We just got back from the first VolksWorld Show at its new location at the South of England Showground, and it was a huge success!
Here’s a quick show report from the JK Team, after the 2025 VolksWorld Show so you can get caught up on what happened at the event.
Whether you weren’t able to make it to the show, or just want to see if you’re in the background of any of our photos, read on to see how the show went and check out some of the amazing VWs on display.
A New Location, and a New Era for VolksWorld
One of the biggest talking points about this year’s VolksWorld Show was its move from Sandown Race Course in Esher over to the South of England Showground in Haywards Heath.
VolksWorld had been held at Sandown since the 1990s, so changing the location wasn’t a decision made lightly, but it looks like the new site works really well!
There was plenty of room to display all the vehicles, and while the show was busy all day it never felt like a crush in any of the halls. Having everything in one cohesive area felt great, too, and let us flow around the place from one display to the next in a way that we couldn’t at Sandown. The club display areas and new individual display areas felt a lot more like a part of the show, due to the layout of the South of England Showground.
This meant there was a lot more to see without having to make an effort to go there specifically, and it was great to see people given the chance to display their vehicles in a dedicated area, without having to build a pristine show car or be part of a larger club. We all loved having the VolksWorld Show at Sandown, but everyone we spoke to at the show this year said that the new location was a breath of fresh air and a needed change.
We’re looking forward to seeing how the show improves again for the 2026 VolksWorld Show next spring!
VolksWorld's 2025 Show Cars
We were in the Queens Building this year, with the show cars and other traders. It was the first big building right next to the entrance, and was busy all day!
There were some beautiful air-cooled classics on display in the hall, and the way they were laid out meant that they were much easier to view than they might have been in previous years.
Some iconic VWs like Velocirazor and Stitch Up were on show, as well as some other really cool builds we’ve been following closely like Max Hawkes’ 1965 Beetle that we’ve been watching him rebuild on Instagram.
Having chatted to Max and supplied him a lot of the parts for his project, it was amazing to see it on display at VolksWorld – something he’s wanted to do since he was a kid.
Max's Beetle was parked up next to the Thomas Crown Affair replica Beach Buggy, built by our friends at Kingfisher Kustoms and displayed with the cardboard cut-out of Steve McQueen that you might have seen on our stand at the NEC Classic Motor Show last year.
JK’s Project Beetle at VolksWorld
Our own stand had our Project Beetle on display, still coated in a fine layer of workshop dust which we decided to leave on!
There’s been some progress with the Beetle ahead of where you might have seen from our YouTube videos, so anyone who dropped by the JK stand at the VolksWorld Show yesterday will have noticed that Pete has louvered the hood and the deck lid on the Beetle,
Pete spends a lot of his free time building hotrods, and has a history of fairly extreme modifications on Volkswagens, so it’s not surprising that he created his own louvre press and went to town on the Beetle.
There’s a reason we used to lock up the hacksaws and other tools if we had to leave Pete alone in the workshop back when Just Kampers was a garage.
If you haven’t seen our Project Beetle yet, we’re restoring a 1971 VW Beetle on a budget, to show young VW enthusiasts how easy and affordable it can be to get their first classic car on the road.
We’ve also been filming and uploading videos of our progress, as Pete and other members of the JK Team get stuck in to fixing up the Beetle in our on-site workshop here at JK HQ.
We had some great feedback about the Beetle itself, and about the videos we’ve been filming, while we were chatting to people at the show.
It’s great to hear that we’ve been encouraging people to get out and work on their own Volkswagens, and that we’ve inspired a few people to take the plunge and buy their first classic VW!
Just Kampers Insurance
On the other side of our stand we had our colleagues from Just Kampers Insurance, who seemed to be busy all day!
We had a couple of competitions going with Just Kampers Insurance, which are now both closed. Anyone who got a quote on our stand at the VolksWorld Show yesterday was entered into a prize draw for a chance to win a free Engine Fire Fighter, and it was also the last day of our free Just Kampers Insurance giveaway, where one lucky winner who got a quote from Just Kampers Insurance was entered into a separate prize draw to win a year of free, fully comprehensive insurance.
It was great to see so many people chatting and laughing with the Just Kampers Insurance team while they were getting quotes, and sharing photos of the vehicles they wanted to get insured – everything from early VW Beetles and VW T2 Split Screen campers, through to newly converted Mercedes Sprinters and daily drivers.
We'll be running more competitions with Just Kampers Insurance throughout the rest of the year, so make sure you're signed up to our email newsletter to hear when the next competition goes live!
