Every autumn we get the same message from buyers in September: “We are coming for the Canton Fair, can you show us tile factories the same week?” Yes, and it is a good plan, but only if you turn up in the right phase. Since the fair was reorganised in 2024, building materials and sanitary ware are no longer in the opening phase, and every year someone flies in for the wrong five days. This guide is what we tell clients before they book.
Dates and phases for the 140th session
The 140th Canton Fair runs from 15 October to 4 November 2026 at the Canton Fair Complex in Pazhou, on the south bank of the river in Guangzhou. It is split into three phases of five days each, with three-day gaps between them while the halls are stripped and rebuilt.
| Phase | Dates | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | 15–19 October | Electronics, appliances, machinery, vehicles, new energy, lighting, hardware and tools |
| Break | 20–22 October | Halls closed, factories open |
| Phase 2 | 23–27 October | Building and decorative materials, sanitary and bathroom equipment, furniture, household ceramics, kitchenware, gifts, garden |
| Break | 28–30 October | Halls closed, factories open |
| Phase 3 | 31 October – 4 November | Textiles, clothing, shoes, toys, food, health, office |
So a building-materials buyer has a split problem. Tiles, sanitary ware, doors, flooring, stone, wall panels, paint and furniture are in Phase 2. Lighting, door hardware, locks, hinges and tools are in Phase 1. If you want both, you are either in Guangzhou for ten days or you pick one phase and cover the other category in the factories. We think the second option is usually better. Doors open 9:30 and close at 18:00; some exhibitors start packing early on the last afternoon.
These dates are from the fair’s own published schedule as of September 2026 and have been the same pattern for years, but check the official site once before you buy flights.
Which halls matter
The complex is four connected areas, A to D, running east along the river. Halls are numbered by building and floor, so 11.2 is building 11, second floor. In recent sessions the layout for our categories has been consistent:
- Building and decorative materials, Phase 2, Area B. Roughly halls 11.1 through 13.2. Tiles, stone, wood and SPC flooring, doors, wall panels, ceilings, paint and coatings, glass, aluminium profiles and some prefab structures.
- Sanitary and bathroom equipment, Phase 2, Area B. Roughly halls 9.1 to 11.1, next door. Toilets, basins, taps, showers, bath tubs, mirrors and bathroom cabinets.
- Furniture and household ceramics, Phase 2. Furniture in the upper floors of Area B (9.3 to 11.3) and the outdoor areas; ceramic tableware in Area A. Useful for hotel projects that need FF&E as well as finishes.
- Hardware and tools, Phase 1, Area B. The same halls, different week: door hardware, locks, hinges, fasteners, tools.
- Lighting, Phase 1, Area C. Halls 14.3, 14.4, 15.4 and 16.4 in the last couple of sessions. Decorative, commercial and outdoor lighting.
Hall numbers move a little each session. Download the Canton Fair app before you fly, open the floor map for the phase you are attending, and search by product rather than by hall. The app also lists exhibitors by name, which you will want later for follow-up.
Enter through Area B or C rather than the main Area A gate if you can, or you will walk the length of the complex before you see a tile.
Planning two days
Two days is enough for building materials and sanitary ware if you do not try to see everything. Nobody covers a phase properly in a week, so the aim is not coverage. The aim is a shortlist and a feel for what the market is offering this year.
| Time | Day 1 (Phase 2) | Day 2 (Phase 2) |
|---|---|---|
| 08:30 | Badge collection if not done, coffee, app map open | Straight in, badge already on |
| 09:30–12:30 | Building materials, Area B, hall by hall. Photograph every booth of interest with its number | Return to five or six shortlisted booths. Sit down, get quotes in writing, ask for factory addresses |
| 12:30–13:30 | Lunch away from the halls (food inside is slow and expensive) | Lunch |
| 13:30–17:00 | Sanitary and bathroom halls | Furniture or ceramics if needed, otherwise leave at 15:00 for Foshan |
| Evening | Sort photos, name cards and WeChat contacts into a shortlist | Dinner in Foshan, factory visits next morning |
Day one is for walking and looking. Do not sit down and negotiate on day one; you will lose an hour with the first friendly salesperson and never get past hall 11. Take a photo of the booth sign, the product and the price card, in that order, so the images sort themselves later. Scan the WeChat code on the booth rather than collecting paper.
