2021 Geneva Motor Show Preemptively Cancelled

On Monday, the organizers of the famed Geneva Motor Show announced that they would be cancelling their second year due to Covid-19. The 2020 show, which was slated to happen way back in March, was one of the first events to be cancelled due to Covid.

Now, the 2021 Geneva Motor Show has also been axed. Apparently most of the exhibitors, all of the main players in the automotive industry, have said they would not feel comfortable taking part in a convention as soon as March 2021, instead holding off for 2022.

The economic impact of these cancellations has taken its toll on the event’s host, the Salon International de l’Automobile. They’ve announced the decision to put the event up for sale, after the cancelling of 2020’s Geneva Motor Show.

The Canton of Geneva, or the governmental body of the Swiss state that hosts the event, offered a $17.6 million loan to the organizers, contingent on them going through with a 2021 show. The terms apparently weren’t satisfactory, and now they are trying to sell the event to the convention center itself.

The last successful show, 2019, had over 600,000 guests in attendance. No doubt, that sounds like a nightmare if it were to take place at the height of a pandemic, but next March is still nine months away. There was no mention of whether other precautions were considered as alternatives to outright cancellation.

This year’s show would’ve been the 90th of its name. Now, the 90th won’t happen until 2022.