Every August, the Monterey Peninsula becomes the center of the automotive world. Rare competition cars return to the racetrack, collectors gather at auctions and private events, manufacturers reveal new models, and extraordinary automobiles appear on roads where they are almost never seen during the rest of the year.
The week reaches its traditional finale on the 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links, where the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance brings together some of the most significant and beautifully preserved automobiles in existence.
This year carries special meaning. On Sunday, August 16, 2026, the Concours celebrates its 75th edition. Yet the event did not begin as the centerpiece of a global automotive week. It started in 1950 as a relatively modest and last-minute social companion to a road race through Del Monte Forest.
That unlikely beginning is one of the best parts of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance history. The car show that was once secondary to the racing ultimately outlived it, grew far beyond it, and helped make the Monterey Peninsula synonymous with automotive excellence.
What Does “Concours d’Elegance” Mean?
The French phrase concours d’élégance is generally translated as a “competition of elegance.” Its roots reach back to European gatherings in which fashionable owners presented elegant vehicles for public admiration and judging.
By the 1920s and 1930s, concours events in Paris and elsewhere on the continent had become important showcases for new automobiles and custom coachwork. The cars were not simply transportation. They were rolling expressions of design, craftsmanship, engineering, and personal style.
Pebble Beach drew inspiration from that European tradition. The first events also concentrated on contemporary automobiles rather than the historic classics most people associate with the Concours today. In fact, a new car won Best of Show in each of the first five years.
The meaning of “elegance” has broadened with the event. Today, invited cars are considered not only for their visual presence but also for their technical merit, history, provenance, and the quality and accuracy of their preservation or restoration. Winning a class at Pebble Beach is a major accomplishment. Earning Best of Show is one of the highest honors in the collector-car world.
A Last-Minute Addition to the Pebble Beach Road Races
The first Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the first Pebble Beach Road Race were held together on November 5, 1950.
The Peninsula’s motoring history reached even farther back. From 1903 through 1907, automobile races were held on the horse track at Hotel Del Monte. The hotel, its grounds, and the scenic route that became 17-Mile Drive played a defining role in the region’s evolution from a railroad-era resort to an internationally known destination. You can explore that earlier chapter in the history of Hotel Del Monte.
By 1950, the road race was the main attraction. Sports cars competed on a challenging course laid out over narrow, tree-lined roads in Del Monte Forest. The setting was beautiful, but it was also demanding: drivers raced past pines and cypress trees on roads bordered by little more than temporary barriers and hay bales.
The Concours was added as a social event to bring another measure of style to the weekend. Cars were displayed and judged in a nearby field before being paraded along the racecourse’s start-finish straight. It was a fitting combination of two sides of the automobile—performance and elegance—but few could have predicted which event would become the enduring institution.
The early Concours was more informal than today’s meticulously orchestrated gathering. Even so, the ingredients of the modern event were already present: remarkable cars, influential owners, design, competition, and a setting that could not easily be duplicated anywhere else.
Sterling Edwards, Phil Hill, and a Remarkable First Year
One person was central to the inaugural weekend: sportsman and aspiring automobile builder Sterling Edwards. Edwards helped inspire the Pebble Beach Road Races and entered his own creation, the Edwards R-26 Special Sport Roadster, in both the racing weekend and the Concours.
The R-26 earned the first Best of Show award in Pebble Beach Concours history. Ironically, that was not the prize Edwards most wanted. His ambition was focused on the road race.
The first Pebble Beach Cup instead went to a young Phil Hill. Hill would become one of the most important American racing drivers of his generation and, in 1961, the first American-born driver to win the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. His story would remain closely linked to Pebble Beach.
Five years after winning that first race, Hill returned to the Concours with a very different automobile: a 1931 Pierce-Arrow 41 LeBaron Convertible Town Cabriolet. The Pierce-Arrow was a car he knew personally—he had learned to drive in it—and in 1955 it became the first classic automobile to win Best of Show at Pebble Beach.
That victory marked a turning point.