On day two you go back. By then you know which six booths you actually care about, and a sit-down with their export manager, drawings on the table, is worth more than another hundred booths glimpsed.
If you also need lighting and hardware, the alternative is a day in Phase 1, the break days in Foshan and Zhongshan, and a day or two back in Phase 2. That is a ten-day trip and it suits importers more than project buyers. For a villa or a hotel we suggest Phase 2 at the fair plus Guzhen for lighting, which is bigger than the lighting halls anyway and open all year.
What is better at the fair
Three things, and they are real.
First, geography in one building. Foshan is the biggest tile cluster but it is not the only one, and the fair puts Zibo, Jinjiang, Chaozhou sanitary ware, Zhejiang flooring and Fujian stone within a ten-minute walk of each other. If you want to compare a Zibo tile factory with a Foshan one, or Chaozhou against Foshan for sanitary ware, the fair is the only place you can do it in an afternoon.
Second, the people on the stand are the export department. They speak English, they have export price lists, they know what a CE mark or a WaterMark certificate is, and they have shipped to your country before. In a Foshan showroom on a Tuesday in March you will often be talking to domestic sales staff through a translator, which is fine with us in the room but slower.
Third, new product. Factories launch at the fair. If you want to see what large-format porcelain, sintered stone, wood-look SPC or smart toilets look like this year rather than last year, the booths are ahead of most showrooms.
What is better in Foshan
Almost everything else. A booth is nine square metres of a factory’s best-looking product with no stock behind it. An hour down the road in Foshan you can stand in a 2,000 m² showroom with the full range, walk into the warehouse and see what is actually on the shelf, and check whether the factory is a factory. Prices for a single container are negotiated with the sales office, not at a fair counter, and the fair quote is usually the opening number anyway.
Mixing an order is easier in Foshan. Most of our clients buy tiles, sanitary ware, doors, windows and lighting to fill one or two containers, and that means visiting eight or ten suppliers in a small area, sorting samples in the evening and going back to two of them. You cannot do that from booths, because the goods are not there. The Foshan markets are set up for exactly this.
Small and medium factories, often the best value for a project buyer, mostly do not exhibit. The factory that will happily make 3,000 m² of a bespoke colour is often the one that stayed home.
What is not at the fair
Stone slabs, in any useful sense. There are stone booths with samples and a few feature pieces, but slab buying means walking a yard and picking the actual slabs, which happens in Yunfu, not Pazhou.
Made-to-measure aluminium windows and doors are shown as systems, but you cannot buy a house’s worth from a booth. The window factory needs your opening schedule, and the real conversation happens in Dali or Nanhai with the drawings. The fair is a good place to see which profile systems exist; it is not where you order.
Prices for small quantities. Fair quotes are for container loads to importers, and a villa buyer asking for 400 m² of one tile will get a polite brush-off at a large booth. The fair is also full of trading companies, some very good, some just middlemen with a rented stand. Ask whether the company owns the factory, ask for the address, and see how quickly the answer comes.
Registration and badges
Buyer badges are free for foreign buyers. Register on the official Canton Fair site well before you travel with your passport details and company name, upload a passport photo, and you get a confirmation to bring to the registration office. First-time buyers collect the physical badge on site, at the registration halls by the main entrances, or at the desks at Baiyun airport, Guangzhou South railway station and a handful of designated hotels. Bring your passport and a business card; the card matters more than you would think. Returning buyers with a badge from a previous session can often just reactivate it.
Queues at the complex on the first morning of each phase are long. Collect at the airport when you land and walk straight in.
On visas: the fair will issue an invitation letter through the same registration system if you need one. Many passports currently enter China visa-free for short business visits under the arrangements extended through 2026, but the list changes and we are not visa advisers, so check with your nearest Chinese consulate before you assume anything.
Combining the fair with Foshan in the same week
This is the trip we run most often in October. Foshan is about an hour by car from Pazhou, and the factories do not close for the fair. If anything they are keen, because the export staff are at the booth and the sales office wants to show it can still take orders.
The shape that works: two days in Phase 2 as above, then two or three days in Foshan and around. Tiles in Nanzhuang and the Huaxia ceramics market, sanitary ware in Nanhai or a day trip to Kaiping for taps, windows in Dali, kitchens in Shunde, and Guzhen for lighting if you skipped Phase 1. Take the booth quotes with you. A Foshan factory that knows you have a written quote from a competitor in the same hall behaves differently.
