The global footwear, apparel, and textile industry is undergoing a profound structural adjustment and technological transformation. McKinsey's "State of Fashion" report and the latest financial reports of major international brands show that the hottest topics in the industry are mainly concentrated in several core dimensions, including "K-shaped divergence," supply chain restructuring, vertical AI applications, the casualization of outdoor wear, and quirky retro shoe upper designs. The superposition of three factors—iterative changes in the global consumption structure, reshaping of geopolitical trade rules, and innovation in production technology—has completely ended the traditional growth model of the footwear and apparel industry, which relied on cheap labor, extensive OEM manufacturing, and fixed-style mass production. The industry has officially entered a new competitive cycle characterized by compliance, digitalization, flexibility, and high added value.

As a major global hub for footwear and apparel manufacturing, Vietnam is standing at a crossroads of transformation and upgrading. Data from Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade shows that its footwear, apparel, and textile export value is expected to rise further, but Decree 293, which takes effect in 2026 (raising the regional minimum wage by about 7.2%), labor shortages, and green trade barriers in Europe and the United States are dramatically reshaping Vietnam's industrial ecosystem. In recent years, Europe and the United States have continued to tighten trade compliance requirements such as supply chain due diligence, carbon footprint traceability, and labor rights audits. Combined with rigid increases in local labor costs in Vietnam and slowing growth in the working-age industrial labor force, the low-cost advantage that originally supported Vietnam's industrial rise has gradually weakened, and the extensive OEM model is difficult to sustain. In the face of the cruel business competition reality of "one person doing the work while a crowd attacks, and those attackers secretly take all the advantages," only by thoroughly abandoning the old weaknesses of "being soft-hearted, talkative, and impatient" and establishing a strong-person detox mechanism of "delayed non-response, brevity without self-justification, and coldness without looking back" can companies and practitioners stand invincible amid the storms, meeting challenges with calm, water-like wisdom and kindness that has grown teeth.

As the "wind vane" for footwear and apparel transformation in the Asia-Pacific region, the 24th Vietnam International Textile and Apparel Industry Exhibition (VTG 2026) and the Vietnam International Footwear Machinery and Materials Industry Exhibition (VFM 2026) will be grandly held from October 14 to 17, 2026, at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) in Ho Chi Minh City. The exhibition will be open daily from 9:00 to 17:00, with closing time at 15:00 on the final day, and visitors under 16 years old are prohibited from entering. Relying on Vietnam's core industrial location advantages and complete footwear and textile industry chain foundation, this exhibition deeply anchors itself to the five major transformation trends of the global footwear and apparel industry in 2026, transforming cutting-edge industry trends into hardcore exhibition area planning, high-end forums, and investment promotion strategies. It provides domestic and international exhibitors, buyers, and supply chain practitioners with a panoramic breakdown of survival rules and upgrading paths under the current policy, legal, and economic framework, and builds a core platform for compliance transformation, technological iteration, and resource matching in the Asia-Pacific footwear and apparel industry.

VTG Exhibition has been deeply cultivating the Southeast Asian market for nearly 20 years. It is a UFI-certified flagship textile and apparel full-industry-chain exhibition, focusing on full-chain software and hardware solutions from Textile 4.0 to 5.0, precisely adapting to the industry's core needs of small-batch quick response and flexible production. The exhibition's core exhibits cover cutting-edge equipment and technologies such as high-speed intelligent knitting equipment, digital spinning and weaving machinery, non-woven fabric production equipment, 3D intelligent body-measuring garment systems, and factory intelligent ERP management systems. The exhibition's core commercial value focuses on solving industry pain points, helping Southeast Asian textile enterprises overcome challenges such as labor shortages, rising production costs, and low production efficiency, providing intelligent and digital flexible production solutions for global brands and OEM factories, perfectly matching the 2026 footwear and apparel industry's product development trends of lightweight, personalized, and fast-iterating.

Visitors can complete pre-registration through the official channel:https://www.chanchao.com.tw/en/entryApply.asp?id=FTXTHCM2026

The VFM exhibition precisely reaches over 70% of local footwear factories in Vietnam and deeply connects with the OEM systems of global footwear giants. It is the most influential professional trade platform for footwear manufacturing equipment and materials in Southeast Asia. The exhibition focuses on green, low-carbon, intelligent, and efficient footwear manufacturing technologies. Its core exhibits include supercritical physical foaming complete equipment, AI visual intelligent cutting equipment, fully automatic footwear molding production lines, ultra-light eco-friendly sole materials, water-based non-toxic footwear adhesives, and other core products and technologies. The exhibition site will demonstrate the full-process intelligent and green footwear manufacturing process in real scenarios, providing multinational OEM factories and footwear enterprises operating in Vietnam with a complete set of production solutions for cost reduction and efficiency improvement as well as compliant and eco-friendly operations, precisely adapting to the 2026 production needs for thin-sole barefoot shoes and global environmental compliance requirements, helping the industry complete green transformation and capacity upgrading.

