SALON PRIVÉ

Salon Privé is five days of cars at Blenheim Palace, eight miles north-west of Oxford, from a Wednesday to a Sunday in early September: a concours d’élégance of some seventy cars, judged on the Wednesday and crowned on the Thursday, a Ladies’ Day on the Friday, and at the weekend more than a thousand privately owned sports cars brought to the park by their owners’ clubs. The cars stand on open lawns and in a covered gallery, and lunch is served in a pavilion beside them.

In 2026 it named two winners at once, “the first ever double-crowning in the Concours’ 21-year history”: a 1969 Lamborghini Miura and a 1995 McLaren F1.

The Hurlingham Club

Salon Privé was conceived by two brothers, Andrew and David Bagley, on the pattern of the early concours, and launched in 2006 at the Hurlingham Club in London. After five years it had outgrown the club and moved to Syon Park, in West London.

Four years later it moved again, to what was meant as a long-term home at Blenheim Palace. The move was announced in February 2015, and the twelfth Duke of Marlborough welcomed the show in its tenth year. Blenheim is a Baroque house of the early eighteenth century, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with gardens by Capability Brown and a Great Lake crossed by a bridge.

At Blenheim the brothers made it a festival of five days that spills out into the neighbouring village of Woodstock, and in 2021 they were given the Personal Achievement award at the Octane Historic Motoring Awards. By then the show had raised more than £1.2 million for the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity.

A sister show, Salon Privé London, is held in April at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, with a prelude on Sloane Street.

The Five Days

The concours is judged on the Wednesday. The gates open at ten, the supercars parade at eleven, and lunch is at noon. On the Thursday the awards are given, and the winners parade at two. The Friday is Ladies’ Day, with a competition for hats and, in the afternoon, a parade of cars for sale. On the Saturday the Club Trophy brings more than 1,500 privately owned sports cars, supercars and hypercars, and on the Sunday the clubs come again, with more than a thousand cars more.

The concours cars are shown on the South Lawn, and others in the covered Automotive Gallery. The weekdays run from ten to five, the weekend from nine.

General entry carries no hospitality; food is bought in the Dining Village. Hospitality is sold apart. In the Spencer Pavilion, from Wednesday to Friday, there is lunch, Pommery Champagne and a bar from half past eleven; in the Glass House, a three-course lunch, afternoon tea and the same Champagne.

In 2026, from 2 to 6 September, it was the twenty-first edition, and more than thirty thousand came across the week, with the Saturday sold out. It rained. Two classes for supercars and hypercars were added, and a second Best of Show for contemporary collectables. Seventy cars were shown. The Miura P400 S of Amir Ravan and the RLC Collection took the Concours d’Elégance, and Terry Bramall’s McLaren F1, restored by Lanzante, the first Concours d’Excellence. Jane Dyke’s Porsche Pre-A Speedster by Reutter took the Chairman’s Award, and a Duesenberg SJ Speedster by Gurney Nutting the prize for coachwork.

What to Know

It runs from a Wednesday to a Sunday in the first week of September. In 2027 it runs from 1 to 5 September, the twenty-second edition.

General admission cost £60 in 2026, and hospitality up to £645. Hospitality must be booked in advance. Blenheim’s own annual pass does not admit to it.

The show publishes its code. On the Wednesday and Thursday it asks for formal garden party attire, a suit or blazer, with ties, cravats or bow ties encouraged, and its answers to visitors’ questions go further: “Gentleman are to wear a jacket with tie or cravat.” Hats are preferred on the Friday, and the weekend asks for garden party attire. Shorts and T-shirts are not permitted on any day. A lounge suit, with a tie; though not, The Rake advises, the business suit in shades of blue and grey.

Blenheim is on the A44, about an hour and a half by car from London, and parking is free with a ticket. The quickest train is the Chiltern line from Marylebone to Oxford Parkway, from which the S7 bus runs to Woodstock; the palace is a ten-minute walk through the park. Stay in Woodstock, at The Bear or The Feathers, or seven miles out at Estelle Manor.

The mistake is to bring cash and nothing else. The bars and the stalls of the Dining Village take cards only.

The Court

Salon Privé is not the Court’s own. Places in the Spencer Pavilion on the concours days are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Woodstock or the country round it, and the table afterward. The Concours of Elegance opens at Hampton Court on the Friday of the same week.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.