From 27 to 29 June 2026, the international trade show returned to Paris, bringing together more than 260 brands from 33 countries and 3,527 visitors representing 71 countries. Buyers, designers, press, content creators and industry insiders gathered to discover what comes next in childrenswear and, perhaps more importantly, to actually talk to one another.
Because in an industry increasingly conducted through screens, emails and carefully curated feeds, Playtime still believes in the value of being in the same room.
And judging by the numbers, so does everyone else.
Calling Playtime Paris simply a trade show doesn’t quite explain it.
Yes, there are rails of clothes. Lots of them.
There are shoes, accessories, lifestyle objects and emerging labels waiting to be discovered. There are buyers deciding what we’ll eventually find in stores and brands hoping to meet the right international partner.
But Playtime has gradually evolved into something broader: part marketplace, part trend laboratory, part creative reunion and part global meeting point for the children’s industry.
This summer, fashion and accessories represented 65% of exhibiting brands, followed by footwear at 20%, lifestyle at 10% and beachwear at 5%. And with 74% of exhibitors returning to the show, there was an interesting balance between established Playtime names and completely new discoveries.
The latter are particularly important.
A full 26% of the brands exhibiting were new, with dedicated New Now and Singular spaces helping buyers identify emerging names and future favourites.
In other words: this is where you go when you want to know what everyone else might be talking about next season.
Walking Playtime is essentially a crash course in just how international children’s design has become.
This season brought together names including Tinycottons, True Artist, Bobo Choses, Patachou, Piupiuchick, The Campamento, Liewood, Wheat, MarMar Copenhagen, Molo, Veja, Konges Sløjd, Donsje Amsterdam, American Vintage, Play Up and Goldie + Ace, alongside dozens of smaller and emerging labels.
European brands remained particularly prominent, led by France and Spain, with Denmark and Portugal close behind. But the geographical mix continued expanding, with Australian, Brazilian and American brands gaining greater visibility at the summer edition.
And then there are the shoes.
Playtime has become a particularly significant destination for children’s footwear, with the latest edition bringing together a seriously impressive roster including Veja, Froddo, Naturino, Igor, Bisgaard, Bundgaard, Bobux, Pom d’Api and Tip Toey Joey, among many others.
For buyers, that concentration matters. Rather than travelling from showroom to showroom or country to country, an enormous cross-section of the market exists temporarily under one roof.
The really interesting thing about Playtime is that what happens there doesn’t stay there.
The buyers walking its aisles represent the boutiques, concept stores, department stores, e-commerce platforms and distributors that will ultimately decide what families encounter next season.
This edition attracted 3,527 visitors from 71 countries, with 77% travelling internationally. European visitors remained the majority, but attendance from Asia continued to grow, particularly from China, South Korea and Japan, alongside increased interest from the United States, Middle East, United Kingdom and Northern Europe.
The buyer list gives a better sense of the scale.
Representatives came from retailers including Mytheresa, Smallable, Zalando and Sarenza, while major department stores represented at the event included Harrods, Le Bon Marché, Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, El Corte Inglés, Isetan Mitsukoshi and Shinsegae Department Store.
That means a tiny brand arriving in Paris with a brilliant first collection can potentially leave having begun conversations on the other side of the world.
That’s the real magic of a good trade show.
Discovery can become distribution.
Among the international press and content creators covering the summer edition was a familiar name: Yours truly, Lemon Magazine.
Playtime’s media community this season also included MilK Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar Kids, Doolittle, Marie Claire Enfants, Scimparello, Design Hunger, Baby & Junior, Pirouette/Directory and others from across the international children’s industry.
Which makes perfect sense. Because Playtime isn’t interesting solely from a commercial perspective.
For editors, stylists and creatives, it functions as a rather enormous mood board of what childhood might look like next.
While most of us are still thinking about what children are wearing now, the industry is several steps ahead…
At Playtime, the conversation had already moved firmly towards Spring/Summer 2027.
Two trend spaces designed by Amélie Lengrand explored the season’s Lull and Happenstance directions, identified by forecasting agency Future Snoops, which also presented the trends in a dedicated conference for buyers.
Lifestyle received its own universe, with Fanny Petit transforming her curated selection into a Mini Disco Party, while first-time exhibitors were given a dedicated space curated by the Playtime team.
It makes Playtime an interesting barometer.
You don’t only see products. You begin seeing patterns.
Colours start repeating. Silhouettes shift. New ideas around childhood, design, sustainability and play begin appearing across completely unrelated brands.
And slowly, next season starts revealing itself.
Perhaps the most important part of Playtime happens away from the products.
The summer edition included individual meetings with experts covering everything from trend forecasting and press relationships to brand image and intellectual property. Networking sessions connected brands directly with buyers, journalists and content creators.
There were creative workshops for children.
Temporary tattoos and glitter.
And, naturally, a cocktail party with a DJ.
Because somewhere between orders, appointments and forecasting presentations, Playtime still seems to understand something incredibly simple:
People do better business when they actually know each other.
For smaller independent children’s brands in particular, those conversations can matter enormously.
An introduction becomes a retailer. A retailer becomes a new market. A journalist discovers a name they hadn’t encountered before. Two founders meet and eventually collaborate.
You can’t always predict which conversation will become important.
You just need somewhere for it to happen.
The children’s market occupies a strange and fascinating corner of fashion.
It has all the serious mechanics of the wider industry international distribution, trend forecasting, wholesale strategy, branding, retail and commercial pressure.
But its ultimate customer is still a child.
And Playtime seems particularly good at remembering that.
Alongside the business conversations, the event maintained spaces for creativity and play, allowing the seriousness of the industry to coexist with the reason it exists in the first place.
Perhaps that’s why Playtime works.
It doesn’t treat childrenswear as a smaller version of fashion.
It treats it as its own creative universe.
And the next chapter is already on the calendar.
Playtime Paris returns from 30 January to 1 February 2027, followed only weeks later by Playtime New York from 21 to 23 February 2027.
For brands hoping to join the next editions, registration opens on 9 September 2026.
So while SS27 may currently exist in samples, showrooms and buyers’ notebooks, the industry is already preparing for what comes after.
Because children’s fashion moves quickly.
And somewhere between Paris and New York, the next name worth knowing is probably getting ready to show us what they’ve made.
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