Visitors can complete pre-registration through the official channel:https://www.chanchao.com.tw/en/entryApply.asp?id=FVNFLM2026

After completing pre-registration, you can enter with the admission QR code. The admission QR code is for the registrant's use only.

The global footwear and apparel market shows an obvious structural K-shaped divergence: high-end outdoor and sports fashion brands represented by Anta, Arc'teryx, and Salomon are leading against the trend, relying on professional functional attributes, brand premiums, and scenario-based styling advantages to continuously capture the mid-to-high-end consumer market, while maintaining stable growth in revenue and gross profit; in contrast, the mass casual and light luxury markets are affected by the weak global economic recovery, cautious middle-class consumption, consumers' rational consumption upgrading, and the frequent pursuit of "affordable alternatives," resulting in weak market demand and an overall industry dilemma of growth pressure and severe involution, with homogeneous low-price competition becoming the norm.

This global consumption divergence trend is directly transmitted to Vietnam's manufacturing sector, completely rewriting the survival logic of the local contract manufacturing industry. In Vietnam, small and medium-sized garment factories that have long relied on labor cost advantages and focused on low-end contract manufacturing (CMT processing model) are going bankrupt and exiting the market in batches. The Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS), as a local authoritative industry organization, has repeatedly publicly stated that Vietnam no longer has the advantage of competing with extremely low-cost countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia for extremely low-end cheap orders. National industrial policy is strongly raising the industry ceiling, systematically eliminating low-value-added, high-energy-consumption, low-profit inferior production capacity "below the K-shaped line" through cost regulation, policy guidance, and compliance constraints, forcing the entire industry to upgrade toward mid-to-high-end manufacturing.

[Legal and Regulatory Restrictions (Decree 293)] Vietnam's officially promulgated Decree 293/2025/ND-CP labor decree formally raised the statutory minimum wage standards across four administrative regions nationwide, comprehensively increasing industrial labor costs. Among them, Region 1, the most economically developed and most concentrated with manufacturing enterprises (such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), saw its monthly minimum wage raised to 5.31 million Vietnamese dong (approximately 210 USD), with wages in the remaining Regions 2, 3, and 4 also raised in a synchronized tiered manner. This legislation directly ended Vietnam's extremely low-cost contract manufacturing advantage at the policy level and directly pushed up basic labor costs, causing low-end mass-market brand contract factories (below the K-shaped line) that survive only on meager processing fees and lack technology and added value to become unable to sustain profitability, forcing them to reduce production, relocate, or shut down. In contrast, footwear and apparel brands and supporting supply chains with technological advantages, high-end production capacity, and high gross margins have solidified their market position and continue to deepen their presence in the Vietnamese market.

In order to avoid high tariff risks in core European and American consumer markets, diversify geopolitical risks from a single supply chain, and meet the needs of diversified production location layouts, multinational footwear and apparel giants are comprehensively accelerating the process of global production capacity dispersion and supply chain restructuring. Large-scale manufacturing capacity for basic knitwear and conventional athletic shoes with mature processes and high standardization is being massively transferred to Southeast Asia and South America through "nearshoring." The traditional supply chain model of "single-point dependence" that relied on a single region for the past decades is being completely overturned and restructured. With its superior geographical location, dense free trade agreement advantages, and mature industrial workforce base, Vietnam has become a core beneficiary of global brand diversification layouts, continuously capturing footwear and apparel import share in core markets such as the United States and the European Union, with industry volume steadily increasing. However, behind the rapid transfer of production capacity, Vietnam is also facing pressure from upgraded global trade compliance reviews, and the severe legal review risk of "origin fraud" has become a core pain point constraining high-quality industrial development.