Vehicle Displays at VolksWorld 2025
The next big building over was the Robins Building, which housed some more displays of classic VWs, including a great selection of iconic Back to ’89 classics.
There were traders set up around the edge of the hall, too, including Air-Style Magazine, Surrey Auto Works, and VolksWorld Magazine themselves. All of the traders looked busy every time we wandered through the hall, and the VWs on display were getting a lot of attention, too.
One of the VWs on display belonged to our friend Reece Burrows, who owns a 1955 Oval Beetle which was on display in the Robins Hall at VolksWorld. We had another look around his super-original Oval, and spotted a slightly alarming change – a patch of bubbled, damaged paint on the deck lid!
When we caught up with Reece he explained that he’d had a small engine fire while working on the Beetle, which he quickly got under control and hadn’t caused any extensive damage, other than blistering the beautiful paint on his Oval (and burning a couple of his fingers).
Fortunately Reece and the Oval are okay, and it didn’t stop him making it to Ninove last weekend. We’re not sure we’d have been as chipper as Reece was if it had happened to us, but it’s great to see the setback hasn’t dulled his enthusiasm in the slightest!
The Swap Meet
We love a good swap meet, and everyone from the JK Team had a good hunt through the Swap Meet at the VolksWorld Show at least once while we were there.
Although it was a bit unusual to have the swap meet in a building usually used for showing off livestock, it seemed to work out really well!
There was some great stuff on display, and a few of us made some cool purchases or just spotted relatively obscure accessories we hadn’t seen in person before.
There were some familiar faces among the Swap Meet traders who we got chatting to, and everyone seemed really happy, especially as the swap meet was nice and easy to get to and much roomier, so it was easier to get about and see what was on display at each table.
VolksWorld Show Club Displays
Another great part of the VolksWorld Show this year was being able to see all of the different VW clubs parked up and having a laugh together all day.
There were a fair few different clubs on display around the show, including the Split Screen Van Club, Wolfsburg Bus Crew, Surrey Air-Cooled and dozens of others.
We even had our own club display, where a few of the JK Team parked their own air-cooled VWs for people to check out.
It was only a fairly small selection of the total fleet of classic VW’s owned by the JK Team as a whole, but it was great to be able to park them all up together and show them off – even if we’re not really a VW club!
Owners’ clubs are a core part of the VW community for a lot of us, so it was great to be able to see so many of them represented at the VolksWorld Show, all with a cool range of different vehicles on display.
If you’re looking to join a VW owners club and join a local community of fellow VW fans, then take a look at our Owners Clubs listings and see which clubs meet near you.
You can also use this link to get your VW club listed on the Just Kampers website, to help more people find your club and join it!
Individual Vehicle Displays
You didn’t have to be part of a club to display your VW at the VolksWorld Show this year, as they had a great Individual Display area, where people were welcome to park their VWs up and show off their hard work and cool rides.
The whole individual display area was full of really great Volkswagens, with a really good variety of different models, styles, and looks parked up together.
Each of us ended up with a different favourite from the individual displays, but Jason and his son spent about ten minutes walking around this VW hotrod, as his son absolutely fell in love with it.
Award Winners at VolksWorld 2025
Towards the end of the day, the VolksWorld team handed out five awards to the winners. All of the show cars on display in the Queens Building were looked over thoroughly for around six hours by a pair of judges, who had to get into really fine details like the size of door gaps in order to separate some of the cars, since the standard of VWs on display was so high.
The first, second, and third best VWs scored 99.5, 99, and 98.5 points out of 100, which goes to show how good the Volkswagens on display were, and how difficult it must have been to decide who won which award!
We’ll be adding more information about the show winners as more information is released by the VolksWorld Team, but you can watch their video of the prize-giving here.
See You at VolksWorld 2026!
We’re really pleased to see how well the 2025 VolksWorld Show did in its new location, and are excited to see what the future brings as the event settles into its new life at the South of England Showground.
You can guarantee that we’ll be there again next year, so we hope we’ll see you there, too!
More Upcoming VW Shows & Events in 2025
If you’re keen to head to more VW shows over the coming year, then check out our list of VW Shows & Events in 2025, to see what’s coming up near you.
We’re updating our list all the time, as more information about shows is made available, so keep an eye on the page for updates.
If you’re organising a show and want to get it featured here on the Just Kampers website, then get in touch and let us know! We’d love to feature your VW show, and help spread the word about it!
