InterTabac 2026: Thursday | halfwheel

Greetings from Dallas.

After a quick turnaround, I’ve gone from 15C to 97F. Also, where did the sparkling apple juice go?

InterTabac 2026 has come and gone. After some sleep, I’ve got some additional takeaways from the trade show fair in Dortmund, Germany.

1. Some Final Thoughts on China

Picking up where Wednesday’s post left off, the other part of the China discussion.

China National Tobacco Corp., the largest tobacco company in the world, has long exhibited at InterTabac and made multiple appearances at the IPCPR Convention & Trade Show through Great Wall Cigar. While the company has had plenty of trade show booths, it’s not seriously engaged in markets outside of China. I think we are a year or two away from another attempt at major expansion into other markets, which would likely include the U.S.

Reports indicate that China National earned more than $220 billion in profits and taxes in 2025. Because it is a state-owned monopoly, the taxes are viewed alongside the profits. Novel. The cigar division is just a small part of that, but it’s important to understand that the resources are, in the context of handmade cigars, limitless.

While Great Wall became less visible in the U.S., at some point in the last decade, the Chinese became the largest buyer of cigar-type tobacco in the Dominican Republic. I’ve been told that in more recent years, it’s upped its buying in Nicaragua, potentially becoming the largest buyer there too.

In the Dominican Republic, I’ve always sensed that the operation was multifaceted. Yes, the Chinese bought lots of tobacco. But it also wanted technical expertise from many of the sellers, which prompted some of them to go to China to help the domestic operation improve their skills. During the last conversation I had with the late Fritz Bossert, the longtime head of Lancaster Leaf, he told me that Lancaster’s parent company, Universal Leaf, had signed a deal with the Chinese to provide technical expertise to for dark air-cured tobacco. I miss Fritz.

In my time in Dortmund, multiple companies mentioned to me that China National was recently floating a carrot: if you agree to a joint-manufacturing agreement, we will increase the amount of cigars you can import to China. There’s an import limit for non-Cuban cigar imports to mainland China, I’ve been told the total number is around 2 million, though I’ve never received any verification from the Chinese about that. Whatever the number, everyone is aware that the cap is much lower than what the market would support, a protectionist rule that has allowed Great Wall to flourish.

El Artista has a new collaboration with China National. There is one blend, offered in two vitolas. One size is made in the Dominican Republic, the other in China. Artista declined to comment on whether it was offered such a deal.

One thing I was told by China National is that the pricing of its cigars has gotten more competitive. I still think that the inherent nature of a Chinese cigar will be a tough sell in America, but I get the sense that Great Wall is gearing up to try again.

For Great Wall, it can try again, fail again and regroup again, only to try again later. The nature of the corporate structure and its own domestic market mean the next attempt doesn’t need to work. Rather, it just needs one attempt to work. Yes, the country that can make anything other than a ballpoint pen can probably figure out how to roll up dried leaves into a cigar.

That also raises the question of acquisition, something I once wondered about a lot more. While I probably will eventually be proven wrong, I’ve sensed little desire of the Chinese to acquire a foreign tobacco entity, though if that were to ever happen, the rumor mill will never let it die.

2. Thursday Didn’t Improve Attendance

Early on Wednesday, I ran into Nicole and Marcel Knobel, co-owners of ADVentura, who told me they had just arrived in Dortmund that day. I wondered if more people would follow suit, helping to boost the attendance on Thursday.

InterTabac scans badges, which means it will have the exact data of daily attendance in a way that none of the American cigar-related trade shows do. Cigars are only a small part of the trade show, so I have no idea what the other 75 percent of the venue looked like on Thursday, but the cigar sections didn’t seem any busier than they were using the previous schedule of a Thursday-Saturday trade show.

Like in the U.S., there continues to be an issue of guests—especially exhibitors—dipping out of the trade show before its conclusion. A lot of the people leaving early spent three or four days in Dortmund, but with those extra days in town before the trade show started. This seems unavoidable, so the question should turn to whether there are non-attendance advantages of one schedule versus the other.

Again I repeat: one of the 14,000 visitors to InterTabac would like to watch a football match.

3. Can InterTabac Better Engage the German Retailers

When I first attended this trade show in 2012, there were almost two different trade shows happening. Friday and Saturday were a European-focused trade show, while Sunday would end up being a day really about German retailers. The change was so stark I could see it in the types of people walking the trade show floor.

Shortly thereafter, the show transitioned fully into a European trade show and, at some point before the COVID-19 pandemic, it really became an international, not European trade show.

On Thursday, I was chatting with Maya Selva, who was lamenting the lack of German retailers. While many of the larger German retailers were in attendance, they were here to say hi to people, not to place orders.

I wonder if there’s something to be done to address the problem that Selva and others point out. One option could be some sort of pre-InterTabac event for German retailers. If the schedule were to move to say Monday-Wednesday, perhaps InterTabac could host a non-selling event for German shops on Sunday. I don’t know if there’s much demand from German retailers for something like this, but it does seem like a waste for all these companies to be in Germany and have little interaction with what is likely their largest market in Europe.

As Selva pointed out, there are also lots of other benefits to getting all of the German shops in one place, once per year.

4. Should You Attend

You can refer to my previous answer here, little has changed.

I would add that if you are a member of cigar media and can afford to attend, or find someone to help pay for the costs to attend, my annual appearance would say it’s worthwhile. David Savona of Cigar Aficionado and Fred Rewey of Cigar Press, both first-time attendees, told me they were impressed by what they saw. There are new products and a lot of companies here. There’s plenty of opportunity for #content and lots of cool events surrounding the trade show itself.

For what it’s worth: I don’t recall seeing any American shop owners outside of people like Sathya Levin, the head of Ashton/Holt’s.

5. The Coolest Thing I Saw

While in the Maya Selva booth, I saw someone open up a drawer to this contraption. I was told that some of this came from Marc André, the German humidor maker whose products I’m a fan of.

I don’t need to find any more cigars in my desk, but if I had a more traditional office, this would be so cool.

In about half the conversations I have during a trade show, people ask me if I’ve seen anything interesting. Regular readers of these reports will understand that the answer is almost always an accessory. That’s because I rarely smoke cigars during these trade shows and even if I did, I’m unlikely to be able to know if I’m smoking anything particularly great. I’m fatigued, distracted and in a room of smoke.

For the most part, every new cigar I see looks like a cigar that has already been made. Imagine how dumb it would sound if I answered the question with “oh yeah, that 6 x 52 toro in the ____ booth looks interesting.”

So a bonus point here for Maya Selva’s upcoming Flor de Selva Año de la Cabra 2027. Most cigars with multiple wrappers, known commonly as a barber pole cigar, are made by placing one wrapper on top of another.

For the Año de la Cabra, the company uses a wrapper from the Jamastrán Valley, with most of the cigar covered in a milk chocolate-colored leaf. Underneath the foot band is a smaller, darker piece of tobacco. However, the tobacco is actually the same type as the wrapper, just processed differently. The end result is that there are two different wrapper colors, though they have the same texture, meaning I couldn’t feel where the lighter wrapper ended and where the darker one started.

There are plans for one more InterTabac 2026 post, check back on Tuesday.

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.