The Shift From New Automobiles to Great Classics
During its earliest years, Pebble Beach followed the European model by celebrating new production cars and contemporary designs. Winners included the Edwards R-26, Jaguar sedans and sports cars, and an Austin-Healey 100.
The 1955 victory by Phil Hill’s prewar Pierce-Arrow signaled that the event was developing a different identity. Instead of concentrating primarily on what was new, Pebble Beach increasingly honored historically important automobiles and the artistry of earlier eras.
The following year, a 1930 Bugatti Type 37 Grand Prix won Best of Show. Bugatti would go on to become one of the event’s most successful marques. In 1958, collector J.B. Nethercutt earned the first of his record six Best of Show victories with a meticulously restored 1930 duPont Model G Merrimac Town Car, helping establish the extraordinary restoration standards now associated with Pebble Beach.
As the field evolved, the Concours became a place where automotive history could be studied in three dimensions. Custom coachwork, racing innovations, one-off commissions, landmark engineering, and the individual stories of owners and designers all became part of the competition.
The result is not a conventional car show. The automobiles invited to Pebble Beach are often irreplaceable cultural objects. Some represent the height of a celebrated marque. Others survived war, neglect, competition, or decades out of public view. Many require years of research and craftsmanship before they are ready for the show field.
When Racing Left the Roads of Del Monte Forest
The road races and the Concours continued together through 1956. That year, racer Ernie McAfee was killed in an accident on the forest circuit, bringing competition on those tight public roads to an end.
A purpose-built track was constructed inland, and racing moved to Laguna Seca in 1957. The change created a safer, permanent home for local motorsports and began another Monterey Peninsula tradition that continues today through WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion.
The Concours remained in Pebble Beach.
This separation allowed the two traditions to develop independently. Laguna Seca became famous for competition and its dramatic Corkscrew turn. Pebble Beach became the stage on which the world’s great automobiles were evaluated as works of design, engineering, and history.
The early racecourse is no longer active, but its story remains embedded in the landscape. Anyone familiar with the history of 17-Mile Drive knows how closely the roads, hotels, golf courses, coastal scenery, and defining events of Pebble Beach have always been connected.
From a Local Gathering to an International Standard
Over the decades, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance grew in both ambition and influence. Entry became highly selective. International collectors began sending historically important cars to California specifically for the event. Restoration teams planned projects around a hoped-for appearance on the 18th fairway.
The judging also became more exacting. Specialists examine cars according to class and consider their history, engineering, authenticity, presentation, and elegance. A beautiful restoration alone is not enough. Documentation matters. Correct components matter. The details of a coachbuilder’s work, a chassis’s competition record, and even changes made by an original owner can affect how an automobile is understood.
That rigor is balanced by something more emotional. At its best, the Concours is not merely a search for perfection. It is a celebration of character—of proportions, craftsmanship, innovation, and the idea that an automobile can express the culture and ambition of its time.
The setting magnifies that experience. Early-morning fog often hangs over the fairway as cars arrive for Dawn Patrol. As the sky clears, chrome, lacquer, brass, polished wood, and hand-formed bodywork appear against a backdrop of Monterey pines, Carmel Bay, and the Pacific Ocean.
Few venues could make the cars look more at home.
The Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance: Proving the Cars Can Be Driven
One of the most popular traditions of the modern event is the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, introduced in 1998.
The Tour was created in part to counter the perception that concours automobiles were static “trailer queens.” It gives entrants the opportunity to demonstrate that their vehicles are not only historically significant and beautifully presented, but also capable of being driven on public roads.
The route has varied, but the sight remains unforgettable: prewar grand tourers, racing cars, open classics, and rare postwar designs moving through Pebble Beach and along the Monterey Peninsula. For spectators, the Tour offers a more spontaneous way to experience the cars than the formal show field does.
Cars that complete the Tour receive a green ribbon and may receive consideration if two vehicles finish with equal scores in Concours judging. More importantly, the Tour reconnects these machines with their original purpose. However valuable they may be today, they were built to move.
How the Concours Helped Shape Monterey Car Week
The Concours was once a single-day addition to a race. Today it is the traditional finale of an automotive celebration that fills the Monterey Peninsula.
