About Bakery China

Bakery China

Bakery China is the world's largest bakery and confectionery exhibition. Held annually in Shanghai and organised by the China Association of Bakery and Confectionery Industry (CABCI) and Bakery China Exhibitions Co., Ltd., it serves the entire bakery value chain, from ingredients and raw materials through ovens, refrigeration and packaging to shop design, coffee and ice cream. Launched in 1997, it has become the leading entry platform for brands entering the Chinese and Asian bakery markets, at a scale — over 320,000 square metres and around 400,000 visits at recent editions — that no rival baking exhibition approaches. Its twenty-seventh edition ran from 19 to 22 May 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai.

Launch in 1997 and annual growth

Bakery China was launched in 1997, when China's commercial bakery industry was still young: bread, cakes and pastries were moving from hotel and specialist production into retail chains, supermarkets and dedicated bakery shops across Chinese cities. The exhibition grew with that market, holding annual editions in Shanghai and expanding its floor, exhibitor base and programme in step with the industry's retail transformation. By its twenty-fifth edition in May 2023 it could describe itself, without serious challenge, as the largest exhibition in the bakery and confectionery industry worldwide. The anniversary edition also marked a venue step-change, moving to the National Exhibition and Convention Center (NECC) in Shanghai and exceeding the peak of previous exhibitions by thirty percent, at over 280,000 square metres. Longevity plus continued expansion is the fair's defining combination: a show founded in the 1990s that is still setting its own scale records in the 2020s.

Organisers: CABCI and Bakery China Exhibitions

The exhibition is organised by the China Association of Bakery and Confectionery Industry and Bakery China Exhibitions Co., Ltd. CABCI is the national industry association for bakery and confectionery, giving the show direct access to manufacturers, chains, ingredient suppliers and regulators across the sector. The dedicated exhibitions company provides professional show operation. Together they have built not only the flagship Shanghai fair but a small family of related properties: the Bakery China Forum, the biennial Bakery China Innovation Award, the Top Patissier of Asia competition, the iBakeryChina digital platform, sister events including Bakery China Autumn in Chengdu and the China Home Baking Show, and, announced in 2026, the brand's first overseas edition, Bakery ASEAN in Jakarta. That portfolio shows an organiser thinking in terms of an industry ecosystem — a word the exhibition itself uses for its platform — rather than a single annual tenancy.

Venue: NECC Shanghai and the move of 2023

Bakery China is held annually in Shanghai, China's commercial capital and a centre of its premium food and retail markets. The decisive venue change came in 2023, when the twenty-fifth edition moved to the National Exhibition and Convention Center, one of the largest exhibition complexes in the world. The move unlocked the fair's current scale: over 280,000 square metres in 2023, then about 320,000 to 330,000 square metres at both the twenty-sixth edition in May 2024 and the twenty-seventh edition from 19 to 22 May 2025. NECC's very large halls suit an exhibition whose exhibitors include full production lines, oven installations and elaborate ingredient and finished-product displays. Shanghai's concentration of bakery chains, food manufacturers, importers and e-commerce platforms supplies the visitor base, while its international connections support attendance from more than 130 countries at recent editions.

Scale: the world's largest bakery exhibition

The numbers supporting the world's-largest claim are consistent across editions. In 2023: over 280,000 square metres, more than 2,000 brand manufacturers from 30 countries and regions, and over 380,000 visits from 109 countries. In 2024: about 320,000 square metres, over 2,200 renowned brands from nearly 30 countries and regions, and around 400,000 visits expected from more than 130 countries and regions. In 2025: about 320,000 square metres, over 2,200 exhibitors with thousands of brands from nearly 30 countries and regions, and nearly 400,000 professional visitors. Over twenty percent of brands at recent editions were international. Major exhibitors confirmed for recent editions include Fonterra, Lesaffre, Yihai Kerry, Rich's, Puratos and Nestlé — a list spanning dairy, yeast, oils, cream, bakery ingredients and global food groups, which illustrates the show's pull at the top of the supply industry. No other bakery-specific exhibition reports figures of this order.

