Canton Fair Phase 3 2026: Fashion and Textiles in Focus

Phase 3 of the 140th Canton Fair closed on 4 November at the Canton Fair Complex in Guangzhou, and the fashion and textiles section was once again the busiest part of the "Better Life" phase. According to the organisers, more than 12,000 exhibitors took part in this phase alone, spanning men's and women's wear, children's wear, underwear, sportswear and casual wear, textile raw materials and fabrics, footwear, bags and home textiles.

The fair remains the single largest meeting point for China's apparel export trade: across all three phases the 140th session covered 1.55 million square meters with some 32,000 exhibitors, and the previous spring session drew 314,000 overseas buyers from 220 countries and regions, according to the organisers.

Two themes dominated the garment halls this autumn. The first is green material innovation — recycled fabrics with GRS certification, low-water digital printing and natural-fibre blends were prominent across stands in the fabric and home-textile sections, echoing EU buyer requirements. The second is digitalisation on the production side: one Guangdong exporter that handled China's first denim export order at the 1978 fair presented an AI-designed, laser-washed jeans programme, with the design brief handled by an AI agent and the wash executed by laser — a sign of how quickly digital finishing is moving into mainstream denim supply.

For apparel buyers, the practical takeaway is that Guangzhou remains not only the fair venue but the production base: the city's surrounding denim and garment clusters can move from a fair conversation to a factory sample within days, which is difficult to replicate in any other sourcing region.

Sanpima (Guangzhou Sanpi Ma Garment Co., Ltd) is a denim OEM/ODM factory in Guangzhou with 15 years of export experience — see the range at sanhorses.com.