[China Traditional Footwear and Apparel Capacity] ───► [Vietnam / Indonesia / Cambodia] (ASEAN: Zero Tariff / Free Trade Agreement Advantages) ───► [Bangladesh] (Low Cost / Least Developed Country EBA Duty-Free Treatment) ───► [India] (PLI Policy Subsidies / Huge Domestic Substitution Market)

[Legal and Regulatory Restrictions (Rules of Origin and Free Trade Agreements)] Vietnam has the world's most densely networked free trade agreements (including the EVFTA, CPTPP, and RCEP), which is also the core policy dividend that enables it to take on global production capacity transfer. Among them, the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), as Vietnam's core trade framework for connecting to the EU's high-end market, strictly implements the "Yarn Forward" rules of origin, and strictly defines the localization of production processes, traceability of raw materials, and the proportion of processing value-added for footwear and apparel products. This means that if a Vietnamese footwear and apparel factory only imports finished fabrics and accessories from China, and only completes simple cutting, sewing, and assembly labeling processes in Vietnam (commonly known as label washing), without completing core production stages such as spinning, weaving, dyeing, and finishing, it will not be able to satisfy the rules of origin and cannot enjoy the EU's zero-tariff policy. This rigid legal rule, at the industry level, forces Chinese footwear and apparel supply chain enterprises, when going overseas to expand, not to simply "transfer back-end processes," but to make deep investments in Vietnam across the entire industrial chain, including weaving, dyeing and finishing, and fabric R&D, to achieve true localized full-chain production and complete the transformation from "process migration" to "capacity rooting."

The application of artificial intelligence in the footwear and apparel industry has completed preliminary exploration, thoroughly advancing from early shallow "creative marketing" scenarios such as poster design, marketing traffic generation, and virtual outfit try-on into a substantive stage of deeply empowering production, R&D, and quality control, fully connecting to core links such as supply chain sampling, production scheduling, quality inspection, and traceability management. Currently mature vertical AI design platforms in the industry can, relying on big data and deep learning algorithms, quickly generate photo-level high-definition footwear and apparel design drafts within 10 seconds, covering all-dimensional design content such as shoe upper patterns, fabric matching, and color schemes, and can directly connect with material suppliers and intelligent production equipment for rapid sampling, greatly shortening the product R&D cycle. Design and R&D costs have undergone disruptive reduction, achieving efficient linkage between the design end and the production end.

The mismatch between demographic structural changes and rapid industrial development has left Vietnam currently facing serious problems of "difficulty in recruiting workers," high labor mobility, and the peaking of the demographic dividend. The traditional manual production model can no longer adapt to the needs of industrial upgrading and capacity expansion. Under the heavy pressure of labor shortage, the Vietnamese government has issued top-level industrial planning. In the "Vietnam Digital Transformation Plan to 2030," it explicitly lists the textile, footwear, and apparel industry as a key area for digital transformation, and grants footwear and apparel enterprises that introduce digital and intelligent equipment such as AI visual fabric inspection, intelligent production scheduling systems, automated cutting equipment, and intelligent quality inspection equipment high corporate income tax reductions and other special tax incentives (Corporate Income Tax Incentives), strongly supporting industrial digital upgrading.

[Legal and regulatory constraints (environmental and social responsibility compliance)] Introducing vertical AI is not only a self-rescue measure for enterprises to cope with labor shortages and improve production efficiency, but also a rigid demand for adapting to global trade compliance. Currently, many countries in Europe and America have successively introduced new regulations such as the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Overseas brand buyers' requirements for full-process supply chain traceability, full-process carbon footprint tracking, and production compliance audits continue to escalate. By introducing vertical AI large models, enterprises can achieve standardized and transparent management of data across the entire chain, including raw material procurement, production and processing, energy consumption and emissions, and finished product delivery. They can accurately complete carbon footprint accounting and supply chain traceability, making this a rigid technical means for enterprises to pass European and American compliance audits and smoothly clear customs for overseas expansion.

The global outdoor consumption trend continues to penetrate. Professional outdoor functional equipment such as hardshell jackets, tennis skirts, and lightweight hiking shoes has completely broken through the usage limitations of extreme outdoor scenarios and fully extended to mass scenarios such as urban commuting, daily travel, and casual wear, achieving "outdoor pan-dailyization." A large amount of market research data shows that more than 70% of global young consumers prefer daily fashionable outdoor footwear and apparel that "weakens professional outdoor attributes while combining fashion sense and functionality." Gen Z and women, with their huge consumer base and active willingness to spend, have become the absolute main consumer groups in this track, driving outdoor functional apparel from a niche category to a mainstream rigid-demand category.

Regional natural environment and travel culture further amplify the market demand for outdoor functional footwear and apparel in Vietnam. Southern Vietnam has a typical tropical monsoon climate, with high temperatures and abundant rain throughout the year. Nearly half of the year is the rainy season, making rainproof, waterproof, and sunproof features core needs for people's travel. At the same time, Vietnam is a globally renowned motorcycle country. Motorcycles are the core means of transportation for people's daily commuting, forming a unique "motorcycle + heavy rain" travel ecosystem. This localized scenario, combined with the global Gorpcore fashion trend, makes outdoor functional apparel with waterproof, sunproof, lightweight, and wear-resistant characteristics not only a trend in Vietnam but also a rigid-demand product that fits people's livelihood needs, with market growth space continuing to be released.

