Cannes

Cannes is the show town. The Cannes Yachting Festival every September is the largest in-water boat show in Europe, and the tender industry's commercial calendar pivots around it. For ten months of the year the Vieux Port and Port Pierre Canto are working superyacht berths; for two weeks in early September they become the most concentrated retail showcase for tenders, chase boats, and support craft anywhere in the world. Every major builder of limousine tenders and open tenders shows here, which makes the Festival the reference point for model-year pricing and the moment a large share of new orders are written.

That show gravity shapes the local trade. New-build allocations are timed to land before the Festival, brokers stage their best pre-owned inventory in the surrounding marinas for the same fortnight, and order books for the following season are largely set during show week. Outside September, the working pattern reverts to the Cap d'Antibes and Iles de Lerins day-trip runs, with limousine and open tenders carrying guests off yachts anchored in the bay.

The local fleet skews to limousine and open tenders for that day-trip pattern. Sport-fishing chase boats are less common here than in Monaco or Antibes; side-launched sport tenders and beach landers are the more frequent guest-side spec, run from anchor rather than from a town berth.

For a buyer, the Festival is the one moment in the year to compare competing builders in the water on the same dock, but it is a poor moment to take delivery. Show-week congestion, restricted road access, and the export and VAT structuring around exhibitor sales mean most boats agreed at the show are sea-trialled and handed over afterwards, usually back at Golfe-Juan or Antibes once the quays clear. A captain shortlisting at the Festival should book the post-show trial and the surveyor before signing, because the September window for both fills as fast as the order book does.

• Monaco Marine Beaulieu and Monaco Marine Vauban are the closest superyacht-scale yards and the usual route for warranty and minor tender work.
• MB92 La Ciotat, an hour west, for full refit and paint; tender packages are normally folded into the mothership lift.
• Composite Works (La Ciotat) for laminate and structural composite work, including show-damage repair.
• Cannes Marine for tender and small-yacht mechanical work without leaving the bay, useful for keeping a boat in the water through the season.

Tender refit is timed to the mothership's lay-up rather than booked alone, so the practical window for Cannes-based boats is the autumn-to-spring period; La Ciotat slots for that window are best locked before the Festival.

France applies EU VAT at 20% on locally delivered tender sales. Show sales at Cannes Yachting Festival are typically structured as ex-VAT export sales for non-EU buyers or with deferred VAT for EU-flagged commercial yachts; the underlying mechanics are covered in our tender import VAT note. The French Affaires Maritimes enforces commercial-yacht crew rules (ENIM social charges) on tenders flagged commercially when chartered locally; private use is unaffected. Coordinate any show purchase with a fiscal representative before signing, not after the boat has changed hands on the dock.