InterTabac 2026: Monday | halfwheel

Hello from a sunny Dortmund, Germany.

It’s mid-September and I’m in Germany, which means it’s time for InterTabac, the largest international-focused trade show for the cigar industry.

As per usual, I’ll be walking around the multiple halls that make up the Westfalenhallen, mainly to chat with people but also to get information about new products.

WHAT IS INTERTABAC?

It’s a trade show for everything related to tobacco, nicotine and cannabis products. InterTabac is the original trade show, but it now includes InterSupply (tobacco manufacturing equipment), NUBIZ (vapes, nicotine pouches) and CB Expo (cannabis). They are all housed in the sprawling convention center here in Dortmund, with some halls specifically focused on one type of product and others with crossover.

• It’s a three-day show that runs Tuesday-Thursday.
• There are lots of different products on display: cigars, little cigars, cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, hookah tobacco, vapes, tobacco-free nicotine, packaging, machinery, and more. I’ve yet to see actual marijuana on display at CB Expo, though perhaps that changes this year.
• The show is absolutely massive, now encompassing 12 halls, which may or may not include some of the large tents set up. Per the organizers, there were 14,500 attendees and 800 exhibitors from 80 countries at the last show. It sounds like the exhibitor number may be slightly down, though the attendee number is said to be increasing.

For the cigar industry, it’s mostly a show for companies to meet with their non-American distributors. In 2012, when I first came to InterTabac, the trade show was just three halls and there was a much larger focus on German and even French retailers, especially on the final day. However, that’s since changed and now most companies will have their days filled with meetings.

If past is prologue, there will be a few American retailers who made the trip over, though the fact that almost none of them ever seem to come back for a follow-up trip likely speaks to the (f)utility of the event for American shops. In short: it’s cool if you want to say hi to people, but this is not a discount-oriented selling event.

As far as our coverage, I’ll be providing these daily blogs of what I did, what’s the vibe around the show floor, and, of course, the new products I saw.

WHAT’S NEW FOR 2026?

As far as new products, I expect I’ll write about at least a dozen companies that have new items, maybe two dozen. This is not a trade show for new items to make their debut, but it happens.

The American market is so much larger than the rest of the world that most cigar companies will either have nothing new or use this show to bring over cigars that have already gone on sale in the U.S., like what Rocky Patel is doing with Sapphire, with a slim minority doing bona fide new launches. You can see our coverage of some of those products here.

As for what’s new this year, the largest change is the schedule. InterTabac was once a Friday-Sunday trade show, but has used a Thursday-Saturday schedule of late. This is the first year of a new Tuesday-Thursday schedule.

While I think trade shows should operate during the week, I certainly wish the previous format had been kept. As a fan of Borussia Dortmund, the local soccer team, the previous schedule meant that it was easy to see the team play at Signal Iduna Park, the massive stadium located next to the convention center.

I won’t be making it to a game this trip, but I did make it to the fan shop.

Not new for 2026, but coming in the future, is a massive expansion to the convention center. I’m told the construction is unlikely to be completed in time for the 2027 show. I’m guessing the WWII bomb that was found during construction wasn’t helpful to the construction timeline.

WHAT DID YOU DO ON MONDAY?

For the second consecutive year, InterTabac has hosted the Cigar Culture Summit, a conference event that takes place during the last setup day. The organizer, which is the same company that owns the convention center, said it would invest more in the event, and that certainly seems to be the case.

There were a variety of seminars, ranging from panels dedicated to doing business in specific regions—one of which focused on how the conflict in the Middle East has affected cigar sales in the region—to seminars on the differences between new and aged cigars.

I moderated a chat with Niels Frederiksen, ceo of Scandinavian Tobacco Group, and Fred Vandermarliere, the owner of VCF/Oliva. As I mentioned to the live audience, these are two people whom I always wish I could spend more time chatting with, so this was quite cool.

One weird quirk is that only 250 tickets were available for this event, which had three seminars running at once. I don’t know if expanding the tickets or making it a ticketless option would make a huge difference in audience size. In some earlier sessions at the main stage, the percentage of empty seats was tough, especially given the resources being used.

For those of you reading who have attended the PCA Convention & Trade Show since the event used the previous acronyms IPCPR or RTDA, you have likely noticed a decline in the number of cigar company-hosted dinners. That’s not the case here in Dortmund, where multiple cigar companies are regularly hosting dinners at the same time.

The only invite I got for Monday was from CLE Cigar Co.; had I known I was going to lose a shirt, I probably would have dressed differently.

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. Previously, I started TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors blogs of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry since 2010, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. Beyond writing, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff from weighing cigars to coordinating the tech. Outside of work, I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.