China officially opened this Wednesday (15) the 139th edition of the China Import and Export Fair, also known as Canton Fair, in the city of Guangzhou, in the south of the country, in an event that is expected to attract a record number of more than 32,000 participating companies, according to organizers.
Held twice a year (in April and October), this is the largest and oldest multi-sector fair in the world. Brazilian Theo Paul Santana, specialist in China/Brazil business and founder of Destino China, highlights that, for the Chinese economy, Canton Fair works as a thermometer for exports: orders placed there dictate factory production in the following months. For the world, it is the main showcase of where Chinese manufacturing is moving.
Santana, who is also the author of the book “O Brasileiro que Decifrou a China”, explains that the fair takes place in three distinct phases, with intervals of days between each one. Each phase focuses on specific product categories. “Going to the wrong stage is wasting time and money,” he said.
Continues after advertising
Also read:
The first phase, which runs from April 15th to 19th, is very technological, focused on smart wearables, display technologies, consumer drones and agricultural drones. “The highlights of innovation in this phase are quadruped robots, with 360° perception; autonomous lawn mowers with AI; agricultural drones with obstacle avoidance; energy management platforms with AI; wireless charging for high-power EVs”, he listed.
The so-called Phase 2 runs from April 23rd to 27th and focuses on service solutions: bamboo and wooden utensils; integrated houses and gardens. This year, the innovation highlights are: service robotics for home environments, green energy storage systems and integrated smart home solutions
In the third and final phase, from May 1st to 5th, it focuses on functional and technological fabrics. The highlights of innovation, according to Santana, are wearable health devices, smart monitoring, active recovery products and technological well-being.
The size and scale of the event is unparalleled: the 139th edition, which opened on Wednesday (15), brings together more than 32,000 exhibiting companies in an area of 1.55 million square meters — the equivalent of more than 200 football pitches —, with 75,700 stands and 179 thematic zones distributed in three phases over 21 days. In the previous edition (138th), 310,000 international buyers from 223 countries attended and business transactions totaled US$25.65 billion.
Every year the Canton Fair debuts a new thematic zone, signaling that that sector has just become an industrial priority for the State, as has happened in recent editions with electric vehicles, solar energy, service robotics and now, in this edition, drones and smart wearables. “It is interesting to note that the event is free for international buyers, with only online registration required. And with the exemption from the Chinese visa, since 2025, for Brazilians valid for 30 days, the barrier of access for Brazilian businesspeople to get to know this market has reduced substantially”, explains Theo Paul Santana.
Continues after advertising
O InfoMoney sent some questions to the expert about the importance of the Canton Fair. See a summary below:
InfoMoney: What is the estimated number of deals to be closed this year?
Theo Paul Santana: There is no official goal announced by the Chinese government for the 139th edition — the practice is to publish the results at the end of each phase. But the signs point to a volume equal to or greater than the US$25.65 billion recorded in the October 2025 edition (138th), which was the highest in recent years. The growth indicators released by the fair organization are significant: 210,000 registered international buyers (+20% vs. April 2025 edition); for the first time in history, more than 70% of pre-registrations are from specialized buyers – purchasing professionals from large chains and distributors; 290 corporate groups from large companies confirmed their presence, an increase of 30% over the previous edition; and there is a notable perception of growth in buyers from Latin America and Africa, with Brazil among the most cited.
Continues after advertising
IM: What news are expected for this year?
Santana: The three big trends in this edition are: AI embedded in everything: it is no longer AI as isolated software. It’s AI integrated into physical products — drones that avoid obstacles on their own, lawn mowers that map terrain, energy platforms that learn consumption patterns. China calls this ’embodied intelligence’; Green as a standard, not a differential: in the 138th edition, 47% of new products had a green design concept and 38.4% of companies adopted sustainable production technologies. In this edition, the discourse is one of consolidation: green has gone from a ‘sales argument’ to an ‘entry requirement’ in the global market; and On-demand and modular production: prefabricated houses, integrated gardens and modular construction solutions are gaining ground, responding to the global demand for faster and more adaptable housing — an issue directly linked to China’s internal real estate crisis, which forced the sector to reinvent its products for the foreign market.
IM: Why do they say that the Asian giant is moving from the “Made in China” phase to “Created in China”?
Continues after advertising
Santana: For decades, China’s competitive advantage was simple: cheap labor and gigantic production scale. The ‘Made in China’ label had become synonymous with a cheap product — and, for many consumers, of dubious quality. This is changing structurally, driven by three simultaneous factors.