Monterey Car Week now includes historic racing, major collector-car auctions, manufacturer previews, rallies, concours events, club gatherings, forums, and displays throughout Pebble Beach, Carmel, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Seaside, and the surrounding area. The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion brings racing history back to life at Laguna Seca. The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering offers a different expression of automotive culture. Auctions attract important cars and international buyers, while smaller events celebrate everything from Italian design to unusual and underappreciated vehicles.
The Concours did not create every one of these events, but its prestige and longevity provided a powerful center of gravity. Collectors and enthusiasts already traveling to Pebble Beach created a natural audience for additional gatherings. Over time, a weekend became a week, and a local tradition became an international destination.
That transformation has also become part of life on the Peninsula. Residents learn the rhythms of Car Week: the transporters arriving, the sudden appearance of vintage cars on familiar roads, the busier restaurants, and the conversations at nearly every stoplight and coffee shop. For a brief period each summer, the automobile becomes a shared local language.
More Than a Display of Rare Cars
The Pebble Beach Concours is known for extraordinary automobiles, but its impact extends beyond the show field.
The event reports that it has raised more than $45 million for charity since 1950 and helps improve the lives of more than 10,000 children each year. Donations support local organizations and educational programs serving children and families in Monterey County.
That charitable mission gives the Concours a meaningful local dimension. A gathering with an international audience and global reputation also contributes directly to the community that hosts it.
Why Pebble Beach Is Essential to the Story
It is difficult to imagine the Concours becoming the same event in another place.
Pebble Beach has always brought together natural beauty, architecture, sport, hospitality, and a degree of privacy. The coastline feels dramatic but never urban. The forest roads create anticipation before the ocean comes into view. The Lodge, the golf links, Stillwater Cove, and the 18th fairway provide a setting that is formal enough for the occasion but unmistakably connected to the California landscape. The history of the Lone Cypress offers another look at how the landscape became inseparable from Pebble Beach’s identity.
That balance is also central to the appeal of living in Pebble Beach. Homes may be oriented toward the ocean, the forest, or one of the community’s celebrated golf courses, and each setting offers a different experience. The contrast is explored in more detail in this comparison of Pebble Beach oceanfront and golf-course homes.
Car Week puts Pebble Beach on an international stage, but the qualities visitors notice during the event—the scenery, quiet roads, architecture, outdoor life, and sense of history—are part of the community throughout the year.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
When was the first Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance?
The first Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was held on November 5, 1950, in conjunction with the inaugural Pebble Beach Road Race.
Why was the Pebble Beach Concours created?
It began as a social and stylistic addition to the road-racing weekend. The race was initially the primary attraction, while the Concours provided an elegant display and parade of automobiles.
Where is the Pebble Beach Concours held?
The modern Concours is held on the 18th fairway of Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California.
How are cars judged at Pebble Beach?
Expert judges evaluate automobiles within their classes, considering factors that include elegance, technical merit, history, authenticity, and presentation. Class winners may then be considered for Best of Show.
Is the Pebble Beach Concours the same as Monterey Car Week?
No. Monterey Car Week is the broader collection of automotive events held across the Monterey Peninsula. The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is its best-known event and traditional Sunday finale.
When is the 2026 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance?
The 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is scheduled for Sunday, August 16, 2026.
Can I watch the 2026 Pebble Beach Concours online?
Yes. The official livestream is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time on August 16, 2026.
A Tradition That Could Only Have Grown Here
The history of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is a story of unexpected evolution. A last-minute gathering created to complement a road race became an institution in its own right. New automobiles gave way to great classics. A field near a forest circuit gave way to the 18th fairway. A regional weekend grew into a global automotive celebration.
Yet the event has never lost its connection to place. The same combination of landscape, history, sport, craftsmanship, and understated elegance that made Pebble Beach a compelling setting in 1950 continues to define the Concours today.
For anyone visiting during Monterey Car Week, the cars are reason enough to come. The deeper story is how closely those cars and this remarkable corner of the California coast have shaped one another for 75 editions.
