President’s Letter: Supporting Our Industry Through Uncertainty — Important Updates on Toy Fair® 2026 Exhibitor Renewal & 2025 LA Fall Preview

April 17, 2025 

During these increasingly challenging times, your resilience as toymakers, creators, and innovators is inspiring as we all try to keep moving forward. Over the course of the last few weeks, I have spoken to many of you personally, and as your Association, we exist to stand with you — not just through our aggressive advocacy to find any way to exempt toys from tariffs, but also through tangible decisions that will help to support your business and the broader industry.

Given the economic uncertainty and constantly shifting policies of global tariffs, we recognize that business planning is getting more difficult by the day, making commitments to important, but less immediate, opportunities harder. With this in mind, we want to inform you of two important adjustments we’re making to provide more time and require less early commitment to help support your business during what we all hope is a short-term tough situation:

1. Toy Fair® 2026 Renewal Period Postponed & Deposit Reduced
We know that many of you are navigating an uncertain road ahead, and that now may not be the right time to make firm commitments about the future. To provide your teams with additional breathing room, we are delaying the opening of the Toy Fair 2026 renewal application period. Originally slated for May 1 to 30, the new application period will begin June 1.

Second, we are reducing the initial deposit required for Toy Fair 2026 booth space to 20% from 50%. We understand that every dollar matters right now, and this change is intended to significantly lighten the upfront financial commitment for exhibiting companies, while still providing our team with the visibility and time it needs to produce this world-class event.

2. New Opportunity for Limited Temporary Showrooms at The New Toy Building
In addition, we are adapting our approach to our new Toy Building in El Segundo for this year’s LA Fall Preview. While The Toy Building is being built exclusively for and will serve as the long-term showroom center for our industry, we are now creating limited opportunities for temporary showroom tenants to join us for the September preview. Our team is actively working through the logistics to make this possible — because more than ever, we want to give companies every opportunity to connect with buyers and the broader global toy community to showcase their products, even if long-term commitments aren't currently feasible.

These decisions are grounded in our mission to work in service of the entire industry — not just through strategic advocacy efforts, but through actionable, member-focused solutions.

We hope these adjustments will provide some breathing room and reduced economic pressure on upcoming commitments as we all work toward a solution for the current tariff situation. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or feedback as we move forward together.

Appreciatively,

Greg Ahearn
President & CEO
The Toy Association