[Government Industry Guidance] Aligned with global consumption trends and local market demand, Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment has explicitly introduced industry guidance policies to positively steer the footwear and apparel industry away from the limitations of low-end pure cotton OEM manufacturing, transitioning from traditional "100% pure cotton knit" capacity toward high-tech man-made fibers (MMF) and high-performance waterproof, UV-resistant, and wear-resistant coated materials, optimizing the local product structure and industrial tier. To attract enterprises to establish functional fabric R&D and production, the government has introduced special tax incentive policies, offering enterprises investing in functional fabric and high-performance man-made fiber R&D and production a full corporate income tax exemption period of up to 4 years, followed by a graduated tax reduction incentive for the subsequent 9 years, fully supporting Vietnam's footwear and apparel industry in completing its industrial upgrade from "low-end basic T-shirt OEM manufacturing" to "high-end professional hardshell jackets and functional apparel manufacturing."

Global footwear design aesthetics continue to evolve. After years of minimalist dominance, the industry is embracing a wave of bold innovation, with retro revivals and niche personalized designs becoming mainstream. Currently, the hottest design trends on international runways and social platforms include: Sneakerinas (fusing athletic soles with Mary Jane/ballet uppers, balancing comfort and feminine style), classic retro shoe revivals (such as German Army Trainers and Adidas classic retro silhouettes), and creatively exaggerated, proportionally bold "ugly shoes" with distinctive shapes, breaking traditional footwear design boundaries and becoming sought-after trendy items among young consumers.

These trendy and complex upper designs have completely departed from the production logic of traditional standardized mass-produced footwear, placing extremely high demands on production processes. They require core technical support such as high-precision shoe mold making, fine genuine leather stitching, multi-layer fabric splicing, and vulcanized rubber sole processes, while also accommodating flexible production needs of small batches, rapid iteration, and multiple styles. Leveraging decades of experience承接ing high-end footwear industry transfers from Taiwan, China and South Korea, Vietnam has accumulated mature shoemaking craftsmanship, a comprehensive supporting supply chain, and skilled technical workers. In Ho Chi Minh City and the surrounding Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces, the world's most mature high-precision footwear manufacturing cluster has formed, making Vietnam the core destination for global whimsical retro and creative trendy footwear.

[Legal and Trade Facilitation] In response to the industry characteristics of trendy footwear — "high-frequency turnover, small-batch customization, rapid prototyping, and short-cycle delivery" — Vietnam's Customs Law has specifically opened up favorable policies adapted to flexible production, introducing a "Processing Trade Tax Exemption Policy (EPE Enterprises)" for processing-export enterprises. Compliant and registered EPE enterprises, when conducting R&D prototyping and new product testing for overseas brands, can enjoy a green channel exempting import duties and value-added tax (VAT) on imported special shoe materials, accessories, creative whimsical components, and custom mold materials, significantly reducing new product prototyping costs and shortening customs clearance cycles, greatly enhancing Vietnam's market response speed and flexible production capacity for undertaking global whimsical retro footwear and creative trendy shoes.

In response to the above five major industry changes, Vietnam's industrial transformation pain points, and policy dividends, the 2026 VTG & VFM Exhibition has made targeted and forward-looking arrangements in exhibition area planning, high-end forum setup, and precise buyer invitation, accurately matching the needs of industrial upgrading and supply-demand connection.

"Green and Functional Materials Exhibition Area": Focus on inviting high-tech chemical fiber (MMF), waterproof and rainproof coating materials, and wear-resistant quick-dry fabric exhibitors from Greater China and ASEAN. Focusing on global outdoor functional consumption trends and Vietnam's industrial transformation direction, helping local Vietnamese OEM factories break through low-end production capacity bottlenecks, comprehensively develop high-profit-margin and highly compliant urban commuting outdoor clothing (Gorpcore) series products, and effectively break through the low-end involution dilemma under the K-shaped market differentiation.

"AI and Intelligent Shoemaking/Garment Machinery Zone": Professionally recruit exhibitors of intelligent fabric inspection machines, AI visual defect detection (AOI), AI production scheduling SaaS systems, flexible automatic cutting machines, and other intelligent equipment. The exhibition site will showcase in real time the full-process industrial closed loop of "10-second AI-generated design drafts, directly connected to intelligent cutting bed sampling," intuitively solving the core pain points of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises such as difficulty in recruiting workers, high labor costs, low R&D efficiency, and large quality control errors, and helping the industry's digital and intelligent upgrading.

