As we enter the five-month countdown to Brand Licensing Europe 2024, 157 companies have already been confirmed to exhibit, including six first timers – 24h Le Mans, The British Museum, Animaj, Cardio Bunny, Merchantwise Group and Unicast.
This year’s BLE returns in a slightly earlier timeline this year – 24-26 September – and will take place at ExCeL, London. Visitors can register their interest now and will be notified automatically when registration opens in early June.
157 exhibitors are confirmed to date, bringing thousands of brands to BLE from all categories.
These include:
From sports: UEFA Club Competitions, Tour de France, Real Madrid, and more
From character and animation: Aardman Animations, Crunchyroll, Hasbro, Le Petit Prince, Moonbug, Paramount, Paul Frank, The Smurfs, and more
From video gaming: Capcom, Sega, Pokémon, Rebellion, SEGA, Bandai Namco and more
From publishing: Penguin Random House, Walker Books, Mercis BV (with Miffy), and more
From heritage/charity: Imperial War Museums, Natural History Museum, RSPB, V&A, Van Gogh Museum, and more.
“The exhibitor list is already showing some amazing brands from across all categories which is a testament to the event’s strength within the European licensing industry – it is quite simply the only place for European retailers, manufacturers and brand owners to meet, do business and sign deals that will decide what branded products consumers will be buying from December 2024 and beyond,” commented Ella Haynes, BLE event director.
Last year, 9,649 licensing professionals attended BLE. Visitor numbers increased by 28%, and the show attracted record numbers of retailers and visitors from France, Germany, Italy and Spain (FIGS) (also up 28%), showing the strong appetite for branded consumer products at retail.
Attending retailers included buyers from Uniqlo, Zara, Amazon, Benetton, The Entertainer, ASOS, C&A, H&M, Calzedonia, Carrefour, Fat Face, Galeries Lafayette, Harrods, Aldi, Decathlon, Diechmann, Next, El Corte Ingles, Forbidden Planet, Frasers Group, Primark, Poundland, Accessorize, Marks & Spencer, Matalan, Card Factory, Hamley’s, Claire’s Accessories, HMV, Iceland, John Lewis & Partners, Legends, Lidl, Lipsy, Asda and Selfridges among others.
Over 5,100 meetings were also pre-arranged in the show’s Event Platform (a 17% increase on 2022) and many thousands more took place onsite.
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