The Outdoor Trade Show 2026

Just back from this year's Outdoor Trade Show in Liverpool. To my surprise this was the 20th show. I didn't think there had been that many. As always there was plenty to see and plenty of people to chat with, often the only time I meet them face to face each year.

Three days in this vast hall with its temporary outdoor gear village.

Amidst all the new gear it was good to see Keela promoting its Legacy Project, which is about restoring, repairing, and reworking items so they last longer. 

Paramo has long been a leader in environmentally friendly gear. This year they showed a prototype jacket made with fully recyclable components. The jacket has no zips but all the features you'd expect. Production isn't planned to start until autumn 2028 though. However some of the design features such as zip-free waterproof pockets will appear on other garments as early as next winter. This sounds an excellent project.

Paramo prototype

Here's a look at a few new items I found interesting. I'm writing an over view of the show for The Great Outdoors magazine (last year's review here) and I'll be reviewing some of the gear over the next year. Many items won't be available until next spring or even later so don't expect to see them in the shops for a while.

The last few years have seen many new stoves arrive and there were two more good-looking ones at the show. Soto had a regulated stove that runs off plug-in horizontal canisters. The only stove I'm aware of that ran off these long narrow canisters was the Primus Grasshopper back in the 1970s. That stove used the canister as one of the stove legs. 

Primus itself had a winter/cold weather version of the new Lite Ultra  (which I'm currently testing). The Ulti Lite has a regulated radiant burner.

There were many new sleeping pads on display and some ultralight closed cell foam ones from Big Agnes caught my eye. There hasn't been anything new in this area for many years, all the attention going to inflatable mats. Big Agnes is a new lighter weight foam that is said to be as durable as heavier ones. Mats made from this are also more compact when packed, which will be excellent. An even lighter foam, is coming too. A full-length mat made from this will weigh just 99 grams!

The weights of some inflatable mats are coming down too. Sea to Summit's Ultralight Ion R5 mat only weighs 315g while having an R-Value of 5. It's also very compact.

Rab has revamped its sleeping bag range, something that seems to happen quite often. Completely new is a quilt in the ultralight Mythic range.

Of the many tents on display Robens has an ultralight trekking pole solo model, the Via 1, which is available now and which I have on test.

At the other extreme of backpacking tents Terra Nova had the Odyssey 1 and 2, which are designed for winter mountain use. The design is clearly derived from the Hilleberg Soulo, though with some different features. The solo Odyssey 1 is also lighter weight and less expensive (though by no means light and still costly).

Finally I liked Xtorm 3in1 Travel Charger, which combines a power bank and a wall charger. This looks excellent for long trips where both those are needed.

I wrote about last year's show here.

Pictures From An Exhibition: The Outdoor Trade Show 2024

Back home from a five day trip to Liverpool for the annual Outdoor Trade Show, which I attended on behalf of The Great Outdoors magazine. Two days on trains - three each way and all on time (just!),  and three days at the show, wandering a huge, bright, noisy, echoing warehouse-like space full of stands promoting every type of outdoor gear. 

Bright lights, straight lines

Despite the artificiality, the harshness of the lights, and the hardness and flatness of the floors (my feet end up more sore than from any day in the hills) I do enjoy the show, though three days is enough. Some of the new gear really is interesting and I'm looking forward to testing items. 

Stoves & pots

Meeting people is the heart of the show though. I only see many friends and colleagues in person at the show and I always think just how different it is to talking to them via a screen. This time I met Francesca Donovan, the new editor of The Great Outdoors, for the first time, which was wonderful. 

Over the years I've got to know quite a few people from brands and PR companies - too many to mention them all here - and it's always good to chat with them. 

This should be interesting!

Away fron the gear standsI had good conversations with Mike Parsons of Outdoor Gear Coach, Henry Iddon, the photographer behind the Mountain Style book to which I've contributed an essay (and which has surpassed its Kickstarter appeal), and Dave Mycroft of MyOutdoors. I was also interviewed by Bob Cartwright of The Outdoor Station for a podcast.

A good idea

Here's a few more pictures of the show, all from my smartphone.

A stand you couldn't miss

There were tents

And more tents

I kept expecting them to move

Shoes I like

Even a dummy dog

Liverpool & the Outdoor Trade Show

Big cities are strange places. At least they are when you haven’t visited one for a long time. The noise! The smell! The people! The buildings! The traffic! Wow!

The city in question was Liverpool and I was there last week for the Outdoor Trade Show (OTS). I’ve been to such shows many times over the decades in places as varied as Harrogate and Friedrichshafen. Rarely has a year gone by without my attending at least one. Due to the pandemic this was the first since 2019, however. Indeed, it was the first time I’d been out of Scotland since then, and only once had I left the Highlands. Other than that brief visit to the edge of Edinburgh the biggest place I’ve been in the last three years is Inverness, a city itself but hardly Liverpool scale.

