An immediate comment at the end of the first day of the event, which continues until February 13 at BolognaFiere.
What were your impressions of the first day of ForumPiscine 2026?
We are very pleased, by 11 a.m. the aisles were already full, and for an event with attendees from all corners of Italy, as well as from abroad, this is a very significant start. Compared to last year, the event has grown in terms of exhibitors, which now number over 150, establishing itself as a fixture in the international calendar of trade fairs in the sector. XLeisure effectively aims to broaden the target audience, because while the pool sector is indeed highly technical, it also requires broad communication that cuts across other areas, as today’s meeting focused on agritourism demonstrated: the few facilities that have a pool show increased revenue and very strong appeal, so this is one of the many growth areas that the event is able to identify.
What does the presence of foreign brands tell us about Italy’s appeal? Are there particular markets or brands that are especially interested in our country?
Most of the foreign companies come from neighboring European countries such as France, Spain, and Germany, but there is also expansion to the east—I’m thinking, for example, of Hungary and Slovenia. Our fair’s distance from other events in the sector effectively offers an additional opportunity to come to Italy even from outside Europe, in fact, we have exhibitors coming from the United States, for example, confirming the event’s identity as an international appointment.
The Italian Pool Awards—I’m thinking of the Facebook category of the prize—bring ForumPiscine’s B2B reality closer to a broader audience that can fully benefit from your educational initiatives. Could this feature find further space in the coming years?
The event is certainly B2B, but the fact remains that in Italy there are no other exhibition opportunities for those who want to buy a pool: what we call the interested public comes here to find a solution for their pool, both from a design and landscape perspective. Our Save Water initiative, always carried out in collaboration with AIAPP and the universities of Milan and Genoa, provides numerous examples of incorporating a pool into a landscape context: this year the dry garden was chosen to raise awareness about sustainability, dispelling the myth that often attributes negative characteristics to pools regarding water consumption. Instead, there are many technologies that allow, for example through rainwater recirculation, to avoid this problem, which is why we created an educational pathway demonstrating that pool water consumption, when done responsibly, is absolutely comparable to normal daily household consumption. The educational approach is therefore a path we started several years ago that, why not, could materialize into other interesting initiatives in future editions.
