Monaco Gets a Dedicated Refit Show; the Market Numbers Don't Agree

A three-day show built inside an existing circuit

Informa Prestige, the events group behind the Monaco Yacht Show, confirmed on 3-5 August 2026 that it will run The Future of Refit at the Grimaldi Forum from 31 March to 2 April 2027. Yacht Club de Monaco is a partner, giving the show an on-water display berthed in the club's own marina alongside the conference halls. BOAT International is the media partner, contributing daily editorial sessions to a programme called Refit Live: keynotes, panels, case studies and workshops aimed at owners, captains, project managers and the yards themselves. It is, on paper, the first major trade event built around refit and nothing else, rather than a refit pavilion bolted onto a new-build show.

Toby Moore, chief executive of Informa Prestige, framed the launch bluntly: "Refit is no longer a secondary consideration within the superyacht industry - it is one of its defining economic realities." Stewart Campbell, managing director of BOAT International, backed the timing: "An event dedicated exclusively to the refit sector is long overdue." Neither company has published ticket pricing, expected attendance or an exhibitor list, which is normal 19 months from a first edition but leaves an owner or yard weighing whether to block out the dates with only the organizer's word on how big the room will be.

The case the organizer is making

Informa's own justification for the show rests on a specific set of numbers: a global refit and refurbishment market worth USD 3 to 5 billion a year, growing 6 to 9 percent annually, and accounting for roughly 36 percent of the superyacht sector's total earnings. The company sets that against an active global fleet of more than 6,000 yachts over 30 metres, owners who typically spend around 10 percent of a yacht's value every year on upkeep, and major refits that fall due every five to ten years as hulls age and systems date. It is a fleet-driven argument: more boats in the water for longer means more refit work, and that work has outgrown its status as an afterthought.

The show also slots into a calendar Monaco has been building around refit and sustainability for several years. Yacht Club de Monaco already runs the SEA Index, a carbon-footprint benchmark for new tonnage, and the 14th Monaco Energy Boat Challenge is scheduled for 29 June to 3 July 2027, three months after the refit show. Informa is, in effect, betting that an owner or yard willing to fly to Monaco for one of those fixtures can be persuaded to come back for a second, refit-specific one - a reasonable wager given how much of the same audience already attends the September Monaco Yacht Show, but an unproven one until seats are filled.

An independent study tells a smaller story

The only third-party audit of the sector's size tells a different story from Informa's own numbers. Global Economic Impact of the Superyacht Industry, a study Deloitte and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam produced for the Superyacht Builders Association and the Superyacht Life Foundation, published 27 May 2026 using 2022 data, put the whole superyacht industry's annual economic output at EUR 54 billion. Of that, the study attributed EUR 5.6 billion to refit and maintenance - about 11 percent of total industry impact, not the 36 percent of sector earnings Informa cites for its own market.

The two figures are not strictly the same measurement - Informa is describing refit's share of the superyacht sector's earnings, while SYBAss and Deloitte measured refit's share of the industry's total economic impact, a broader base that includes new-build, crew wages, marina fees, brokerage and charter. That difference explains some of the gap but not all of it: even generously reconciled, an owner or investor reading both claims side by side is left with two credible-sounding institutions putting refit's weight in the industry at roughly three-to-one apart. Neither figure has been withdrawn or corrected since publication, and no third study has yet reconciled them.

The yards that already organized around refit

Away from the trade-show calendar, the refit sector already has its own standing body. The ICOMIA Superyacht Refit Group brings together eleven yards - Amico & Co, Astilleros de Mallorca, BAE Systems Jacksonville, MB92 La Ciotat, Lusben, MB92 Barcelona, Monaco Marine, Pendennis, ISKRA Shipyard, IMS Shipyard and KRM Yacht - in what the group calls a forum where the industry's foremost refit yards collaborate to shape standards, share knowledge and advance the sector, principally by developing standardized contracts and guidance documents. Two of those eleven are yards Yotters has covered this week for real capital commitments rather than conference talk: MB92 Barcelona's EUR 40 million investment tied to a lease running to 2050, and Pendennis's GBP 150 million rebuild of the old Falmouth oil terminal into new docks.

Those commitments are the more concrete evidence that refit capacity is genuinely expanding, independent of whichever market-size figure an owner chooses to believe. The Future of Refit will compete for the same yards' and captains' calendar time as the Monaco Yacht Show itself, run by the same organizer in the same city five months later, and against the established refit circuit around Fort Lauderdale. A first edition with no attendance record and no published pricing carries real execution risk that the ICOMIA group's ongoing, yard-led standardization work does not.

What this means if you are planning a refit

Nothing about the Monaco announcement changes a refit decision an owner needs to make this year - the show itself is 19 months away. What it does confirm is that refit is being treated, by at least one major events group and by eleven of the sector's own yards through ICOMIA, as a market worth organizing around in its own right rather than a subplot to new-build sales. The ICOMIA group's standardized-contract work is the more immediately usable resource for an owner or project manager today; the Grimaldi Forum event is a 2027 date to watch, not a 2026 tool.

The more durable story is the gap between the two market-size claims. An owner, CEO or investor sourcing refit numbers for a board paper or a purchase decision should treat Informa's USD 3-5 billion, 36 percent figure and the SYBAss-Deloitte EUR 5.6 billion, 11 percent figure as two different claims from two different institutions, not two versions of the same fact. Whether Informa publishes attendance and exhibitor numbers as the 2027 date nears, and whether a further independent study narrows the three-to-one gap, are the two things worth watching next.