The show itself was down in the newly developed docks area, right on the banks of the River Mersey. Inside it felt familiar and just like every other trade show. Somehow this was reassuring. I was there to look at outdoor gear, but much enjoyment came from meeting people I mostly hadn’t seen for three years. One of the best aspects of shows like this is the community feel. OTS may be about business but it’s also about the outdoor community and it was good to feel part of that again. Online meetings don’t adequately replace face-to-face ones.

I’m not going to write about the gear I saw here. We made some little videos on some of the most interesting stuff that’ll appear on The Great Outdoors website soon and I’ll be reviewing items on the same site the rest of the year and probably into next year as some of the gear won’t appear until then. For now, I’ll just say I was pleased that sustainability was a major theme. I’m aware that some companies are probably only doing this because they feel they have to and there’s undoubtedly elements of greenwash around. However, I think that whatever the reason it’s better companies do something rather than nothing and that the outdoor industry is at least moving in the right direction.

 

Away from the show I had a little time to wander round the Albert Dock and Mann Island areas, now redeveloped and modernised and a big tourist draw. I hadn't visited the area for many decades (I was brought up in Formby just up the coast and so came to Liverpool quite often as a child and teenager) and it was just about unrecognisable. The development is attractive and there are informative signs as well as museums for a deeper look at the history – I had no time for these, unfortunately. There is somewhat of a clash of architectural styles though, with the red brick of the functional dock buildings and the pale grey of the classical Liver Building and its neighbours somewhat at odds with the hard angles and flat brightness of modern glass and steel constructions. 

 

 

After the show I spent a very enjoyable few hours with my brother John who lives not far way and who I hadn’t seen for quite a few years. I mentioned to him that I could do with a decent coffee, that in the hotel and at the show being, frankly, vile – I’d abandoned several almost-full mugs from various outlets (oh, I have got fussy!). “There’s a speciality one next to your hotel”, he said. And there was. Root Coffee. And it was excellent. How had I failed to see it? Because it lay the other way from the show and the docks. Thanks John!

 

 

As well as visiting England for the first time in three years I also hadn’t been on a train in that time. To be travelling on one again seemed quite exciting! Actually six trains there and back. Of these three were cancelled yet somehow I arrived only slightly late and got back to Aviemore at the right time. Perhaps oddest was that the London to Edinburgh train I was meant to catch at Wigan was cancelled but only from London to Preston. So I caught a train to Preston and caught the almost empty train there.

As always crossing Drumochter Pass was a joy, even though it was grey and windswept. Home again!

Now I’m back my blog will return to normal. I don’t think there’ll be another city for a while. The hills beckon.

Note: the show pictures were taken right at the end, just before packing up began. Most of the time it was busy!

OutDoor Show, Friedrichshafen, 2017

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Friedrichshafen via Aberdeen, Paris and Zurich for the huge OutDoor industry trade show. I'll be spending three days wandering the aircraft-hangar style halls looking at gear and searching for anything new and interesting. I'm there on behalf of The Great Outdoors and I'll be sending short reports back for posting on the magazine website and also tweeting comments and pictures on the magazine's Twitter feed - @TGOMagazine. I'll probably post some stuff on Facebook too.

When I get back I'll write a fuller report for the August issue.

Long journey tomorrow. I'm hoping it's going to be worth it.

Outdoor Trade Show - The Most Interesting Items of New Gear

Displays at the Outdoor Trade Show

Last week I spent a few days wandering round the Outdoor Trade Show in Stoneleigh in Warwickshire (furthest south I've been this year) looking at gear whilst outside the sun blazed down. Yes, I'd rather have been in the hills but there was quite a bit of interesting stuff that I'm looking forward to trying. I've done a round-up of the gear that most caught my attention for The Great Outdoors (I was there on the magazine's behalf) which you can read here. It includes brands like Force Ten, MSR, Primus, Therm-A-Rest, Primaloft and Sea-to-Summit and items including packs, sleeping mats, stove fuel and insulation.

Thoughts from the Outdoor Trade Show

Just spent the first of two days looking at gear at The Outdoor Trade Show, which is held at Stoneleigh Park down in deepest Warwickshire in the English Midlands. Took me a whole day to reach this distant place (as measured from the centre of my world - the Cairngorms).

At the show I've seen a mass of stuff including nice socks from Point 6 and Teko, Gooper magnet closed electronics cases, good looking new Paramo clothing, a modular Kelty pack, new Force Ten tents, a water resistant cotton/polyester fleece from Climescape, some interesting fuel gel from Trangia/Vango and lots of footwear. Much of this gear will be tested for test reports in The Great Outdoors over the next year.

The indoor show is quite small compared with the big trade shows in Friedrichshafen and Salt Lake City. However the tent show outside is vast, the biggest in Europe if not the world. Ranks of tents and banners faded into the distance. Vango alone had more space and tents than other shows have in total. This promoted me to wonder which of the various impossible to imagine comparison cliches were appropriate - x football pitches, Wales, Belgium?