Inside The World’s Most Exclusive Car Show

The Quail is where the modern automotive industry comes to feast, gathering 5,000 of the world’s wealthiest car enthusiasts, designers, and celebrities on California’s golf course. Jeremy Taylor explores what makes this 23-year-old Monterey fixture the most exclusive car show on earth.

Inside The Quail 2026

The champagne starts to flow at breakfast… Now in its 23rd year, The Quail by The Peninsula is played out on the immaculate greens of the eponymous golf club. Strictly limited to 5,000 guests, securing a pass involves a highly competitive lottery system that sells out in hours. Yet for those who step past the gates, The Quail is a sensory overload of unlimited champagne, mouthwatering culinary treats and a staggering concentration of global wealth.

What sets The Quail apart from any other automotive event is that it’s not just the extraordinary roster of hypercars and classics that guests come to enjoy. This is the ultimate lifestyle gathering where visitors in sharp linen suits and summer dresses travel to see and be seen, wandering among multi-million-dollar vehicles in the Californian sunshine. Think the British Grand Prix, Wimbledon and Royal Ascot rolled into one.

Entry tickets cost around £1,200 – almost three times more on the black market – and offer a unique experience. Apart from a smorgasbord of automotive exotica, expect incredible food, amazing cocktails and, this year, a private show from US country music star Russell Dickerson. Five gourmet culinary pavilions, each inspired by global properties from The Peninsula Hotels, are set up on the golf greens. On the Michelin star menu are bucket loads of oysters and caviar and crates of world-class wine.

The Quail is also a relaxed environment where you can comfortably strike up a conversation with a racing legend, chat directly with car design icons, or cross paths with Hollywood stars and tech billionaires. For the true car enthusiast, the Rolex-sponsored event is an unmissable intersection of historical significance, immense financial capital and pure automotive beauty.

Since 2003, the show has cemented its status as the most exclusive, high-octane garden party on earth. While the classic Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance down the road acts as the traditional anchor of California’s famous Monterey Car Week, The Quail is where the modern automotive industry comes to feast.

In the wake of traditional international car shows fading from the calendar, major manufacturers and bespoke hypercar builders now treat The Quail golf greens as their premier global launchpad. And as I discovered, it’s not just a place to look: it is an active marketplace, where car-makers sell out their entire annual allocations right on the grass.

This year, The Quail celebrated the centenary of America’s iconic Route 66, the legendary highway that runs 2,500 miles across the States. Other cars of honour included the 1990s Lamborghini Diablo – the first Lambo to top 200mph – and the Ferrari F40, the last model approved by Enzo Ferrari himself before he died in 1988.

And for the first time, the 2026 gathering was extended with a pre-event bash for just 500 lucky attendees. Organisers threw an Eve on the Green gala night, including an extraordinary supper created by the culinary team from L’Oiseau Blanc at The Peninsula, Paris. Frequent visitor, American chat show host and car collector Jay Leno’s humour has also helped boost the Quail: ‘The cars are great,’ Leno said during the show’s early tenure. ‘But I’m here for the food. It’s real food, not just a hot dog on a stick.’

Gordon McCall, director of motorsports at The Quail and a founder of the event, told Country & Town House: ‘The first gathering in 2003 was a little thin on the ground – now we have exhibitors and guests desperate to join us. We like to think The Quail has created its own way of doing things – unlike any other car show in the world. It’s a garden party for the automotive set and that’s what makes it so unique.’

Discover more about The Quail by The Peninsula at peninsula.com