1. Massive investment in intellectual property. China today holds 60% of global artificial intelligence patents and 66% of global robotics patents — more than 190,000 active patents. In 2024, the Chinese robotics industry generated US$33.4 billion in revenue and the country operates more than 2 million industrial robots — the largest park in the world.
2. The new ‘champion trio’ of exports. In the 2000s, China exported what was called the ‘old three’: clothing, household appliances and furniture. Today, the trio that dominates the Canton Fair stands is called the ‘ultra-new three’: electric vehicles, new energy batteries and solar panels. These are high-technology products with very high added value, where China now dictates global prices and standards.
Continues after advertising
3. The speed of iteration. In sectors such as robotics, China compressed into 5 years a development cycle that took 20 years in Japan and the USA. In November 2025, UBTECH carried out the first mass delivery of industrial humanoid robots in history: dozens of units delivered to automakers such as BYD and Foxconn. In March 2026, China opened the world’s first factory in Foshan where robots manufacture other robots, with a capacity for 10,000 humanoids per year.
Also read:
IM: China has placed an emphasis on advancing “greener” production with electric cars, lithium batteries and solar and wind energy equipment. Is this represented at the fair this year?
Santana: It is and increasingly so. The green transition went from being a parallel agenda of the Canton Fair to becoming a structural axis of the event’s curation. The numbers from the 138th edition (2025) give the dimension: 47% of new products launched in the 138th edition incorporated a green design concept; 38.4% of exhibiting companies declared adopting sustainable production technologies; 1.083 million green and low-carbon products were showcased in a single edition.
In the 2026 edition, the evidence of this presence is concrete. In Phase 1 (April 15–19), the Vehicles and Two-Wheeler zone showcases high-power wireless charging systems for electric vehicles, while the Electrical and Energy zone features AI-powered energy management platforms. Companies such as Solarway (off-grid solar systems) and Kingfit Energy (solar + storage + EV charging integration) are among the exhibitors with solutions aimed at the global energy transition market.
The context behind these numbers is strategic: China currently produces 92% of the world’s photovoltaic modules, leads the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and sold more than 12.9 million EVs in 2025 — with a market share exceeding 49% of monthly car sales in the country in September of that year. These products need international customers, and Canton Fair is the main channel to access them.
For the Brazilian businessman, the message is direct: the prices of these products tend to fall by 20% to 40% over the next three years, in the same trajectory that solar panels have taken in the last decade. Anyone who visits the fair now leaves with a 12 to 24 month advantage over the competition in any sector that depends on energy or mobility.
IM: How is Brazil’s participation in the fair? What opportunities are you seeing?
Santana: Brazil participates in the Canton Fair predominantly as a buyer and in increasing numbers. In the 138th edition (October 2025), Brazilian buyers grew +33.2% compared to the April edition of the same year, this was one of the biggest jumps recorded among Latin American countries. For this 139th edition, Brazil took a record delegation of 350 businesspeople, organized by associations and business mission groups.
As an exhibitor, Brazilian participation is more limited. The Canton Fair has an International Pavilion (CIEF) for foreign companies that want to sell to the Chinese market. Brazil does not have a tradition of organized participation in this pavilion, which represents a gap and also a clear opportunity.
It is also important to highlight where the opportunities lie for Brazil as a buyer. Green energy: solar panels, inverters, storage batteries and chargers for EVs at prices 30–50% below the European market; Automation and robotics: for facilities, security, cleaning and logistics companies — the humanoids and service robots that we saw at the Hong Kong and Canton Fair already have a catalog and commercial proposal; Wearables and smart health: monitoring, therapy and technological well-being devices with a very attractive import margin for the Brazilian consumer market.
IM: What opportunities could be explored as an exhibitor?
Santana: Animal protein: China is the largest importer of beef in the world. Brazil exported US$7.3 billion worth of meat to China in 2025 (+19.6%). The Canton Fair International Pavilion is a direct channel for Chinese distributors and retail chains; Coffee: the Chinese coffee market grows 6%–11% per year and per capita consumption is just 5 cups/year (vs. 400 in the US). Luckin Coffee has already signed a US$2.5 billion contract with Brazilian producers. Here is the place to expand that presence; Differentiated agribusiness: honey, propolis, açaí, fine cocoa — products that have a ‘premiumization’ appeal in the growing Chinese consumer market and almost zero competition in the International Pavilion.
The most relevant data to contextualize is the opportunity: China is the destination for 28.3% of all Brazilian exports (US$ 100 billion in 2025) — but almost 90% of this is concentrated in soybeans, ore, oil, meat and cellulose. The Canton Fair is the place where Brazil could begin to diversify this agenda and have direct access to the Chinese end consumer — who, through the 15th Five-Year Plan, will increasingly be the engine of growth in that economy.