"Greater China/ASEAN High-Quality Shoe Molds and Craftsmanship Exhibition Area": Gathering high-precision shoe mold factories, special genuine leather stitching machines, renewable rubber soles, and high-elastic supercritical foaming equipment suppliers, accurately matching the production process needs of global quirky retro and creative trendy shoes, perfectly supporting the flexible implementation and small-batch high-quality mass production of global trendy upper designs, and filling the shortcomings of Vietnam's high-end shoemaking craftsmanship.

During the exhibition, in conjunction with Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT), VITAS, LEFASO, and international legal and supply chain experts, based on Vietnam's latest policies, global trade rules, and industrial transformation pain points, the following three authoritative industry dialogues will be held to provide enterprises with policy interpretation, compliance guidance, and industrial upgrading solutions:

Major Brand Procurement Offices in Vietnam (e.g., Nike, Adidas, Target, etc.): Targeted promotion of the "Hardcore Eco-friendly Materials" and "Unmanned Factory Solutions" exhibition zones that comply with the latest European and American ESG / carbon footprint regulations, precisely matching the stringent compliant procurement standards of international brands, screening and providing high-quality green suppliers that have passed international social responsibility audits for brand owners, and building high-end supply-demand matchmaking channels.

Global Emerging DTC and Cross-border E-commerce Buyers: Leveraging Vietnam's mature flexible intelligent manufacturing industry advantages, with "Quirky Retro Shoes" and "Fast Fashion Flexible Supply Chain" as core attractions, focusing on attracting cross-border procurement groups that need "small batches, multiple varieties, short cycles, and delivery within two weeks," helping exhibitors connect with emerging traffic markets and broaden their overseas channels.

Core Highlight: Facing the "K-shaped divergence" in the global footwear and apparel market, geopolitical supply chain restructuring, and the cost challenges brought by Vietnam's latest labor law (Decree No. 293/2025/ND-CP) raising regional minimum wages, the global footwear and apparel industry chain is undergoing profound structural adjustment. The 24th Vietnam International Textile and Apparel Industry Exhibition (VTG 2026) and the Vietnam International Footwear Machinery and Materials Industry Exhibition (VFM 2026) will be grandly held from October 14 to 17, 2026, at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) in Ho Chi Minh City. As the "weather vane" for footwear and apparel transformation in the Asia-Pacific region, this year's exhibitions will comprehensively focus on intelligent manufacturing, flexible supply chains, green functional materials, and vertical AI applications, deeply aligning with the five core global footwear and apparel development trends for 2026, providing one-stop closed-loop solutions for global industry players to overcome cost dilemmas, avoid compliance risks, and seize future business opportunities.

In the current complex and ever-changing international environment, the survival space of the traditional low-end OEM model (CMT) that relies on cheap labor is being further squeezed. Involution of low-end production capacity, continuous profit compression, and surging compliance risks have become the industry norm. In addition, rigid requirements for "carbon footprint tracking" and "substantial origin" under green trade barriers such as the EU and U.S. Supply Chain Due Diligence Acts mean that the extensive model relying solely on process transfer and OEM assembly can no longer adapt to international trade rules. Vietnam's footwear and apparel industry urgently needs to move toward high technology, high added value, intelligentization, and greenization of the entire industrial chain, and complete structural transformation and upgrading. In this critical transition period of industrial iteration, the organizers of the 2026 VTG & VFM exhibition are responding to the trend, accurately grasping the pulse of industry change, and fully anchoring the exhibition theme to "technology going global, hardcore compliance, and flexible upgrading," making every effort to help domestic and international footwear and apparel enterprises break through bottlenecks and achieve breakthrough growth amid industry pain.

"2026 VTG & VFM is not just an exhibition; it is a strategic think tank and resource matching platform for global footwear and apparel enterprises to rebuild their moats when facing complex 'headwinds' such as rising costs and tightening policies." A spokesperson for the exhibition organizers said, "We sincerely invite global brand sourcing offices, cross-border e-commerce pioneers, supply chain decision-makers, and footwear and apparel manufacturing giants to gather in Ho Chi Minh City, deepen their presence in Vietnam's core supply chain market, and together gain insight into trends, seize opportunities, and witness the birth of new leaders in this great industrial transformation."

Welcome to 2026 VFM & VTG | October 14-17 | SECC, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam