Baselworld, which was to be held from April 30 to May 5, 2020 has been postponed due to concerns related to Covid-19 and will now take place from Thursday January 28, 2021 to Tuesday February 2, 2021, the organisers announced late last week.

They said the decision was “for health safety reasons and in accordance with the precautionary principle issued today by the Swiss authorities”.

It may be recalled that the Swiss government has on Friday officially banned large public gatherings in the current scenario.

The Baselworld organisers said that this left them with no other option, but said that they had “taken this difficult decision in close consultation with …partners and the health authorities in charge, in whom Baselworld has full confidence for their expertise and recommendations for the benefit of exhibitors, visitors and collaborators”.

In an announcement on Friday, February 28, they said the it was also important to take an immediate decision as “all preparations, in particular, construction in the halls and of the stands was scheduled to commence next week (start March)”.

Michel Loris-Melikoff, Managing Director of Baselworld said: “We deeply regret having had to postpone the event as planned due to the coronavirus, in full consideration of the needs of the watch and jewellery industry to be able to benefit from the platform to develop their business. This decision has been all the more difficult in view of all the positives that have been achieved through listening and dialogue over the last few months, which resulted in new concepts and new solutions, that have attracted exhibitors to return and new ones to sign on. We registered encouraging growth in all sectors; watchmaking, jewellery, the gemstone and pearl trade, as well as in the technical branch.”

He added, “By postponing the show to January 2021, we have found a solution that enables the industry and all our customers to avoid losing a full year and at the same time reset their calendars for the beginning of the year, a period that is conductive to the presentation of their new products, new trends and order taking. This postponing will also allow Baselworld to continue developing and bringing new formats and solutions as well as improvements to the new concept we propose.”

Bernd Stadlwieser, Group CEO of MCH said: "Within the process of the last weeks, I was very impressed by the involvement and trust of all our customers, partners, stakeholders and team, to pro-actively find the very best solution in the interests of the industries. By communicating intensively all together, we were able to work on different scenarios and to jointly decide on the very best one. I would like to thank everybody for their belief in and commitment to our platform.”

Baselworld is also being repositioned as an industrywide global community platform, active all year round. In the coming weeks, the organisers said they will be presenting a new digital service that is essential and useful to the entire community, and which they believe, “will meet the needs of the brands that have become even more important in these difficult and turbulent times”.