GemGenève sets attendance record as gold and gems draw global crowds
GemGenève’s 10th edition turned the spotlight on untreated stones, natural gold and a new generation of makers, while dealers called the mood a vintage year.
GemGenève closed its 10th edition at Palexpo in Geneva with a mood that was part buying frenzy, part craft symposium. The fair drew 5,365 unique visitors from 109 countries and logged 8,009 total visits, the strongest turnout since the show launched in 2018, even as collectors kept circling the cases for untreated gems and finely judged gold work.
Held from May 7 to 10, the fair brought together 249 exhibitors and edged past its 2025 visitor record of 4,970. Ronny Totah said exhibitors praised the quality of the discussions and the high energy on the floor, adding that the show was especially good for sealing deals. Thomas Faerber called the edition a “vintage year,” a neatly turned phrase for a market that felt selective, but still hungry.
What stood out on the floor was not volume but discernment. Buyers kept returning to non-oiled Colombian emeralds, Kashmir sapphires and unheated Mozambique rubies, a reminder that the high end still prizes stones that have been left as close to nature as possible. That preference dovetailed with a broader appetite for gold as a structural material rather than a backdrop, especially when paired with unexpected textures and surfaces. The most interesting pieces did not shout. They relied on proportion, finish and the tension between precious metal and less expected matter.
That spirit ran through the Designers’ Village, curated by Nadège Totah, where three new designers and five emerging talents were given room beside established names. Their presence reinforced what GemGenève has become under Thomas Faerber and Ronny Totah since 2018: a marketplace where discovery matters as much as sales. The fair’s cultural programming pushed that idea further with Shaping Matter, Enhancing Beauty, a temporary exhibition of museum-quality objects in jade, coral, amber, horn and agate, including loans from the Baur Foundation Museum of Far Eastern Art and the Museum of Art and History of Geneva.
Taken together, the 2026 edition suggested that the next phase of high jewelry will not be defined by louder branding or bigger stones alone. It will be shaped by material contrast, by gold used with more imagination, and by the steady rise of younger makers who understand that rarity now lives in both provenance and point of view.
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