtBuyer's closing report, dated 2 November, counts 211 superyachts across the five days, with a combined length of 6.95 km, up 15.4%. The fleet got younger as well as bigger: average age fell from 11.34 to 9.58 years. Debuts rose 38.4%, from 86 to 119, and the show named the 93m Oceanco Draak as its largest yacht, ahead of the 64m Royal Hakvoort Scout and the 60m Feadship Rock.It.

The growth came from the middle of the market, and the averages show it. Average length dropped from 35.43m to 32.93m, so the show added many more boats than it added metres. The debuts show where the volume is. The world debuts were the 29.43m Pearl 100 Hybrid (the builder's first hybrid-powered model), the 21.34m Horizon PC68A and the 17.55m Galeon 570 Sky. The US debuts were the 28.7m Azimut Grande 30M, the 27.11m Princess X90 and the 25.6m Bluegame BGX83. None of those is above 30m. BOAT International's preview made the same point from the other side: 141 of its 182 confirmed yachts, or 77.5%, measured between 24m and 40m, and it described the show as focused on the sub-40m market. Charter held at 60 yachts, unchanged from 2025, which means its share of the fleet slid from 35.29% to 28.44%. Charter didn't grow into the bigger show. Brokerage and new boats did.

Did asking prices fall at Fort Lauderdale in 2026?

Yes. The average asking price of a yacht listed for sale fell 16.8%, from $11.9 million to $9.9 million, while the number of listings rose 16.8% to 174. Both moves come from YachtBuyer's closing report and both are percentages of an earlier base that the outlet restated.

Listings for sale reached 174, about 82.5% of the attending fleet, up from 149. Their combined asking value slipped from $1.8 billion to $1.7 billion. So the show had roughly a sixth more boats for sale carrying a smaller total price tag. Put differently, the typical listing asked for about $2 million less than it did in the baseline year. Average length of those listings fell from 35.59m to 33.46m and average age from 11.95 to 10.84 years.

A shorter average boat explains part of the price drop. It doesn't explain all of it. Dividing YachtBuyer's published averages, the desk gets about $0.334 million of asking price per metre in the baseline year and about $0.296 million this year, an 11.5% fall, on boats that were also about a year younger. That is the desk's own arithmetic on rounded figures and it describes asking prices only. YachtBuyer reports no sales and no sale prices from the show, so nobody can say yet whether owners are cutting or buyers are walking.

Why don't the 2025 and 2026 reports use the same 2025 numbers?

YachtBuyer's 2026 closing report compares against a 2025 that differs from its own 2025 closing report. Year-on-year percentages built on the new base shrink or grow depending on which one you pick.

The 2025 closing report, published on 3 November 2025, said 162 superyachts attended, 150 were for sale at a combined $1.9 billion, with an average ask of $12.5 million and 78 debuts. The 2026 report gives 2025 as 170 superyachts, 149 for sale at $1.8 billion, an average ask of $11.9 million and 86 debuts. Both reports credit YachtBuyer's own market data. The 2026 pages we read don't say why the base changed, and a late-registered yacht or a recount would explain it equally well.

The choice of base matters. Against the original 162, the 2026 fleet is 30.2% bigger, not 24.1%. Against the original 150 listings, the 174 are up 16.0%. The average ask drops 20.8% from $12.5 million to $9.9 million instead of 16.8%, and total asking value falls from $1.9 billion to $1.7 billion. Every direction holds. Only the size changes. A reader who quotes up 24% and a reader who quotes up 30% are both accurate, and each should say which 2025 they mean. The 2025 report also lists debuts that sum to 68 while claiming 78, which is another reason to treat these counts as show-floor tallies and not audited statistics.

Why do the pre-show and closing counts disagree?

BOAT International's preview on 22 October counted 182 confirmed superyachts, YachtBuyer's opening headline said 216 and its closing report said 211. They were measured at different moments by different outlets.

BOAT International's BOATPro preview, written by Holly Margerrison, cited exclusive BOATPro data for 182 confirmed superyachts, a brokerage fleet asking more than EUR 1.4 billion, an average length of 33.95m and 141 yachts between 24m and 40m. It warned that the list was still changing. YachtBuyer's opening-day headline then put the show at 216 superyachts and $1.9 billion, and its closing report cut that to 211 and $1.7 billion. The pages we could read don't explain the move between those two YachtBuyer figures.

Currencies and definitions differ too. The preview is in euros and the closing report in dollars, so the EUR 1.4 billion and the $1.7 billion can't be compared without a rate and a shared cut-off date. A superyacht in these tallies is usually a yacht of 24m or more, but a show decides who counts when it prints the list. If you're quoting one of these numbers, quote it with its source and its date, because the same show now has at least three.

What does the Fort Lauderdale data mean for an owner or buyer?

For a buyer there was more choice at lower asking prices. For a seller it was a more crowded room than a year ago. Neither reading is confirmed until the sale prices come in.

A buyer walking the docks had 174 boats for sale to compare, and the typical asking price was about a fifth below the 2025 close as first published. The supply was also newer and smaller, so the saving isn't a like-for-like bargain on the same boat. The listing mix matters for a buyer too, because 82.5% of the fleet was for sale, so a show that is nominally about new boats worked as a brokerage floor. A seller faced the opposite view: the listing count rose while total asking value fell, which is what a market looks like when owners price to move. Is that a correction or a change in mix? The show data can't tell the two apart.

The honest answer arrives over the next two quarters, when the closed sales behind these listings appear in brokerage reports. Until then the figures are a map of what owners hope to get, drawn by trade outlets at a trade show. The desk will compare the sold prices with these asking prices once they're published. The useful habit for any owner is to look at price per metre and age together, because the headline average hides both.