Labubu draws crowds at Shenzhen fair as Pop Mart expands IP reach

Pop Mart set up LABUBU front and center in the Beijing exhibition area of the 22nd China International Cultural Industries Fair, and the booth quickly became one of the busiest stops on the floor. Visitors clustered around the display to photograph the plush-heavy setup and the recently launched THE MONSTERS x FIFA collaboration, a rare collector-facing moment that put the character’s next chapter on public display.

The five-day fair ran from May 21 to May 25 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center in Bao’an District, with a main venue spanning 160,000 square meters. The scale matters here: the event drew 6,312 exhibitors online and offline and put more than 120,000 cultural products on show, turning Pop Mart’s presence into more than a branded pit stop. In a setting framed as China’s only state-level, international, comprehensive cultural industry expo, LABUBU read like an export-ready IP rather than a toy shelf novelty.

Pop Mart said it brought multiple popular LABUBU products and the FIFA collaboration so more visitors could experience the appeal of trendy IP in person. The tie-in is not just decorative fair content, either. Pop Mart’s official U.S. site lists THE MONSTERS × FIFA as an official collection, confirming that the crossover is a real product line and not simply a Shenzhen-only presentation. For collectors tracking where LABUBU is headed next, that matters as much as the foot traffic.

The display also fit a longer arc that starts with Kasing Lung creating LABUBU in The Monsters universe in 2015. Pop Mart introduced THE MONSTERS as a series in 2019, then brought out the brand’s first vinyl-faced plush in 2022. Those steps helped set up the breakout run that followed, with THE MONSTERS becoming Pop Mart’s first IP franchise to pass 10 billion yuan in annual revenue and, in 2025, generating 14.16 billion yuan in sales, up 365.7 percent year on year, about 38 percent of the company’s total revenue.

That is why the Shenzhen fair mattered beyond brand visibility. The crowded booth showed Pop Mart using LABUBU as a cultural-stage IP, one that can move from blind boxes and plush into licensed collaborations and large-scale public activations. At Shenzhen, the character did exactly what Pop Mart seems to want most now: pull people in, then make them look at LABUBU as something bigger than a single series on a shelf.