Break days, 20 to 22 October and 28 to 30 October, are underrated. The fair is shut, Guangzhou is briefly quieter, and the factories are open with nobody else visiting. Clients who arrive on the 26th, do two fair days, and then have the 28th to 30th in Foshan get the best of both. See our buying trips page for how we organise the days.
Hotels and traffic during the fair
Hotel prices in Guangzhou double or triple during each phase and the ones within walking distance of the complex are booked out months ahead. If you have not booked by August, Pazhou is gone. Zhujiang New Town and Tianhe are the usual fallback, 20 to 40 minutes by taxi in the morning rush, and better for dinners. Metro Line 8 stops at Xingangdong for Area A and Pazhou for Areas B and C, and is the reliable way in when the roads jam, which they do from about 8:15.
The other option, which we suggest to anyone spending more days in factories than in halls, is to stay in Foshan. Rates barely move during the fair, the drive to Pazhou in the morning runs against the worst traffic, and you are already where the factories are. We have had clients commute in for two fair days from a Foshan hotel and be through the gate before the Guangzhou guests have found a taxi.
Taxis at the complex after 17:00 are a scrum. Walk five minutes from the gates before you call one.
Following up with factories afterwards
The two weeks after a phase are the busiest of the year for an export department. Every buyer who took a card is now emailing, and the factory answers the biggest orders first. If you are a project buyer with one or two containers, expect to chase, and expect the price to be re-quoted; the fair quote was a headline.
What works: write within three days while the salesperson still remembers your face, on WeChat rather than email, with a photo of the product and the booth number in the first message. Ask for the export price sheet, the factory address, the business licence and a lead time for your quantity. Then, for the two or three suppliers you like, visit. We do this for clients most Novembers, and a fair share of “factories” met at the fair turn out to be a trading office in a business park.
Samples are the other step. Ask for full-size tiles, not chips, and a real tap, not a brochure. Most factories will courier samples at cost or send them to us in Foshan, where we put them next to the alternatives from the markets. From there it is the normal route: written specification, pro forma invoice, deposit to the factory, inspection, loading. The shipping page covers the last part.
A note on prices: every figure in this guide is an indicative estimate from recent orders. Factory prices, freight rates and exchange rates move, so treat them as a planning guide and ask us for a current quote before you budget.
Frequently asked questions
Which phase of the 2026 autumn Canton Fair has tiles and sanitary ware?
Phase 2, 23 to 27 October 2026. Building and decorative materials and sanitary and bathroom equipment have been in Phase 2 since the fair was reorganised, mostly in Area B. Lighting, hardware and tools are in Phase 1, 15 to 19 October. Check the official floor map in the app a week before, because hall numbers shift slightly each session.
Is one day at the fair enough for a villa project?
One long day gives you a sense of the market and a few contacts. It does not give you an order. For a villa we would spend one day at the fair, mostly building materials and sanitary halls, and then two or three days in Foshan where you can see full ranges, stock and prices for a single container. Our guide to buying tiles from China explains what happens in those days.
Can I buy at the fair and ship straight away?
Rarely. Booths take enquiries and sometimes deposits, but production starts after the phase ends and lead times are the same as any other order, typically 20 to 45 days for tiles and sanitary ware plus sea freight. A buyer who orders in late October should plan for goods arriving in January or February, and Chinese New Year in early February 2027 sits right in the way, so order early or accept a March arrival.
Do I need an invitation letter to attend?
Only if you need it for a visa. Buyer registration is free and open to any foreign business visitor with a passport and a company name. If your passport needs a visa for China, the registration system issues an invitation letter you can use in the application, but allow several weeks.
Can you meet us at the fair?
Yes. We normally walk the Phase 2 building-materials halls with clients for a day, then drive to Foshan together. Our commission is on the factory invoice, agreed in advance, so a fair day is part of the same trip rather than a separate charge. Tell us your dates and what you are buying and we will suggest which halls and which factories.
Planning to buy building materials in Foshan?
Tell us what you need and when you plan to come. We aim to reply the same business day with a realistic plan, price ranges and which markets to visit.