Car Design Night Geneva is also cancelled in light of these announcements

This morning, the Swiss government announced that there is now a ban on events involving more than 1,000 people, coming into immediate effect until “at least 15th March”. In light of this, the organisers of the 2020 Geneva Motor Show – which was set to run from 3rd-15th March – have cancelled the event, saying “this is force majeure.”

Given these extraordinary circumstances, our own Car Design Night event, this year run in collaboration with GIMS, is also being called off. This is, of course, very disappointing, but given the situation we have no choice.

The announcements come after the COVID-19 novel coronavirus reached Switzerland earlier this week, and Geneva itself in the past couple of days. This highly contagious disease has already had a profound effect on the automotive industry and wider community in China. Given the situation in northern Italy as well, which is not far from Geneva, the cancellation of the Geneva show has been on the cards all week.

The show organisers at Palexpo have dubbed the motor show “too big” to postpone until the autumn (when the virus situation is expected to be under control), which they have already done with the International Exhibition of Inventions that was originally set to be held on 25th-29th March.

Car Design News is already in contact with the car manufacturers who were set to exhibit, and we will still bring you all the latest launches, images, videos and insight into the cars and people we were expecting to see next week.