The entire bakery value chain on show

Bakery China serves the entire bakery value chain. Its exhibit scope covers ingredients and raw materials; finished and semi-finished products; ovens and bakery machinery; refrigeration, proofing and fermentation equipment; packaging machinery and materials; shop, café and store furnishings and design; coffee, tea and ice cream; and franchise and chain-store resources. The twenty-sixth edition in 2024 added exhibition areas for independent baking brands, OEM and ODM products, and bakery industry franchising, reflecting the maturation of China's bakery retail market, where brand-building, contract manufacturing and franchising have become businesses in their own right. For a visitor, the chain coverage means a single trip can address sourcing, production, packaging and retail presentation. For exhibitors, it guarantees an audience drawn from every stage of the trade, from ingredient distributors to chain-store buyers and e-commerce platforms, all of whom organiser accounts list among the nearly four hundred thousand annual professional visitors.

Forum, awards and competitions

The exhibition's programme extends well beyond booths. The Bakery China Forum, hosted during the exhibitions, convenes industry discussion on markets, technology and business models. The Bakery China Innovation Award, presented biennially, recognises product and technology innovation. The Top Patissier of Asia competition brings elite pastry competition to the show floor, and organiser accounts describe professional events at the fair serving as China qualifiers for world-class baking competitions, giving competitive baking a formal place in the programme. These elements matter to the fair's positioning: competitions create spectacle and media attention, awards create an innovation benchmark that exhibitors compete to win, and the forum gives senior industry figures a reason to attend beyond purchasing. Together they help explain the fair's exhibitor loyalty and its status as the preferred platform, in organiser language, for companies to unveil new products and technologies.

iBakeryChina and the digital platform

Bakery China supports its physical editions with the iBakeryChina digital platform, built, in the organisers' description, on a database of over 6,000 suppliers and 500,000 buyers. The platform extends the fair's matchmaking beyond the four days of the Shanghai show, allowing buyers and suppliers to find each other, present products and maintain contact year-round. Its published database figures also quantify the fair's underlying commercial network: half a million buyers is the audience asset on which the physical exhibition's four hundred thousand visits rest. In an industry where many exhibitors are ingredient and equipment companies selling to dispersed bakeries and chains, a verified year-round sourcing channel is a significant part of the value of exhibiting, and it distinguishes Bakery China from fairs that exist only as annual floor space.

Sister events and international expansion

The brand has expanded beyond the Shanghai flagship. Bakery China Autumn serves the western Chinese market from Chengdu, and the China Home Baking Show addresses the fast-growing home and small-studio baking segment. Most significantly, in 2026 the brand announced its first overseas edition, Bakery ASEAN in Jakarta, Indonesia, subsequently scheduled for August 2027 at the Jakarta International Expo. The ASEAN edition is explicitly built, in organiser statements, on the full value chain and global industry resources of Bakery China, the world's largest professional bakery trade show, to create a platform focused on ASEAN and global markets. The move converts Bakery China from a China-market entry platform into an exporting exhibition brand in its own right — the same trajectory followed earlier by European fair brands that built the Chinese shows now competing with them.

The Chinese bakery market behind the fair

The fair's scale mirrors its market. China is one of the largest producers and consumers in the global bakery industry, and organiser releases cite the Chinese baking industry reaching 285.3 billion yuan in value in 2022, with projections of steady expansion to an estimated 351.8 billion yuan by 2025. Growth drivers named in those accounts include post-pandemic recovery and upgraded, diversified consumption — more premium ingredients, more western-style products, more coffee-and-bakery retail formats. Bakery China both reflects and accelerates that market: international ingredient and equipment brands use it to enter China and Asia, Chinese brands use it to launch products and recruit franchisees, and its visitor base of chains, distributors and e-commerce platforms constitutes the industry's buying power gathered in one complex for four days each May.

Significance and outlook

Bakery China's significance is straightforward to state because its central claim is numerical and verified across multiple editions: it is the world's largest bakery and confectionery exhibition, launched in 1997, organised by the national industry association and its exhibitions company, covering over 320,000 square metres with more than 2,200 exhibitors and around 400,000 visits. Around that core it has built a forum, an innovation award, elite competitions, a digital sourcing platform with a half-million-buyer database, domestic sister events and a first overseas edition in Jakarta. For any company serious about the Chinese or wider Asian bakery market, the Shanghai fair in May is, on the evidence of its own audited-scale editions, the single most concentrated opportunity the industry offers.